Education: through the eyes of a protégé

This is not an expert view, nor from a teacher’s pen, it is a simple understanding of a student written on the basis of few experiences.

I recently read an article about our education system providing thorough information which corrupts ‘knowledge’. Before, going any further let us understand the difference between knowledge and information. Information is what u know? When u read a certain fact, but Knowledge is when u completely comprehend the information. Sadly, our present education system is concentrating on enhancing the amount of information rather than ensuring that a child comprehends the information into pure knowledge. The main cause of this could be the fast increasing competition in the contemporary world. On competition my views are quite negative. Yes, competition is what runs the world, without competition the world cannot progress it is something in the genes of every organism to be better than the other. I respect competition; it is something out of my power. But, there are few common questions in my mind- Why should we only learn so as to pass in an exam? Why don’t we learn for the sake of learning, for the sake of knowledge? Why is it that countries tend to develop so as to be better than other countries? Competition has played a big part in shaping the present world, but it has nonetheless on the other end disseminated the spirit for doing something valuable for the sake of ourselves, not to better than others. The day when people will forget about competition will be the day we can be called “Learned”. “Fear” is another important aspect that is responsible for this degeneration of education. However, its causes and effect are directly “on” and “From” the student itself. It is an entity also responsible for the “running” of our world and also for “ruining” of it. If I am not mistaken most of our terrorist organization run on the basic principle of spreading “fear”. But the reach of fear is spread worldwide, we generally do many things just because we are scared of the aftermath of ‘not doing’ that event. “If I don’t get 100 in maths this term my dad will throw me out of the house” “If I don’t complete this project, Mam will send me off to the principle”. These have become clichés to every student. It is common for most of our institutions and special classes that prepare student for competitive examinations (the sad fact is that these organizations don’t prepare students to face failure) to work on the principle of Fear. How different are these organizations to “Terrorists”, both of them work on the same principle and for the cause of “betterment of the world”! I believe Fear should be eliminated from the world, and then only can we truly understand the reason for our actions to be profitable to both us and our fraternity. Education is a lifelong process; our school life only lays the foundation for our further learning. I say- How good is the foundation laid on the basis of ‘Fear’ and ‘competition’? How strong will the foundation be which only preaches ‘information’ not ‘knowledge’ (creativity is something forgotten in school, so me mentioning it will have no effect). Well, at the end it’s up to our world to change and anyways the last “renaissance” was long ago!