An article on burden of studies
Answers
BURDEN OF STUDIES
By:_______________
The school-going child is burdened because she does not understand what her efforts and struggles add up to. Because she does not experience the connect between the classroom and her personal growth. Despite CCE, education is still what we do to the children, devoid, for the most part, of the delight of discovery. To those who do not grow to their full potential, everything, life itself, is a burden forever.
What is the scope and purpose of education? Our ancestors used to have some clarity on this issue. A child is born to his biological parents, who take care of his growth till he attains a certain age, when he is entrusted to a teacher (guru), who accepts him in trust. The guru facilitates his total growth, as a result of which he is born a second time as one empowered to engage his context responsibly and to use his skills and knowledge to meet the needs of his fellow human beings. Being ‘twice born’ was neither casteist nor cultic. It denoted character, commitment and competence. The purpose of education was to midwife this new being by awakening and empowering the higher self in every human being. Whatever it took to reach this stage never was a burden. Processes and practices unmindful of this goal were a burden.
The truth is that for the student to be ‘twice-born’ through true education, the teacher needs to be a guru and not merely a servant of the syllabus. Not uncharacteristically, the paradigm-shift envisaged under CCE was pushed without re-orienting teachers. Farmers are wiser than policy pundits. They prepare the soil before sowing the seeds. They are interested in the produce, whereas we refuse to look beyond the process. Innovations, then, become ends in themselves. The net result is that while the school kid is not exactly smiling, the teachers, by and large, are looking more and more burdened!
The mark of the ‘twice-born’ is neither pride nor greed. Human growth is growth in responsibility. Responsibility is response-ability. Education must empower us to respond to the needs in the given context, lest its beneficiaries become parasites or paralytics. A parasite has no responsibility. A parasite has, also, no dignity. An educational paradigm that fails to empower young people to be responsible persons and by default lets them be parasites — smart, successful and sophisticated, but parasites, nonetheless — is a mendacious project. It burdens pupils and undermines societies.
Knowledge without character, said Gandhiji, is an evil. It is a snare to individuals and societies alike. Growth is the bridge between knowledge and character. Having to cross the chasm on a bridge that exists only on paper is burdensome indeed.