How often have you heard someone shake his head at the atrocious behaviour of another saying, “I can’t believe how an educated person can do this”? I have heard it on planes when someone is in an unseemly hurry to disembark, and grabs at his luggage without bothering about the others waiting patiently to do the same. I have heard it in a car when the guy driving the BMW (why is it always a BMW in India?) blares his horn while running a traffic light and throwing his cigarette packet out of the window. And I have heard my wife say it when she opens a door to enter a fancy restaurant only to see the person at the other side of the door think she was opening the door for him! On the contrary, the most polite and considerate people I have met are uneducated and unsophisticated rural folk who will inevitably offer you a glass of water when you walk near their hut to have a chat!
I can understand some of the high expectations people have of the educated. My whole family thinks that since I have studied engineering sometime in the dim and distant past, I should be able to fix anything at home that isn’t working. There is some rude logic to this, though my attempts to distinguish between an engineer and a mechanic have fallen on deaf ears. My wife graduated in mathematics in college and when I comment on the fact that she counts with her fingers, she says that counting is arithmetic; I presume she implies that she is the go-to person for anyone stuck solving a differential equation, as she will be able to do it in her sleep with her right hand (she is left-handed in case you were wondering)! The only profession that I know that can actually prove that they learnt something are accountants but I suspect that they get away with it mainly because they talk debits and credits which no one quite understands! Of course, less said about MBAs – they are the Brahmins of the education caste system and so no one dare challenge their superiority!
So, if college education only equips you to design spacecraft or do multi variate calculus or debit what comes in, to quote the accountants bible written by S & G (not Simon & Garfunkel but Shukla & Grewal, in case you were wondering), there is little chance that it will teach us the more mundane qualities of politeness, decency, tolerance, respecting and revelling in diversity of thought and people – all skills and attitudes necessary to be a good person! So, whose job is it?
Back in the day when I was in school, when the Catholic boys went for Catechism, the rest of us were subjected to a subject called Moral Science. I remember a feeling of dread on the days we had Moral Science because which 10 or 12 year old wants to be taught what sin is and why we should love our neighbours like ourselves and so on? To us, it was obvious – we loved our neighbours at school and home because they were who we spent much of our waking hours with. And we learnt what was right and wrong from our parents – that was what our parents were for, isn’t it, apart from providing us the creature comforts? They told us what was right behaviour and, more importantly, demonstrated it – with their own behaviour and tight smack when we faltered.
I think there is a lot of confusion about what education is meant to deliver and what it actually does. So let me give you my take on it. I think the first few years is all about learning
to socialise – about learning that not everything you want can be got by crying – sometimes,
asking and sharing will work; that you are not the centre of the world because every kid thinks likewise; and hanging around with folks other than your family can be good fun. So,
play school is all about that, and learning to postpone gratification and negotiating to get what you want rather than fighting for it (an option that army generals never figured out
and which is why they became generals, I suspect)! A little later, and I believe this is what the bulk of schooling is about, it is about learning to think, to analyse, to ask questions (remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question). This is, potentially, where civilised behaviour has the right eco-system to bloom and grow. And this is where our education
system fails us the most, because not only do we not learn to be analytical about mathematics for example (which we turn into learning formulae and how to apply them)
but also our own behaviours. The paper chase has begun! And before you know it, it is time for the dreaded board exams – the one that is supposed to separate the men from the boys
and where your whole future gets written! Where the whole focus is about gaming the
system, where learning has no currency – only marks have. And in this tension-filled world, young 15 year-olds are expected to practice being good human beings in a zero-sum game!
So, back to my earlier question – what is the relationship between being educated and decency? Reports that education delivers decency are highly exaggerated. Period! It’s you parents and friends that teach you life’s greatest lessons!!
Education Exaggerated!