The Purpose of Education

“You don’t even have an ambition. You do not like to wear good clothes, aspire to wear a nice watch, or have a house and a car in the future. What is the point of your studying so much? There is no point in your reading so many books and wasting your time if you have no aim to succeed”, declared my aunt when delivering another one of her long sermons when discussing my future.

Much irritated as I was, her statement of success shook me strong and made me doubt my whole approach towards education. I suddenly realized how she had brought the purpose of learning down to being nothing more than a means to secure a bright (read- monetarily secure) future. I started to wonder if that is all what education was about- money, a comfortable life and good living.

Would we have had a C.V Raman and a Ramanujam if their approach to learning had been the same? What about all the Verghese Kurien’ and Bunker Roy’ we’ve produced? I wondered.

Why then is society today so intolerant towards people who want to pursue something different because they find it interesting. Why is success solely measured through the prism of money today?

“Education is not merely a matter of training the mind. Training makes for efficiency, but it does not bring about completeness.”  – Jiddu Krishnamurti

When after doing my Bachelors in Mass Media I chose to shift  to doing a Masters in Social Work, the whole of my extended family frowned upon my choice and even asked me mockingly, “So you aspire to become a Mahatma Gandhi now is it?”

Like wanting to become a Gandhi in life was something wrong.

Our present education is geared towards industrialization with its principal aim being to develop efficiency. With examinations and degrees being declared the prerequisite to future development, we are raising our children in a world of ruthless competition and mutual destruction which never allows them time to think on vital human issues.

Success is today measured in terms of the superior salary that you draw in comparison to thy relations/colleagues. With the meaning of a ‘comfortable life’ being defined by an excessively commodified and market-oriented society, everyone is out trying to fulfill this world view. This increasing need to satisfy the society had led to a very few of us actually pursuing what we love and are passionate about.

Is it necessarily true that a confused person without an ambition is useless and worth nothing?

Why is it that our society cannot so easily accept people who want to carve their own path by gaining their own experience?

To be confused is good. A confused mind is a thinking mind. All it needs is some genuine guidance.

Many people ask me this question, “How can we take up what we are passionate about? There are so many needs and responsibilities to be fulfilled.” Without denying the verity of these statements by any measure, it is undeniably true that people today have ever expanding needs and are never happy with as much is necessary. With them having no definition of ‘enough’, they are always unhappy and are aspiring for more. When does one limit one’s wants?

We thus have a generation of IITians and IIM graduates, who work mindlessly in offices on dull and boring assignments, which offer very little, or no scope for new and innovative ideas. With the money being the sole incentive, all of them rue over the monotony in their line of work. There are a few for whom the money factor acts as a great incentive. But for those many who seek out for interesting careers with job satisfaction, work life becomes a tedious affair. This has created a generation of depressed workers who have increasingly become dependent on cigarettes, alcohol and anti-depressants to keep their work life going.

It’s time that society stopped assuming education to be nothing more than a means to earn money. Monetizing the final output of education is a sort of mental prostitution. People should understand that an individual may sometimes simply have a passion to learn. She/He may not have the best of house or the finest of cars in the future, but they shall certainly be content. It is essential for parents to rethink their views on education and to make learning a fun and desirable activity for children so as to help them draw their own future paths.

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Social Work education in India

Studying in one of the foremost and most prestigious (or so it’s called) institutes of Social Work for Rural Development in Maharashtra for the past one year has enabled me to structure my long held thoughts on education better. Education is no more a means to apply knowledge and develop thinking capacities. Today learning has been reduced to being just a medium to ensure one a secure financial future. In the context of my college I can say thus; what is expected of the Agents of Change is very much in contradiction to what these Agents expect of themselves. Concerns of personal future monetary gains are so deep rooted that they far supersede the greater common good for which they claim to have taken up the course.

‘If the ends are satisfied, the ethics surrounding the means are often ignored.’ The following example would help elucidate this statement.

Ex: ‘A good (meaning ‘good placements offering’) college with bad lecturers and poor teaching quality faces no protests from the students. Protest is automatically suppressed in the delight of the expected future good.

I have been witness to innumerable complaints by students most of which emphasize upon the bad food offered, uncomfortable hostels, unfriendly college timings, unnecessary extra classes, etc. None seem to voice opinions regarding the more important points of bad teaching quality and lack of institutional infrastructure to help support our learning. Apart from empty talks amongst a group of friends during lunch or tea, very little initiative is taken in the direction of demanding better quality teachers, most of who happen to be former Social Workers who completed their PhDs from any random university and joined the bandwagon of incompetent university lecturers.

It isn’t difficult to figure out why students remain silent on these issues. Today’s materialistic world has made them so concerned about their future jobs that they fear to protest. The fear rises from the obvious possibility of them being rusticated in the name of ‘misconduct’. Placements have made each one of them so selfish and competitive that there is an utter lack of unity. Fears of gaining a bad impression with the professors surpass all other concerns. Thus, my esteemed Social Work institute continues to churn out students who are taught to suppress dissent in order to gain better grades. With them failing to advocate for their own rights, how is one to expect them to do anything for the people in the future.

In the first few months of our course, we were taught about how we were lucky to have got a chance to study in this college which has given the country some of its best professional social workers. ‘Professional’ of course stood for ‘expert’, ‘trained’ and ‘skilled’; but it was also emphasized (more profoundly, yet indirectly) that it stood for someone who commands a good pay-check in the job market.

“Don’t mistake Social Work with Social Service. We don’t need Gandhis and Mother Teresas. The industry needs professionals not sympathizers”, we were told coldly by our professor.

Social work education seems to stress excessively on the need to be professional as compared to the need to balance it out with being sensitive. The social work sector has been publicized as an ‘industry’ to such an extent that most social work students join with the sole intention of earning a big fat salary in the future. Very few go on to work in the grassroots except when left with no other option.

And when asks one, “What about the primary aim of SW?” prompt comes the answer, “Oh well, we certainly will be working for them. We will be using our professional skills and specialized knowledge (from our air-conditioned cabins in big cities) in order to bring a change in their lives. Of course we will.”

But in a country like ours where poverty seems rampant, how does one view a professional work attitude?

It is good to be professional in one’s work, but being professional in the approach towards one’s work, especially when that happens to be social work is shameful.

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