Reasons 4 Alienation In Todays Education...

There’s something seriously wrong in today’s education scenario. 22, 20, 16, 13 yr olds committing suicides for mundane reasons; ‘failure’ and ‘left out by girlfriend’ being the most common.
What does education mean? Does it mean only high ranks 5th or 1st in IIT-JEE or 98% in SSC/ HSC Boards and high ‘percentiles’? Or does it mean cram the subjects and vomit out on the day of exams without understanding? Or being ‘brandish’ as a ‘duffer’ if s/he doesn’t score well? Or only ‘marks culture’ that define the intellectuality of a student? Or not focussing on students’ other abilities? Or schools and colleges categorising their students on the basis of their ‘percentiles’ (or cramming?) Or Teachers and Principals of schools focussing only on bright students making them brighter and targeting the weak making them weaker. Where is this system of education leading us to?

Alienation. “Marks Have Alienated Them”. The concept of “Only Marks Is Education” is making them more negative and indifferent. This ‘crammed’ work is alienating the students from their fellow mates, from their teachers, from parents, from the society, from their studies and of course from themselves. Alienation of students in school is not understood properly and is taken in a negative sense. Depression, feeling of inferiority complex, the psyche of ‘I can’t do a thing’, suicides and suicidal attempts are as a result of alienation from the mainstream. It even causes deviant behaviour like placing crackers in loos or robbing stationary or destroying laboratory articles like test tubes. Alienation is even caused by ‘demarcation’ made by teachers and school authorities when they focus on the bright side of the brighter and shady side of the weak. It is even causing frequent orkutting, online gaming, searching online friends and trying to make them as partners in life; which again unfortunately is taken very negatively.

This scenario has to be changed. All schools ‘should’ have at least one psychologist who would behave like a friend with them rather than a professional. The teachers and school authorities should be counselled in regards to the type of students in the school. The parents should be counselled in sync with the psyche of their pupils and then the school children should be counselled. While counselling these kids, they should be made to feel comfortable and not should not have any guilt feel in their mind. School children have loads of untapped potential energy, equivalent to change anything. They should not only be tapped but also channelised in a proper manner so that they become focussed. All before this they should be taught what exactly the market, the society needs from them in sync with their talents so that they start working towards it from right age and waste no time.

Two important agents of socialization- School and Family should take up this responsibility of making their energies tapped, channelised and thus make them focussed. These agents should ‘stop’ physical sanctions onchildren to make them study, cursing them and exploit their liabilities which would ensure more alienation. If this is not done in the right adolescent stage; the negatives will be Inherited in their future for which Kiran Desai will have to write a sequel of ‘Inheritance Of Loss’!

-- Sachidananda.
(Eternal Happiness)
(24-01-2007)