Education v/s Educating.

"Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught", said George Savile, Marquis of Halifax, an English statesman, writer, and politician.

Education is one of the most misunderstood concepts of the world today. Somewhere down the path of building this educated society, learning has lost its meaning and relevance and has been replaced by an orthodox and monotonous mode of education. Today, mostly if not all, education is about passing a few exams, getting a few certificates and reaching a certain level of 'education'. This way of education is governed by the scope of result in view. I would not be wrong in saying that education is, mostly, just a means of attaining a preconceived & desired result. It has no bearing or relation to the learning involved in the process of educating.

Looking for examples, let’s look around us or within ourselves. Let us talk about a few of them. Today middle class forms a major chunk of India's population. Generally in a middle class family, the kid is expected to perform well in studies at least, so that he can get into some conceived good stream like science, thereby getting into engineering or medical or some other job yielding course. Talking about engineering, be it any engineer - IT, computer, electronics, electrical, mechanical, chemical, civil, etc., you would find him in the IT industry. There are many more examples which we all know and see everyday. It makes no difference if the person has the knowledge on what he has been educated, unless he/she is able to land up an earning. To a certain extent I would say it’s practically correct. But the result of this is another generation following the same concept of education and the 'success' related with it. There I find a problem.

Do we really understand what these problems are? Probably most of us do. But we do not know the way out and feel it safe to go with the wave. There are a few things which will certainly work towards breaking this tradition of education and move it towards learning or really educating. I believe that proper communication, freedom to think, skill evaluation and skill based actions rather than result driven actions are some of the steps towards learning and educating.

We will talk more about these later and also I look forward to your inputs as well. Some of us may also debate on the benefits of skill driven learning and those of result oriented education. But I will take some more space to discuss on this and certainly at some other time.