Does Education Really Help Us?

When exams draw near, there is a ghastly  fear that comes upon our youth and children. Like a criminal trying to get the burden of  the law off his back, is a student during his trial. Exams have become a word  of terror these days. But think about it - Has education taken the place of learning? And have awful exams and passive learning taken the place of development and new inventions these days?

[http://www.sparklingadventures.com/images/1935.jpg]

Let's choose to take our minds off convention for a while. Imagine we grew up learning what we were interested in. Imagine if schools taught us 'how to think' instead of 'what to think'. Imagine our exams were of a period of time where we had to come up with New Ideas based on our learning, and work on those models toward new thougths and processes. I'm not saying that orderly education is wrong. But the problem is orderly education has been abused and turned into traditional education. There was a funny incident that came to my mind. It was recently, when I was teaching a girl some last minute Chemistry, as her exams started the next day. I was in full zeal, teaching the subject with complete interest and with all my strength, when another woman came in the room and casually asked me if I knew "Kakuu". It sounded so weird that my ears took some time to capture the absurdity of that "Noise". But finally she explained to us that she was talking to us about the subject I was teaching, Chemistry. That dosen't sound like chemistry at all; more like a babble from an infant. She then said that the formula for "KhaKUU" was CH3COOH! :-/...She had mugged up CH3COOH, which is the formula for Acetic Acid, as "KhaKuu" because she didn't really understand its chemical structure and properties to remember it during the exams!:-0.

I didn't even want to laugh at that. I knew this woman since school days, and she confessed to my judgement that she was used to mugging up stuff since she thought the information was useless to her future, career and life. She used to mug up stuff this way, and score really well in her exams. And I knew many people students like that who used to score so well, but never had a conceptual understanding on the topic at all. And apart from school or college lives they were not really good at understanding situations and making decisions. And conversely, I knew students who understood concepts well but failed the exams just because they were not really interested to study for the exams.

[http://ifiwereasnowman.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/nerd.jpg]

I didn't want to bore you off this article due to its length, but wanted to get this point across. Education has become a vain tradition, and people literally treat Exams and Report Cards as decision makers for their entire lives. That should not be the case!

I really would like to encourage you Children to NOT worry much about grades, but concentrate more on understanding what you're learning. This would make studying and education way more interesting than it's now. And all you older folks, who have already passed that horrifying state of mental torture, to take time in reading factual information and make time for creative thoughts and works of art. That would make life more interesting and would keep you busy in the right way. If you have children, take time in reading their text books. Do something interesting. Build stuff, even if you have to throw it all away in the end. Be Curious! God has made all things so complex and wonderful so that through those things you would understand the greatness of His Love and Character. Get back to learning!

Interesting Thought - Einstein was a school dropout, and thus learned the value of true learning. And Gandhi Ji was a realist who chose to excel in the simple things of life.

Media based on the article -

1. Book - 3 Point Someone (by Chetan Bhagat)
2. Movie - 3 Idiots (Based on the book 3 point someone)
3. Video - Education and learning in India