Every parent shudders to see the kind of education imparted to their wards. If we talk about a free and liberal space in institutions of higher learning, at the primary, middle and high school level cramming and conformism is the order of the day. So how can students articulate their hopes, aspirations and dreams if these have been stifled in their early and formative years? Those students who step out and try to be different are marked as trouble makers. There is no space for creative thinking or expression of original ideas. Everything is bookish. The students are not encouraged to bring to bear their grasp of the outside world into the classroom. Similarly, they don’t know enough to apply the lessons learnt in the classroom to the world outside the campus. The insistence on scoring high marks rather than problem solving has turned education into a humdrum activity. Most students drag their feet to school. Many are paranoid about being reviled for not knowing their lessons or completing their homework. Parents too are burdened by the load of homework which deprives their child of his/her play time. Is this really the meaning of education?
But who will take a call on revisiting the pedagogy adopted thus far. What is the nature of education being peddled in our schools? How motivated are our teachers? Often we confuse education with schooling. What most teachers do is not something we can call education. Blame it on the system or the syllabus but teachers are pushed, into ‘schooling’ by trying to drill learning into people according to some plan often drawn up by others. Paulo Freire (1972) famously called this ‘banking’ – making deposits of knowledge into a student’s head without drawing out his corpus of wisdom. This quickly descends into treating learners like objects, things to be acted upon rather than people to be related to. Educators draw out the best in the child, encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is an intentional act. At the same time it is, as John Dewey put it, a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’.
A true educator brings out grace and wholeness in the learner by identifying his/her unique gifts. As Pestalozzi constantly affirmed, education is rooted in human nature; it is a matter of head, hand and heart. The learner only finds meaning and purpose in life ‘through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace. In short, to educate is to set out to create and sustain informed, hopeful and respectful environments where learning can flourish. It is concerned not just with knowing about things, but also with changing ourselves and the world we live in. As such education is a deeply practical activity – something that we can do for ourselves (what we could call self-education), and with others. Not everyone is therefore called to this noble task because it involves both passion and sacrifice both of which are lacking in many who take to the teaching profession today.