COMPULSORY FORMAL EDUCATION
A travesty!
VED from VICTORIA INSTITUTIONS
It is foretold! The torrential flow of inexorable destiny!
The TRIGGER in the FEUDAL CODES
TOMFOOLERY to SEND UP CERTAIN PEOPLE
ACADEMIC DISDAIN for REAL KNOWLEDGE
The TRIGGER in the FEUDAL CODES
In my Physics degree class, the teacher would start with Constant whaaliyam Tharmomeettar (Constant Volume Thermometer). He would start dictating the notes in equally terrible pronunciations. The students from the Malayalam medium schools would show great deference to his teaching and write notes, while many of the students who had come from English medium schools would simply bear the tedious teaching. The students of the Malayalam schools were aware of the terrible feudal codes of Malayalam as an everyday event, and their firm purpose in life would be to get into the higher levels of the Malayalam codes, which was through a government job. Actually for most government jobs, this education is not required. However, there is college teaching jobs, scientist jobs etc. where this qualification was required.
REDEFINING a PROFESSION
My personal problem was to identify the teachers with the concept of professors. For many of them were ‘professors’. Yet, in my mind, the concept of lecturers and professors were of an elevated kind, good in English, disinclined to use lower level pejorative words to students, persons of a higher mental order etc. However, the teaching classes that I saw in the colleges were of the opposite kind. However, it would not be correct on my part to say that they were bad people. In fact, some of them were really good persons. However, they shouldn’t be the persons to don the robe of a professor. For, they were lending power and status to feudal, suppressive social communication codes, through their very stance as professors.
An EXPENSIVE SWINDLE
Now, just think of an English professor, who gets paid around 75,000 rupees per month as salary, a fabulous pension, that can literally continue for around 30 to 40 years after his or her retirement, commutation of pension, by which he or she can collect around seven and a half years of pension amount as a lump sum on immediately after the retirement, if he or she request for it. What is the quality of the students who have been taught by this person? How many of them have become good in English? It may be understood that learning English is not a difficult thing, and can be done without any help if one strives for it, even without formal education. However look at the quality of majority students who have passed out of formal college education. Their knowledge of English language as well as its finer elements is totally of the abysmal level. Many of them do know that they had been fooled.
OPENING UP the COMPETITION
This is the quality of the majority English teaching in formal education. If this be so, it might be correct to point out that the quality of all other subject education is also of the same level. However, the students do not have much problem, for they have all come for a formal qualification and not necessarily for knowledge and refinement. Since most of the government jobs are reserved for persons with formal qualification only, the jobs gets shared and distributed among a particular percentage of the students who have formal qualification. However, if the government jobs are not reserved for them, and they need to compete with people who may not have formal qualifications, but are of good calibre, the farce known as formal education would be heavily discussed.
TOMFOOLERY to SEND UP CERTAIN PEOPLE
For, it is people’s money that is being spent for this tomfoolery. And the students who come out with minor quality enhancement go above the common man, without the real intellectual inputs to show for the levels, they claim to. Their behaviour to the public, even with all levels of formal qualifications, is just feudal, suppressive, pejorative and rude type, unless the common-man can exhibit some powerful connections or designations. What is the use of this type of education to the people in this nation?
A STERN DECISION
After my education, it was my stern decision that I would not join the government service, seeing the crudeness that was entering it. I saw the government officials as crude, low calibre, low-in-English, very feudal, self serving class, who were not only corrupt and useless to the core (for the work they were doing could be done more efficiently if there was a British management in place), but also that they were hell-bent on increasing their salary, pension and other benefits, including commutation of pension, beyond all levels of reasonableness.
It was this terrible decision that gave me a lot of information about various other knowledge, of which I had been quite unaware of, and which no school or college could give a person.
ACADEMIC DISDAIN for REAL KNOWLEDGE
I am not intending to write a story here. However, as I moved around many places in the nation, with bare financial stability and great attachment to English communication codes, I came to see the various types of activities in which human beings were engaged. They all had information and knowledge. However, in the academic circles, these are not treated as knowledge or information. In the academic circles, Trigonometry, Calculus, Logarithm, Algebra, Polynomials and such things are knowledge. {Actually, I did teach my daughter the rudiments some of these at a very early age like around 5 years. This I did because I wanted her to be informally well informed in higher mathematics. However, I did not see any connection to this ambition with a formal schooling. And this ambition had no specific aim of getting her a fabulous job in mathematics, but simply to make her aware of the incredible possibilities in mathematics}.
USE and WASTAGE
Now, here I need to mention the use of studying mathematics and sciences. People study these subjects for getting jobs and not necessarily for getting knowledge in them. Knowledge in a specific field of human intellectual activity, may at times lead to a great discovery or insight. Or it may simply be as entertaining as playing chess.
Since I have mentioned Chess, there is need to compare playing Chess with studying Physics or some other theme like Mathematics. In my home state, around 700,000 students study write their tenth class exam every year. This is a very small state. Out of these students, how many will actually have any use with their calculus, trigonometry, logarithm, quadrilateral equations etc. knowledge in Mathematics? I would say that maybe of the 700,000 every year in my home state, around 5000 may have use of these things. Some two thousand may head for the doctors jobs, 10000 would get engineering graduations, but whether they get a job commensurate to their qualification is uncertain. Maybe some 20000 would go in for various scientific jobs. Well, totally may be, I am saying maybe, some 60,000 would totally get a job with a minor percentage of the various inputs they had received from their education.
In terms of percentage, may be around 10 percentage of the students might get a job connected to something that they had studied at school and college. Even then, most of them have to really go in for other higher education to really get a job. And on the job, most of them find that they need to study again, to get to know what the company knows. For the others, who go in for jobs unconnected with knowledge in higher Mathematics, it is just like knowing chess, or even worse than that. As to the jobs they enter into, they come with zero information and experience. Just for the sake of the other 10%, they had to study unconnected subjects, just to give the classrooms and study system a mass movement feeling.
FILLING A DEFINITE VOID
Now about academic knowledge. There is this fact I noticed when my own sister was studying for Engineering. I found that that actually the five years of study was a waste in terms of what was being taught. For the first few years, actually a lot of unconnected things like History of Engineering etc. were taught as serious subjects, just to while away the time. She was studying for Electronics and Communication Engineering. However, there were a lot of subjects connected to such things as Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering etc. that simply pushed the years to fill the five year period. At that time I was under the impression that all these things were needed to make a person a good Electronics and Communication Engineer.
However, when my young daughter at age 8 was studying C++, and saw that it was also a very serious subject in Software engineering, I really had to confirm certain of my doubts. She had already been good in such things as MS word, Ms PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, rudiments of audio and video editing, and Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat etc. I really could understand that a person could become an expert in Software engineering themes even without going to an Engineering college. Moreover, there is no need to study for four to five years, writing innumerable exams. A good mastery can be gained from six months to one year study, if the person is of calibre enough and was good in English. English helps.