By Adeena Jamal Ahmad
When I was four years old, I was admitted to an all girls Anglo-Indian school in North India. To a middle-class family, a child being admitted to a Missionary school was like a dream come true. It was taken for granted, that I will be an English-speaking parrot who will be rattling English nursery rhymes and quote Shakespeare in a couple of years. My parents were also nurturing the same kind of dreams. My parents received education via a state board system in India. Hence, education was a luxury when they started their academic journeys. It was often reinstated that our missionary school education was the best we could get. As we grew, the only emphasis we had was to attain a certain set of marks, win a specific set of literary competitions, play certain sports that were approved for a young lady’s behaviour. For 14 years, I was taught that women cannot be seen with period stains. We were looked down upon if our hairstyle did not behave in a nun-like manner. While this is not an assault on my alma mater, which gave me excellent training. My question is – why is the entire Indian education system following one flawed set pattern?
Why was the trilogy of subjects so sacred? Are English, Mathematics and Sciences a sure shot access to success? What if a kid has the latent potential to be the greatest mountaineer who is shackled by the constraints of a class? Why is it wrong if the length of your socks does not match? As a generation, we have produced the most obedients clerks who do not deviate from the established norms of the society.
Are 14 years of education, enough to guarantee a respectful, good human being? I do not disagree that education is of paramount importance. However, my concern lies in the mode of education being rendered today.
As a society, we are currently battling with issues this world has never witnessed before. Millions of people are battling mental health issues, yet our education system has never addressed the importance of mental health. Our system is plagued with bullying in many ways, yet nothing is being practised to address the same. Our environmental education classes are becoming shorter than ever, because clearing the engineering exam without any moral responsibility is far more important. Children do not have any access to nature. The schedules are being monitored to accommodate as much as screen time as possible.
Our generation failed to better the education for ourselves. The result of which is poor mental health, physical ailments, a failing ecological system, inequality rising in all spheres, lack of empathy for other species and inflated egos.
It is so important that we mend our education system. It is absolutely acceptable to allow creativity to grow within oneself. Taking a few days, weeks or even months away from a schedule to recuperate is also not wrong. We can agree to accept that being a better human being supersedes being a better clerk who has only followed instructions all their life.
It is time, we educate ourselves. Education is not time bound. Nobody has ever said that age and education have any correlation. Grow. Create. Think. Breathe. For yourselves. To get away from what has been pre-defined. Is it imperative that we decide our own path of education? What may work for you, may not work for someone else? So how can one education system fit all?
I have a long way to go. To break the nearly three decades of trying to fit into somebody else’s expectation. And it is a path unknown, yet doused in growth, a learning curve and just the excitement to reach the stage that is not yet explored. Are you?