Friday, September 17, 2010

All about education

Education has gone a long way in making us who and what we are, but its goals and avenues need to be redefined. The goal of education has become the production of people able to earn a living, and be successful in life. The definition of success needs a redefinition. Education should be directed to the upliftment of the people who are not educated. Education needs to be defined in such a manner that it capable of bringing about a metamorphosis in individuals in particular, and the society in general.

There is a huge difference between education and literacy. A large proportion of the public today is literate by virtue of the several avenues of learning open to the layman, but very few are able to comprehend the difference between education and literacy. Education brings with itself many things that are not visible to the eyes of the layman. It is a lot to do with culture and the process of acculturisation.

The ascent from a being literate to being educated is punctuated by several steps whereby the individual is exposed to realities that are at times not easily absorbed into the intellect. As a literate child becomes educated, he is made to actively partake in the process of development of his community, and to his own proper development. Education is what brings out the hidden potential of individuals that could have been latent and forgotten had it not been for education.

This is where the importance of schools comes in. schools become the harbours where ships of peace and harmony are anchored. This is how the school forms an important and inseparable part of the society. This is how schools play an important role in the acculturation of the society. Education brings a sense of tolerance within the individual. It shows the way to succeed in life. Education adds values to the nuances of everyday life. The goals set out by education can never be achieved till it is liberated from the grips of commercialization.

Education needs to be freed from the grips of business. The educational sector is as much an arena of investment as anything else. About $40 billion are being invested in the educational sector every year for the purpose of creating individuals able enough to make pots of gold. A lot of grey matter is wasted in simply the pursuit of money. Brain drain resulting from the attraction towards IT and management and other fields should be brought to an end. For this, the educational sector needs to be made worthy of being praised and admired. This goal could be accomplished when teachers and students are known to have a definite goal besides amassment of material wealth.

Teachers and students ought to emerge as contributors to the process of peace in the world. The school atmosphere needs to be modified to this effect. The school curriculum needs to be modeled on the pattern to produce the effect. It should be an adequate mixture of human education that would involve mutual cooperation and team work. Mutual co operation and understanding foster trust and confidence, but at the same time, they also give rise to conflicts and strife among individuals. After all, no society can exist without conflict. Conflict is an essential part of all the drama that is staged in the world. Drama often gives rise to conflicts and tension. There are always ways to deal successfully with this conflict and tension. Students must be taught about the principles of law and justice in the whole world as there are bound to be conflicts arising out of the mutual distrust between men and women.

The mistrust and misunderstanding needs to be resolved and need to be countered with forces of trust and understanding. These are the feelings that would make up the human education that should be given to every child as a part of his education. Children need to learn to trust each other and give adequate amount of understanding to each other. This way they could develop into healthy asocial individuals contributing to the society in particular and the world in general.

Students at CMS are inculcated with the concept of holistic education aimed at an overall development of the child. This way, they partake in a lot of hobbies while at the same time focusing on their academic pursuits too. The goal of education as imparted in other schools has become the production of people able to earn a living, this needs to be redefined. Education should be directed to the upliftment of the majority who are not educated. But the ability to read and write can never be equated with the merits of education.

There is a huge difference between education and literacy. A large proportion of the public today is literate by virtue of the several avenues of learning open to the layman, but very few are able to comprehend the difference between education and literacy. Education brings with itself many things that are not visible to the eye of the layman. It is a lot to do with culture and the process of acculturisation.

The ascent from a being literate to being educated is punctuated by several steps whereby the individual is exposed to realities that are at times not easily absorbed into the intellect. As a literate child becomes educated, he is made to actively partake in the process of development of his community, and to his own proper development. Education is what brings out the hidden potential of individuals that could have been latent and forgotten had it not been for education.

This is where the importance of schools comes in. schools become the harbours where ships of peace and harmony are anchored. Education brings a sense of tolerance within the individual. It shows the way to succeed in life. Success can never be alienated from the merits of education. It is education that makes successful people what they are, and it is education that defines their success.

This way, the entire outlook towards success in the world would have to be redefined. The parameters defining success would have to be redefined. Success needs to be defined in terms of satisfaction that could be obtained through adequate education of children. These children would grow up as citizens of the world and they could be brought up to be worthy world citizens if they are given adequate education of the world around themselves. This would arm them with skills and competence to conquer and overcome all obstacles that might come their way. Children need to be made wary of the obstacles that could come in the way. Material education aimed at refining the parameters along which success is measured needs to be imparted. Material education should be capable of preparing them for a healthy future.

Thinking of the future seems to put children in a time machine that propels us to the heavens. These abstract things push us into realms of the unknown, they identify us with God. This brings in the need for a meaningful education that would circumvent all the religions of the world. The All Religion Prayer at CMS is a unique and distinctive feature that sets the institution apart from others in the whole world.

Religion and education are what make a man he really is. While education shows him or her a rational world with all the manifestations of good and evil, religion pushes the individual into an ideal world where only the virtuous and good exist. It depends on the person’s upbringing as to which way he or she is pulled and attracted.

The individual needs guidance at every step of life for proper direction. A proper direction needs to be given to a person’s life from the very day he or she is born. An individual’s home and school are the most important elements in teaching the values of the society to the individual. They are the gates to the society. They are the ones that make an individual give his best to the society, and they also ensure that the individual get the best back from society.

The best that an individual can get from society is respect and tolerance. This would be the direct consequence of the polarity he or she chooses for his life. The direction in which his or her life is headed for should be set out in a clear way. What is needed is a compass that can point out the appropriate direction for the individual. This is exactly what religion and education are aimed at. Religion and education should be given to children or the whole of humanity in the appropriate proportion. This would ensure peace and harmony in the world at large because religion and religious tenets have been found to be at the heart of all contentions.

These religious tenets need to be clarified. They need to be brought before the masses ignorant of the significance of these tenets. Education of these tenets needs to be given right from the days one begins one’s education. This could be the ideal way of inoculating mutual love and harmony for different religions and cultures.

All the cultures of the world are different and unique, but they are all aimed at fulfilling the same purpose of making us happy. It is happiness that all of us strive for, all of us want to be happy, whatever we do, we do to be happy, the sieves of education and religion are supposed to filter out the best that our lives can give us to make us happy. Good education can show the individual the correct way to achieve happiness, this is where schools play an important role.

The role of the school cannot be confined to the provision of proper religious education. it is required to supplement it with an appropriate dosage of material education that is capable of making the child able enough to wade through the world and its exigencies. Schools in general are not supposed to provide anything other than material education.

CMS emerges as the only institution capable of providing an adequate mixture of all the three kinds of education

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