The transformative power of education is generally acknowledged by most. Disputes and disparities, however, are likely to be in what is transformed by conventional education, how transformed and very often, and ironically, how deformed.
While scrolling through one’s own records tucked away neatly in the dusty drawers of the past, the term “education” inevitably binds to its twin sister, “school” and brings to mind early fascinations with the symbols of letters and numbers and the joys accompanied by gleeful laughter discovering and manipulating sounds, singing them out, followed by progressively stifling rules of grammar and sequences of logic and a culmination in sets of knowledge for mastery in specific disciplines, specific skills. One left the educational institute somewhat dazed, so proudly and precisely ordered to function in a disorderly world in real time.
In childhood, going to school was a novelty. I took it for granted that I was going to school to learn things, new things nobody else would be ever able to teach me. I went to school looking forward to the difference in experiences it afforded, adding on to my colourful life at home. But there was a wall of echoes around me which sounded my future of a good life, being employed, doing something gainful and having a comfortable life without struggles. What struggle? Very often the economical and financial stresses of my fore-fathers shaped my need for an education. Surely something was fundamentally flawed? Was the economy reason enough for education?
What did it mean to me? Was I able to ask myself this question in school? Was I consulted? Are the students of this time and age consulted or stimulated to think about why they were in school and what they wanted to do with their lives? Do parents help?
In the Education for ALL Global Monitoring Report of 2013 (funded by the United Nations UNESCO), the transformative power of education was broadly spelt out in these words: “Education, if delivered well, enables people to fulfill their individual potential and to contribute to the economic, political and social transformation of their countries.”
The complexity inherent within the education process, or at least in its concept and execution, if not its outcome, can be quite humbling. Unpacking this statement, in reverse order, will kindle many questions seeking answers and the answers, if at all they arrive, will determine the flowering of an educational effort and the shape it takes.
Is education confined to a place and time called school? Are all teachers true educators? Who determines good education? The child? The parents? The teachers? The Government? Surely it is important enough for everyone to have a say? But how is this collaboration worked out? Who or what is the focal point?
World over, education seems to be the business of the State. How is education conceptualised by the State? What is the ideology in which education is grounded? Instinctively, we know that the high and noble the ideology, so will be education, so will be its effect on all educated and so will it show on the social and political front, in each citizen and in the making of the country.
In this and the following issue of our Newsletter, we examine some fundamental questions confronting us now, such as what is knowledge, the ideal of education, how it could be approached and the special nature of this being subjected to education. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother gave education special attention, for it was a means to hew the path towards the beautiful future promised to mankind.
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