Educating to kill?

I have been holding back on this one for a long time now. Sometimes the words come gushing out, in anger and in pain, and sometimes, no matter how I feel about it, it refuses to make sense even though it stares right into my face.

The "largest" democracy in the world is going in for the polls. In an article "THE CROWN IN THE GUTTER, - In India, democracy creates its own royals" written by an eminent journalist from South Asia, Sunanda Dutta-Roy clearly distinguishes between "western-style" and "eastern-style" democracies:

The elections seem to have little bearing on the nitty-gritty of government. Voters and their representatives enter into a different compact in the West where democracy is equated with good governance. Our monarchical ethos places elected representatives above accountability.

If you look at the spectacle of India going to polls, you might perceive that it is no better than a bunch of feudal lords of the new age and their affiliates stage-managing a great ritual for the confused billions who have trouble making ends meet or even secure a square meal a day. In this frenzy, I am trying to hear the voices, I, who come from a relatively privileged middle class with some education to speak of, the manifestos of the left, right and centrists: I am trying hear what they are talking about and what they are thinking of doing about education.

Every day I open the newspaper and news article after news article tell me about five year olds raped and killed, ten year olds fatally wounded and left standing in forty degree heat with bricks on their shoulders until they collapse and never recover from life support and comma... every day there are stories of "teachers" abusing students at every level, every age, physically and mentally.

In his blog post "Educating to failure?", Peter Kenny, a well-renowned Australian educator notes:

‘Training to failure’ is a common term used often when referring to weight training. The controversial method of training basically promotes athletes to increase repetitions of lifting weights until the muscles fail and the athlete cannot lift again until rested. This, it is thought, promotes muscle growth and increases stamina and strength.

The same day little ten-year-old Sanno died, a young man aspiring to be a software engineer with a Bachelor's degree on Technology hung himself from the ceiling, yet another casualty of an education system which has systematically turned people into confused, scared and obedient corporate slave workers in a country that prides itself as the cradle of the Eastern civilisation and the land of spirituality. Poor soul was not a rebel, he did not blame the corporate body whose tough training program is perhaps designed to "cut the flab" of trainees on the bench in these times of global recession. He was a follower, and in his six-page suicide note, he blamed himself as a failure.

Again, I will quote Peter who puts it succinctly into perspective in the very first few lines of his post:

Standardized tests, benchmarks, high stakes testing and the external pressures placed on both student and teacher by Governments (eager to quote a ‘value added’ for political gain), Organizations, media and some curriculums corrupt the minds of our youth and eliminate the art of critical analysis, creativity in thought and entrepreneurial endeavor.

No, I will not go and vote in this elections whether it makes a difference or not. No matter how much TV ads or electoral advocates like "jagore.com" ("wakeup".com) try to entice me into participating in the Great Indian Democractic Process. I will strain my ears and look out for the day when our political class give up their power or use it right from the grassroot level to the crème de la crème institutes and educate the future generations to learn how to learn , and not turn into violent, aggressive, self-serving and competitive individuals who continue to rape, kill and plunder, with their hands or their means, this land, this nation and this earth we live on.

The latent violence in our society is manifest in our speech, our body language, our actions and what we do to earn a living or consider pleasurable. Rahul Guha Roy, a musician gets into the "psycho" headspace of the young man who put a bullet between the eyes a young lady, right where Indian women stick their bindis, in a farm house at Meherauli (south of Delhi) . This young man, son of a politician, "well-educated", went out that night like so many others for a night out. He is just a conformist in a society shaped by politicians and leaders, and an education system, which once served to create "colonial" masters, and now creates glorified clerical jobs outsourced from another part of the globe where, now, people are just beginning to come in terms of the word called "globalisation".

Where does all this violence come from? Ashoka fought a bitter war at Kalinga centuries ago and then, horrified by the violence, he denounced war and all forms of violence and built the largest ever known empire founded through peace and diplomacy, and the unifying mission of Buddhist spirituality. In more modern times Churchill called Gandhi the naked fakir who, in his loin cloth and diet of little else than goat milk, moved masses to ask the colonialists to quit India in no uncertain terms. From the east, another man, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose led a troop of irregulars at the head of the Japanese army advancing towards India through Burma only to be massacred by the Allies as late as 1945. With that every Indian young man's Garibaldi-influenced dreams of fighting an armed battle for freedom ended even before it begun.

Our feudalist mindset continues, and is all pervasive. The education system we patronise continues - the education that teaches you to be a machine to kill, or be on the side which kills the most. "Spare the rod, and spoil the child": even our best teachers wanted to be figures of authority, they were the good cop and the bad cop rolled in one. Every Indian child goes through a systematic inhumane series of rituals every morning from the prayer assembly to period after period of unconnected classroom tasks. They get scolded, slapped, beaten up, turned out of the room, humiliated and told they are not good enough. Never good enough.

It is precisely this experience in the growing years that rob them of their innocence, and their natural curiosity, the positive little risks taking attitude invaluable for learning life lessons, and turn many of them into adults with very little values to speak of.