Opinion
Fitting In Vs. Standing Out – Hindi film actress, producer and social activist, Juhi Chawla on how the modern education system fits children into narrow boxes
We have the richest subjects of art, music, Sanskrit, yoga but we seem to push that aside, instead of having that take centre-stage.
As I'm growing and getting to know more and more, I realize that the way we teach our children, our education system, it is pathetic. We burden our children with books, books, more books; we expect them to memorize things. The worst part is we teach them what to think instead of just allowing them to think, think differently. That's what we do.
If they think differently they feel they are doing something wrong, whereas that is the right way to be!
Though our education system seems to say that 'Oh we will allow our children to flower in whatever they wish to be’, we are somehow still only pressurizing them to perform in academics. I think it should be scrapped totally – we should somewhere look back at our gurukuls and see the things that they were doing which were valuable.
Yes, our children need to step out and need to know the English language, but a lot of what is written in those books… I know, I've done it, been there; learnt it for my exams, all the history, geography, all those many subjects and all those details. As a kid, I learnt it just because I had to literally vomit it out at my exams, but that's it. I didn't really want to remember any of it. I didn't give a damn if I didn't and a lot of it I didn't really need. I don't see why the whole pressure, why always the competition between children to beat each other at something… it doesn't make you a great person at the end of the day.
Our kind of education – very nicely put by one of our gurus, Sadhguruji – he said, we do not today prepare our children today for the universe, we prepare our children for the universities. I totally don't agree with what's going on. I wish we could teach our children Sanskrit, I wish we would have yoga as compulsory. I wish we would have our cultural dance and music and actually not have that as a co-curricular but as a curricular. Our culture is so rich; if we teach our children according to our culture, they would become brilliant, brilliant adults.
We need to know about computers, yes, we need to know the English language, that's all very well. But when we have the richest subjects of art, music, Sanskrit, yoga, we seem to push that aside, instead of having that take centre-stage. I really wish, as a nation, we would wake up. As parents, we could do something about it but so many of us are conditioned and we push our children into the rat race.
So a few hundred years ago, before the British came into our country, our country was the richest in the world. Trade was carried out from here. Trading in spices, handicrafts; culturally, historically it was the richest country, it was responsible for 27% of the world's GDP. India was known as Sone Ki Chidiya. The world wanted to come to India. In the north of India, the literacy rate was 99% and in the south of India it was 100%. Our children used to learn in gurukuls; there were no beggars, no robbers, and no cheaters.
Then the English came on the pretext of trade. Eventually the British managed to stay on, cheat, manipulate and take over the country piece by piece by piece by cheating. They could not understand our entire system of learning and imparting knowledge. They needed people to work in their offices because here was India, a huge country with a huge population, being ruled by a handful of British people. They needed people in their offices and so they introduced their schools in India to create the clerks, peons. That continued and came to be known as the modern system of education.
We have continued that system of education and really, you go to school, you learn what they teach you in the books, they put you into classrooms like boxes, they put you into uniforms so that everybody is one, looks like one, behaves like one. Modern education does that whether one realizes it or not but this is what happens subconsciously through those books. Those books are the same for everybody. You are taught what is in there. You are told to memorize what is in there and then you start believing in what is in there and if you think differently, then they think you are wrong. So, for all your growing years, you are pushed into this system so by the time you come out, you are conditioned to a certain way of thinking and then it takes you a whole lot of your life to realize that you didn't have to fit into a box or a uniform or be like everybody else. You are not supposed to fit in if you want to stand out.
Our education system is really pathetic, we need to re-examine it completely. We are the country from where came the mother of all languages, Sanskrit. But we do not teach our own children that!
About the Author:
Juhi Chawla is a Hindi film actress, producer and social activist.
This article was originally published in the Anniversary (August 2017) issue of ScooNews magazine. Subscribe to ScooNews Magazine today to have more such stories delivered to your desk every month.