True Essence Of Education

True Essence Of Education

Firing and killing of fellow student at one of school located at Gudgaon near the capital city Delhi has not only proved tsunami for the national conscious of the country but also provided a space for debate and put a question mark on our present educational system.

Like the most of life fields educational arena is also dominated by the stiff competition and our present educational system is being looked as the stress source for the students, parents and teachers. Unfortunately our budding generations are not equipped with the training skills of controlling the mind to face and get rid of these stresses.

While reading literature of great Indian philosopher and educationist Swami Vivekanand, I come across with a sentence

“To me the very essence education is the concentration of mind and not the collection of facts.”

Now look at our present educational system, the real factory, a place in true senses for the synchronizing of human mental capacities for memorizing and collection of facts and reproducing the same at appropriate time say examination or during the interview for the job. Our system is emphasizing on collection of facts with a minimal space for the development of wisdom faculty. Students are prompted for acquiring best knowledge but kept deprived of wisdom essential for using this acquired knowledge to its totality in the practical life. We all know human beings are livings with most developed nervous system but surely we are not with infinite storage powers and memories, might be being aware of and realizing this, our forefathers have invented “scripts” to keep the facts in written format for the use of future generations. Probably here lies the failure source of our present educational system.

Kida are forced to face the educational syllabus at the tender age of 2 -3 years, without getting time for maturing their mental abilities, in the form of “Pre nursery” or “Play school”. This is the reflection of pressures of the present educational system on our lives, that I had prepared a computerized presentation of the English alphabets, for our grand children well before their birth. Though being a teacher I was aware of harms of pre mature exposures and hence my oldest grand daughter [almost 3 years] was recently saw this presentation first time.

I come across with an interesting finding. I was taking interview of a computer graduate for the post of service engineer. I asked the candidate about the operating System and told that candidate had installed it for more than fifty times and with a habit of reading the changing screens while the installation. I was surprised to know that person was not aware of number of changing screens during a single and complete installation. This was happening only because this information was not part of syllabus. This is indicating another failure of our present educational system. Students are learning remain rigidly in the frame of known facts and lacks in the use of their imagination powers and observation skills, probably that’s why our most of modern science inventions are incidentals baring a few targeted ones.

I am not denying the power of facts. I know future can get birth only from the uterus of past, failure is the first step on the success roads but surely we need a balance between the collection of facts and acquiring the wisdom for utilizing and analyzing these facts. Only this can work as the true and ideal educational system.

Inspiration

A few days back I read a comment on one of my blog post "Tell me about your inspiration" and since the day I was in real wonder , searching myself with my inner self and trying to find a few words that can work as answer for my question. Does we need inspiration ? Are we able to perform our work in the absence of inspiration?

Let us start it systematic and in a definite order with "What is inspiration?" all the chemistry students are well versed that for a reaction or for the production of something new we need reactants which can participate in reaction, and substituting their existing properties with altogether new one, produce a product which is different from the reactants. There are some reaction which needs presence of something called catalyst [which doesn't involve in the reaction] for the vigorous rate of reaction or some times even to start the reaction. In the human life this stimulant is an inspiration.

Unlike the chemical reactions human creations doesn't need reactants to be collected at a place because they are already present at the place of reaction in the nervous system and brain of the human and these are the knowledge and experience. Human creations are also unique from the chemical reactions in the sense that from these only two reactants a variety of creations can be resulted. Uniqueness and unpredictability of human mind, which varies from person to person, underlines the importance of inspiration in the human life and makes it hard to guess what will work as inspiration?

A few words of Swami Ramakrishna Paramhans has inspired and changed the life of Narendra by making him Swami Vivekanand, who had given the most inspiring words "My brothers and sisters" to the wold. Who knows what word, action, situation can work as inspiration, the unforgettable thing is that inspiration is just a stimulant not a reactant so even its presence can't make you creative, you need to have the knowledge for feeling presence of it , you need the experience of utilising it.

We are here on the earth because Adam was inspired by Eves suggestion of tasting the restricted fruit. You are reading all this as your knowledge is inspired for expansion and I am writing all this because you inspired me to write. So Friends keep increasing your knowledge and experience and wait for the inspiration to make yourself a creative, the true follower of inspiration.