Education...Nah! Tuitions...Yeah!

Guess who topped the twelfth grade exams?

1. The student who had his hand up with a well-thought intelligent answer in class! 
2. The student who was not seen or heard in class.

      You are forgiven for making the mistake selecting option 1 because we are talking about the Indian Education System. What should a developed education system lay emphasis on? The child's all round development but in India the education system is meant to lay emphasis on studies and studies alone. Studies are emphasized regardless of the fact whether the child is interested in the subject at hand or not.

      In the exams, the child who is always active in class, answers questions and is recognised by the teachers as a good student gets average marks while students who are not heard of manage to get excellent marks because the examiners give marks only to the answers which are good enough to be introduced in any guide. They do not see whether the child has understood the fact or simply mugged the answers.

      I am not ridiculing the entire tuition system. I understand that at times tuitions are needed for subjects like Maths and even for languages that you haven't learnt before like French or Russian but I don't understand the logic behind having tuitions for subjects like Political Science or Psychology. Is there a need? No student can be so dumb that they won't understand what is being taught in the class in the above subjects.

      What I don't stand for is that you go to college and then go for tuitions mug those huge answers that are given by your coaching classes and then just print them out on your examination sheet word to word and then end up topping the exams. I know many people who didn't take tuition and who got average marks and I also know people who took tuitions and got good marks. It is upto you to decide who to respect. I respect the one who didn't take tuitions and got average marks. They are the ones who will do well in abroad where there are is no tuition system. So for all those who didn't take tuitions, you did better than the rest.

Psychology of Views and Decisions

      What is the routine that you wake up every morning to follow? I bet it involves reading the newspapers. Sure it does. What are you nodding your head for? OK? So you open the papers and what is the first news that you read? Killings, rape and violence. In simpler words it is all the things that the world would be better without and also that you would be better without every morning. After all it is much better to wake up every morning to read happier things. But do the papers realise that? I don't think so.

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      Regularly they feature events that are not so pleasant to either the eye or the emotions on the front page and we like the silent people read them, go through them and the worse it is the better. At times it seems like we have been taken over by a sinister evil that wishes to see all the gory details so brilliantly highlighted in the newspapers. We do not have any control over it.

      But how did it grow so big in the first place that even our superior organs like the brain can't overcome him? Well it is simple now that you ask. It has grown. All the rubbish that we fed it acted like nutrients for it and it bloomed. There are few things in this world and life that we can do.

      And it is these things that we do that define us. Also there are those things that we don't do that define us. As such we are surrounded by options, options good or bad. However what we need to look at is: what is it that we have done and or will do and what would their consequences be? Can they be put into the 'good' circle or the 'bad' circle.

      Whatever we do may not have its effects immediately but it will in the future, you can be sure about that. Thus every time we do something or decide to do something just give it a second's thought and view all the paradigms attached to it. That is all you need to do to lead a good life. Once you have analysed everything, you will choose the right option automatically.

Earth in 2011: Humans and Nature

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      Disasters. Man-made and natural. None of the two are new, they are age old words but they should now be said with a lot more fear. Everywhere you look there is despair that hangs in the air with humans being the rope and the devil himself being the Hangman. Egypt, Tunisia, Libya are the most recent and the most intense examples of man-made disasters. It was man who created the system of ruler. It is a time tested one but it also has its negatives. These negatives are mostly the result of poor leadership. Unlike the earlier days, now a days the leaders give a lot more importance to their own state of well-being.

      The best example of this sort of leadership is that of the infamous Col. Gaddafi. Every news paper has something to report about his banks accounts which are spread all over the world and which the world powers are doing their desperate best to freeze but then we, civilians, don't know the ground reality. We are simply the infant which is fed by the mother, the government being the mother here. Educated, politically aware and smart though we are but it is only those handful of people in the villages, rural areas or the not so developed regions who are asking the questions. What are we doing then? Isn't it our responsibility too? Being responsible global citizens shouldn't we offer help to our brothers who are struggling to achieve some sense of democracy?

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      We aren't doing that but how is it that even with so many educated people in the world, individuals like Gaddafi are able to get away after killing civilians or rebels as he may have labelled them. The US which is the supposed 'Big Brother' of the international community is having trouble in trying to find a quick and efficient solution to the problem. They are trying to get NATO to play a bigger part because they have got their 'own bigger problems' such as the one in Afghanistan. There are about 200 countries in the world and yet only one (read USA) is staking its claim to be a 'Moral Superpower'. Of course it is a claim that is resisted by many.

      US has its own self-interests to take care of first, the most important being OIL. Hence, we can term that claim of theirs as questionable, but who doesn't want to look after their self-interests? China is playing brother to Pakistan to counter India, USA is backing South Korea to counter North Korea. There are many more examples of countries getting involved in the bigger picture to secure their interests. However, what does this lead to? An Afghanistan, if I may say so. It was the US that declared war on Afghanistan with its allies to get the world rid of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. A praise-worthy venture indeed but what happened? Did the dream come true? No. All that remains in Afghanistan is a slightly crippled Taliban getting its money from poppy cultivation opposed by a few warlords here and there.

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      Thus it was a failed operation. It was an operation that cost the tax-payers billions of dollars each day that it continued, yet it still continues. Now we hear that the US is going to slowly and steadily pull out of there. What then? The only thing that is stopping the Taliban from overthrowing the decadent government is the presence of the US troops. Thus, we are heading back to the almost similar past scenario. A half-hearted operation won't do the trick and this is what leaders have realized and hence, we can see the rebels surviving the Libyan Civil War.

      The entire middle-east is in turmoil currently. Each day media reports about protests in different countries. The fight for freedoms has spread like a wildfire. What I feel is that the time has come when military or other dictatorship would be shown the door from the entire middle-east and people would prosper in a free middle-east. Yet there is another aspect of human life that we haven't explored yet. And that is the natural aspect. I wrote about power hungry despots but we are still left with Mother Nature, a topic so vast that even if I type a billion blogs, I won't be able to explain it entirely and do it the justice that it deserves.

NATURE

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      In the last couple of months, we saw earthquakes, horrendous ones. We saw New Zealand suffer and we also saw Japan in despair, a situation that is hadn't been in since the world war. What is all this that is happening all around us? Revenge by mother earth? Is this the beginning of the end? These are some of the questions that 'pollute' the dreams of many. What I feel is that this is not the end. It is merely the start of a new beginning. The earth is starting the process of cleansing. It is cleansing itself from all the harm that we have done and when it does so we will go back to the golden age.

      The process would be tough on all of us. But it is needed. I don't know what it would be like but it would certainly involve earth releasing colossal amounts of energy lying dormant in its dark interiors. Thus we may see a rise in the number of earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunami but it is all for the good.

      There are many more aspects that need to be analysed but I can't do so in one post so hence I will write another post about this and it will be posted on the next Sunday.

TO BE CONTINUED....