LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT. 55. LITERACY AND EDUCATION.

LITERATURE-LIGHT AND DELIGHT

55. LITERACY AND EDUCATION

Literacy reigns as the chief mark of education today. And education itself is taken as the equivalent of a teaching-learning process, in a formal, institutional environment, involving systematic study of some subjects , culminating in a formally conferred qualification, diploma or degree, taken as valid or essential for employment. In India the whole process is tightly (but ineffectively) controlled by the govt. bureaucracy at all stages. Currently, computer literacy is the only thing that counts.

However, the net result seems to be not only pretty poor but mighty ridiculous. We learn that over 50% of our engineering graduates are "not employable". This is serious, because only the top mark earners at the secondary school level (after 12 years of controlled instruction) gain admission to the engineering stream. No such survey seems to be available in respect of our medical graduates and other fields. But we can guess. Visit any govt. office or bank (even some new private banks)or other such establishment, the chances are your work will not be done at the first instance, if at all! Not only is the functionary unhelpful and unsympathetic, he is himself often helpless, with or without his computer or mobile phone. Most of them do not know what they are for, except that they somehow constitute a barrier beyond which the citizen of this vast country and big democracy should not be allowed to proceed. The spirit of colonialism is still alive and kicking! 

I need not talk much about the medical profession- again a "highly educated" segment. The newspapers are full of reports about how 50% of the surgeries are unnecessary but wantonly performed, the nexus between the profession and the drug manufacturers, the fleecing of patients under the insurance schemes. And the medical professionals, like Brutus, are all honourable, educated men, often with post-graduate qualification!

Or take another situation. Watch any traffic junction in a big city or metropolis, as the traffic signals falter and fail- which they often do, and when there is no traffic policeman around. See the chaos, confusion, road-rage, horn-blowing, one upmanship, etc. And most of the participants in this show are well-dressed, well-heeled and well-educated cream of the society, in their nice, international branded sedans, SUVs, etc.

When I used to travel by air, I invariably used to witness an amusing scene: as the plane was preparing to land, an announcement would be made requesting passengers to remain seated and not to open the overhead lockers before the plane came to a complete halt, in order to avoid causing injury to fellow passengers. But in over 25 years of plane travel in India, I did not observe a single occasion when this was followed! And you would suppose that most of the travellers were "educated"!

Situations like this make us wonder about the meaning of education, after all!

All old societies associated certain virtues and conduct with education- not just literacy or literary skill. The highest point was about man's place in the universe- his relation to the rest of the creatures. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom- the great Bible put it so simply and straight. This was echoed by our Valluvar: "What is the purpose of education if it does not lead one to adorn the Feet of Him who is the repository of Wisdom?" (Kural,2). Sanskrit sources go a step further and say learning should induce humility ( Vidya dadhati vinayam). The branches of a tree bend low, when they are heavy with fruit! Talk like this to our convent or English medium churned out youngsters today and they would call you sissy.

In college over 57 years ago, my Maths professor, then an already superannuated venerable old figure gave an anecdote from his own student days of over 50 years earlier! He was studying in a college in Madras ( then called Patnam) and had come home to his small town for holidays. One day he was engaged in some arguments with some others and he happened to utter something uncivil in the vernacular. Now, in an adjacent room his mother was receiving curds from their regular vendor woman from the village. (Those days most households in small towns used to buy curds and milk in this manner). This curd-woman from the countryside heard his words, and exclaimed spontaneously: "Why sami, I thought you had gone to Patnam to get 'educated' but you talk so bad, like we do!" . The prof. said this opened his eyes to the real meaning of education!

Put quite simply, real education gives us a new perspective, a deeper, philosophical perspective on life. It is in this sense that no education can be taken as complete without a little exposure to philosophy! Philosophical attitude need not mean mastery of empty dogmas and slogans. More than 2400 years ago, even in the Classical Western tradition, the greatest of Western philosophers said precisely this, as the meaning and purpose of life.Platonism ultimately meant:

....about the soul and its immortality; the nature of human happiness and its dependence on the perfection of mind and character that comes through the virtues of wisdom, justice,temperance,and courage; the eternal and unaltering Forms whose natures structure our physical world and the world of decent human relations within it; the nature of love and the subservience of love in its genuine form to a vision of that eternal realm.

From: Introduction, p.xxv, Plato- Complete Works, Edited by John M.Cooper.Hackett Publishing Company, 1997. 

If true education does not mean an open-ended enquiry into such a state, what can it possibly be? Mere preparation for the rat race? To convert us to mere consuming morons?