Modern Day Colonialism

India has always been an idea of acceptance and tolerance. Few hundred years ago there was a company which came with the intent of trading here and ended up colonizing the whole nation and with the support of the then Indian soldiers, officers and other citizens conquered and won many battles and gained territory of other countries too for further colonization. Today we know them as the “East India Company”. But what has happened, has happened and cannot be changed, and there is no point in blaming someone and definitely no reason to hate someone today. Only thing we can do is to learn from our history and try to gain lessons from it, so that no misery happens in future.

Few days ago I was reading about ‘Swami Vivekananda’, as I admire him as one of my idols in life. We all know that he was from a well to do family and had a very good childhood and education. But after the death of his father ‘Shri Vishwanath Datta’ the family had no source of income and was left with extreme poverty. Swami Vivekananda was so hurt and was in so pain that he started questioning the existence of god. For days he had nothing to eat and not even clothes to wear properly. After all this he decided to do something for the family and for the living of all. And as history tells us he ended up giving a historic speech at the ‘world religious conference’ in Chicago 1893 and is one of the greatest personalities in Indian and world history. I find that speech personally as the only true definition of the ‘Idea of India’ which we nowadays see on TV, that people are debating over endlessly.

In earlier times there was a habit of writing, reading, discussing, thinking and questioning. Today we can see barely anyone writes, reads, questions things around them and calls out the negatives in the society, instead we end up glorifying them. Can we even think of that Great personalities, be it anyone would be glorifying the things we do today? Can we imagine Swami Vivekananda would encourage someone that let’s see how much alcohol capacity you have? That is ridiculous. We do not even care about small things like taking care of our surroundings ourselves and not being dependent on anyone for it. Neither have we taken care of our environment from saving water, electricity, keeping cleanliness etc. I wonder if the citizens of any country would be aware about such small things, Imagine where that nation would be heading. And if we talk about India, that potential cannot even be imagined.

But I find no reason for anyone to do it in today’s time. We will always be what we see, study, admire, and what we are taught. I find three key reasons for what we are today. The first one being nothing but our own education system.

The Great Indian Obsession

In the past 200 years, Industries evolved, Technology evolved, Vehicles evolved only thing that remains same is the way we are taught.

Above is the picture of a classroom approx. 100 years ago and I don’t need to add a picture that how classrooms look today. We never got out of the way we are so called educated. No interaction with students, no asking about their preferences, their likings, their disliking, nothing, we just put them in a system and form them all the time against their will and likings.

We even see and seek reservation for children who are just being admitted to, primary classes and then we say, he/she is debating or trash talking about the same, it is we only who introduced them to such a thing, which further in future leads to discrimination.

Stupid examples of ugly and fair, rich and poor, happy and unhappy are shown in books. No doubt casual racism is so common in our society.

Killing each and every aspiration and hobby of theirs. We all say give importance to sports, but in real children hardly get half hour for sports that too not in a day but in a week. And even in that it is often taken away by other subject teachers. I’m sure we all have been through such things.

If we talk about India, Things like Extra Curriculum activities, Smart classes, Physical education, Art, music, craft and more things were introduced in previous 20-30 years, and if we look at a common child from any school allover India, The school’s role is minimal in making a child a good athlete, a good musician, a good artist instead we kill the artist inside them, the musician inside them burdening them under the filth of homework and topics which barely anyone likes.

Any activity requires hours and hours of practice, discipline, patience and love for it. Our education system from primary to colleges barely gives time to a child to practice any activity of their liking, we do teach them discipline, but the type of discipline we teach them is barely a system inspired from slavery. Do your homework then it is good, if not you will be punished, that’s it.

We teach them physical education but in actuality we merely teach them the size of a football field, the length and breadth of a goal post, the length of a cricket pitch. Exercise keeps you healthy is the only thing taught in school, No one tells a child what is team effort, what is passion, what is hard work, what is joy, Who are real heroes of the society, No one even talks about it.

Even if we talk about history, more than half of the history taught in schools is manipulated, wrong and nothing tells us about our glories, the real stories of great people. We only show the good side of every person taught in our history, No person can be perfect, but I think it should be the duty of the historians to show the other side of the coin too. One should then decide accordingly using their ability to think critically.

But our schools lack here too, from morning attendance to day end, we are told to stay in line, sit properly, not to talk, write, read, sit, stand etc. Individual freedom is not a thing in schools. If we will teach them to do things according to whatever is said to them, how can we then expect anyone to take decisions of their own? Critical thinking, questioning, reasoning, finding logic behind things is a gift very few people have, we have such an environment in our educational institutions where a teacher tells them to sit down whenever a question is asked to them, fellow students laugh at a student whenever he/she tries to ask something which was already taught, but that is totally fine, not everyone can understand everything, every time.

Everyone has different abilities and good in different things, but there is no scope of that in schools, just do what is said, end of the story.

There is not even a discussion on how to make a child follow a blueprint of what he/she wants to do in near future, No counselling, no guidance and with no disrespect to anyone our parents themselves came out of such a system and not all are that educated too, that they are themselves capable enough to guide their child, It is the condition of majority of households in India.

A child does not even know how to code, how to make music, how to write professionally, any language, or even a sports in which they might make a future. They are almost completely blank about their future and what they actually learned while in school.

Almost same goes with colleges and universities, we are merely teaching them how to do slavery when they graduate, so that they can join any organization and work under a filthy and toxic environment. The time one might have spent on learning anything, any activity, any language, any game, they spend that exact time copying stupid assignments.

We should not be surprised when companies say that this or these graduates are actually unemployable. And the number is overwhelming. Nearly 70 percent of degree holders in our education system are unemployable. We all know people around us who studies something else and now are making a living out of something else, even whatever they are doing now is nowhere near what they were studying while in college or school.

No one teaches students about mental health, physical health, handling finances, current affairs, music, writing, sports, nutrition, thinking, reasoning nothing. Never ever such things are preached. We ourselves overhype the importance of marks since their childhood and then when any unfortunate thing happens in future there is no one to blame, but it is only we who were responsible for it. What in this world will happen if any student fails any subject or passes with upmost success? But our teachers and innocent parents pressurize so much that a child end up doing something unfortunate.

And so many other factors like how expensive education is nowadays and that too one is learning nothing at all.

Depression, suicide, sadness and other mental health issues are caused with whatever reason but did our schools ever taught us how to cope with it?

Students do not even know how many genres are there in music, in literature, what is archery, shooting, gymnastics, modern day technology etc. It is nearly the dawn of 2022 do a school child even know what 3d printing is?     The answer is hardly any individual knows about it. No one will tell them the pros of playing video games.

No one knows about their glorious past, our heroes, writers, poets, sporting personalities etc. Let’s face it, majority of the children today know about Pornography, nudity, drugs, alcohol, stupid Instagram reels and soft porn, content filled with vulgarity, abuse and oppression but not about our great past of individuals like Major Dhyan Chand, Subhash Chandra Bose, Lal Bhadur Shatri, Shaheed Bhagat Singh, Shaheed Udham Singh and all others.

We don’t even know who is known as the butcher of Amritsar, Who was Babur and others who had a bloody history. Often it is found that either we are taught half the truth about who they were and what people like them did to us. I feel ashamed to compare such great personalities of our nation to people like these. We even end up glorifying them in today’s time and can be easily seen people defending and justifying their cruel and bloody doings in the past.

I wish our schools focused more on entrepreneurism rather than typical coding, more on actually playing a game rather than telling them the size of football fields, more about current affairs rather than how windows 98 looked like. Making them learn new skills of their choice rather than teaching them how to calculate the mass of an body hanging from a 20ft building.

Neither do we know how to make the best use of a computer and mobile phones, Enjoyment should never be on the expense of hurting our future.

I have written many emails to institutions like CBSE, ICSE, Haryana Board and to few schools in my district about the current curriculum, hoping there will be someone who will take a step in the betterment of our education policies, but I have never received any reply from anyone, I am almost no one in this professional world, there are wealthy, powerful and intellectuals in our country who are already aware about the condition of students, employment rate, self-learning, and being self-employed, I just don’t see any actions being taken. We all are still waiting for the recent education policy introduced to be implemented, but we all know no change is made in the schooling manner as of now, even though it is almost 3 years to that policy being introduced.

Will be continued in other articles or this will be almost endless.