MANTHAN – 12Sep
True Education…
• Should be connected to life. One of the biggest issues in learning subjects like Math, Science the way it is currently done is that the link to life is missing and loses its value eventually.
• Should connect one to their roots and help strengthen the identity of the individual. This builds confidence in self and provides the scope to spread far and wide. Education that takes you away from your culture and roots leave you with an inherent feeling of shame and a false sense of freedom
• Should be liberating and not binding. Should enable the child to experience his true inner self and bring out the innate wisdom he possesses. Should be able to understand self and the world around him. This paves way for opening up their creative minds, breaking paradigms and have a holistic view of the society and establish a good relationship with the society
• Should equip one with life skills. In many cases life skills is confused with livelihood skills which is more about developing the skills needed to pursue an occupation. Life Skills include the ability to handle uncertainty, adapting to changing environments, handling fear, understanding relationships, being sahaj, dealing with failures.
• Should enable self-learning. In this ever-changing world, learning agility is an important ability to be able to adapt to the unexpected needs that arise in life.
• Should build the viveka (discretion) to make the right choices and decisions
• Should develop the physical (health, food, way of living, body care), emotional (confidence, inner strength, habits), social (relationships, understanding perspectives), intellectual (skill development, knowledge, information, logic, analysis, reasoning) and spiritual capabilities (Knowing self and divine).
• Should build a strong foundation of values and right attitude to deal with life
• Is a never-ending process
Education is not…
• About building academic capabilities, learning subjects with the thought that it may be useful sometime in future
• Skill building alone
• A preparation to get a job. It is not about the preparation to meet industry needs • About memorizing and learning
• Only about gathering information but developing the wisdom to handle the information
• Not about learning to follow instructions How can the right kind of education be given
• Home, school and society should work in tandem to provide a fertile environment for the child to grow and explore. Education should start in individual families with parents playing a larger role.
• Children should have varied experiences which help them establish connections in their own spaces and stay on as deep-rooted learning
• Travelling and meeting people is a great way of providing varied experiences and exposure to children
• Nature is the biggest laboratory. Staying amidst nature opens up varied learning opportunities naturally that easily connects with one’s life. It helps to experience being with life, triggers curiosity, develops observation skills, nurtures our senses and gives a sense of joy
• Children should have spaces to know their interests and explore their competencies
• Dr. Gururaj Karjagi, a well-known educationist once mentioned just like todays back pack travelers whose destination is not pre-decided, pack their bags with things necessary for all type of conditions and weather, thus being prepared to live in any type of situations, true education should put those basic necessities in the bag of children, which will equip them to face any kind of situation once they are out into this world.
Why is so much thought needed towards providing the right kind of education
• Education plays a big role in shaping us as individuals, defining our thought process and behavior, influences our decision making, in the way we handle our relationships and many other aspects of leading a sustainable life
• Children need to experience a childhood that they don’t have to recover from
• Education plays a big role in nation building and today some of the issues we see in the society like – the inability to deal with relationships and adversities, lack of faith, unwarranted fears, inability to handle uncertainty, disconnection from roots and culture, inability to have a holistic view of life, self-centric way of living – are largely a result of the current education system. Hence the need to understand the meaning of true education and take steps towards it.