Remodeling education

Looking at creative geniuses for inspiration

We live in an amazing time — travel in space is possible, computer chips are becoming more like human brains, and it won’t be long before self-driving cars or cancer detecting pills would be readily available in the markets. Whilst providing tremendous opportunities this adventurous journey of transformation throws a number of hard questions at us. And many a time, overwhelmed by the speed and complexity of events, we find ourselves wondering whether we are equipped to take on this challenge.

It will be naïve to believe that humans can be truly prepared for life and what it has to offer. Our education system, at best, tries to familiarise us with some basic concepts that may come in handy when we enter the professional world. We have developed a system where students are trained in various disciplines, are tested and then subsequently, graded on their performance.

This gives birth to a number of concerns. For instance, who decides about the nature, content and medium of educating students. Or whether the traditional psychometrics like IQ tests or other standardised tests truly measure the full scope and diversity of intelligence. Henry Miller beautifully captured this idea and lamented that “our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water.”

It is a standard practice for organisations to train new inductees but an increasing number of organisations are heavily investing in extensive trainee programmes for fresh graduates. The challenging nature of and increased diversity at work is directly proportional to the amount of time taken by employees to get socialised and adjust to the work culture. It is not uncommon to hear fresh graduates starting their careers complaining that “I wish grad school taught me this!” or “I wish I knew what I was signing up for.”

One way to tackle this problem is to remodel the higher education system and heavily focus on professional ad vocational training. However, it becomes extremely difficult to have this discussion in a country of 190 million, where 60 percent of the population comprises of youth but only eight percent students are able to attend higher educational institutions. Especially when the sitting government has skewed priorities and considers it a good idea to cut down the budget of Higher Education Commission by around 50 percent, and instead would spend 36 billion rupees on building Disneyland or slash budget for water and social services to make room for distributing laptops to youngsters.

This, however, doesn’t mean that we avoid having this discussion altogether. I strongly believe that there is a dire need in our society to explore alternatives of traditional educational systems. Susan Sontag, a creative genius, wrote a remarkable diary entry 40 years back envisioning a rather different approach for education, inverting the traditional sequence of schooling.

She wrote:

“Why not eliminate schooling between age 12-16? It’s biologically [plus] psychologically too turbulent a time to be cooped up inside, made to sit all the time. During these years, kids would live communally — doing some work, anyway being physically active, in the countryside; learning about sex — free of their parents. Those four ‘missing’ years of school could be added on, at a much later age. At, say, age 50-54 everyone would have to go back to school. (One could get a deferment for a few years, in special cases, if one was in a special work or creative project that couldn’t be broken off.) In this 50-54 schooling, have strong pressure to learn a new job or profession — plus liberal arts stuff, general science (ecology, biology), and language skills.

This simple change in the age specificity of schooling would a) reduce adolescent discontent, anomie, boredom, neurosis; b) radically modify the almost inevitable process by which people at 50 are psychologically and intellectually ossified — have become increasingly conservative, politically — and retrograde in their tastes (Neil Simon plays, etc)

There would no longer be one huge generation gap (war), between the young and the not young — but 5 or 6 generation gaps, each much less severe.

After all, since most people from now on are going to live to be 70, 75, 80, why should all their schooling be bunched together in the first 1/3 or 1/4 of their lives — so that it’s downhill all the way.

Early schooling — age 6-12 — would be intensive language skills, basic science, civics, the arts.

Back to school at 16: liberal arts for two years

Age 18-21: job training through apprenticeship, not schooling”

At the very least, we need to include discussion about such rich ideas in the public discourse. Though it is a lofty goal but the aim of this discussion is not only restricted to ensure that students land better jobs or even perform better in the professional world. But it aspires to result in conceiving an educational system that doesn’t kill the creativity of the students.

It is a social and moral responsibility of the philosophers, public policymakers and political elite of the country to invest in ideas and education. For it is our only hope to produce a de-radicalised, enlightened and progressive culture in our country. With online education already making waves and changing the way we think about college, we need to catch up with the world and learn from the collective global knowledge to formulate an innovative educational system that helps us utilise the true potential of the youth bulge in the country. We don’t need to solve all problems in a day but we can (read must) invest in an educational system that produces generations of enlightened, conscientious and creative citizens who are equipped to acquire a deeper understanding of their surroundings and can be the potential agents of change for our society.