Education
There are two aspects to education: 1. Imparting Knowledge. 2. Instilling character.
It is an age old saying that "If character is lost, evertything is lost". Nobody says "if knowledge is lost, everything is lost". Today, education has become synonymous with gaining more and more knowledge, be it theoretical or practical. This section itself is not very good. What is happening is that the character side of education is facing severe neglect, mainly because the teachers themselves lack them. In the case of knowledge, even if the teacher is dumb, students have other sources like books, internet etc. But for character, the sources of learning for a child are parents and teachers. A parent/teacher of a great character can produce students of great character, even against the so-called peer pressure, because in those cases, peer pressure reduces due to the overwhelming influence of the teacher/parent. Sad part is neither the parent nor the teacher have that character. Where from are you going to select good teachers in this regard?
If you think about it deeply, the philosophy of education itself needs to be modified to not just produce great engineers and doctors, but to produce, basically a good human being who has heart, and not machines that work only for themselves. The present system only leads to the formation of such machines. Unless something is done about it soon, the world will surely be ruled by robots - robots who have flesh around their bones and blood running through their veins. Sooner we act, the better it is.
But the age old question remains: Who will bell the cat?
Originally written by me written in http://human-values.blogspot.com
It is an age old saying that "If character is lost, evertything is lost". Nobody says "if knowledge is lost, everything is lost". Today, education has become synonymous with gaining more and more knowledge, be it theoretical or practical. This section itself is not very good. What is happening is that the character side of education is facing severe neglect, mainly because the teachers themselves lack them. In the case of knowledge, even if the teacher is dumb, students have other sources like books, internet etc. But for character, the sources of learning for a child are parents and teachers. A parent/teacher of a great character can produce students of great character, even against the so-called peer pressure, because in those cases, peer pressure reduces due to the overwhelming influence of the teacher/parent. Sad part is neither the parent nor the teacher have that character. Where from are you going to select good teachers in this regard?
If you think about it deeply, the philosophy of education itself needs to be modified to not just produce great engineers and doctors, but to produce, basically a good human being who has heart, and not machines that work only for themselves. The present system only leads to the formation of such machines. Unless something is done about it soon, the world will surely be ruled by robots - robots who have flesh around their bones and blood running through their veins. Sooner we act, the better it is.
But the age old question remains: Who will bell the cat?
Originally written by me written in http://human-values.blogspot.com
3 Comments:
typo da first line: of your blogpiece on education
where, i couldnt make out any...
Its not necessarily as gloomy as you make it out to be. It need not be that only parents or teacher who support character building. People do it to each other all the time. aren't we given responsiblity early in our age in IIT? isn't that character building? don't we have moral science classes in school? why does it have to be pin point character building. I personally see hundreds of examples everyday of exemplary conduct. A security personel in the bus promptly gets up to give a seat to a woman carrying a child while the others watch, a poor maid servant starved for food returns a wet 100 buck note in the clothes. Don't we see so many such things around. sometimes we just choose to ignore it and crave for a more direct form. I personally don't see the need.
Post a Comment
<< Home