Education and Deforestation of our Minds

Contributor: Shashank and Vibhuti

This article emerged from the exploration of 'Work' and 'Education' as part of the The Future Child Asks Magazine and ES Learning Process Inquiry.

An important exploration needs to be undertaken of the system that's considered responsible for producing the human beings who shall do the 'work' to shape the world of the future. It's the Education System. In the last couple of centuries - we have relinquished all our responsibility for the education of our children and have given away all the authority to the schooling system. Schooling seems to be the most universal experience that most children and adults around the world would go through for significant parts of their lives. In India especially after the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyaan, no one was able to escape the system.

This article explores how schooling has led to the deforestation of our minds. It's not a hidden fact that schools are designed as a supply chain of human resources for the industry. The meaning of 'school' has traveled far away from its word of origin which is from Greek σχολή (scholē), originally meaning "leisure". Similarly the word 'Education' has a Latin origin from the word Educere which means "to draw forth". Education today seems to have traveled far away from the idea of drawing forth wisdom from the learners. Rather it has become about imposing a certain culture, disciplining students, assessing them with standard tests in batches to be finally called the products of such-and-such school ready for a highly competitive career in the modern economy. 

Inviting you to come a step deeper into building understanding about the reigning education system. 

The Father of Modern Indian Education Thomas B. Macaulay said the following about India in 1835 in British Parliament. "I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self- esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.”

An article from Aseem Srivastava in The Caravan Magazine from 2017 titled "What a critical biography - still unwritten of Thomas Babington Macaulay would tell us about ourselves" enables us to understand the cognitive background of the man who can be called one of the most important architects of modern India. The eventful four years (!) from 1834-38 that he spent in India led to the design of Indian Penal Code, Indian Civil Services (now Indian Administrative Services) and most importantl English based Education System. 

                            

Macaulay’s education system  that was adopted in India after the year 1835 aimed to train “a new caste of English guardians” who would mediate between the few Englishmen in our country and the vast population of Indians. And a new caste it did become, a scholar presented it as the caste above Brahmins in India's caste pyramid. This colonial cognitive framework continues till date in our education system and our society.

There’s little that we know in popular understanding about the education systems that existed before colonial education took root. Although the remains can be easily seen in our society if you venture away from the modern urban civilization. So what are the values and design principles that schools are based on, here's a brief description:

Fear 

There’s a fear that helps us to survive and there’s a fear that keeps us from living. Modern Education keeps the limbic brain of students alive and active by creating mechanisms that reinforce their fears. These are based in fear of being wrong, fear of scarcity, fear of getting left behind, fear of authority and fear of death.

Control 

Teachers are not the caring adults to nourish students with love. They are rather managers that need to control the performance of human resources in the system. Controlling what children need to learn at what age; what’s in the course and what’s not; how they must be to do well in life : So one makes children relinquish the natural life force of taking responsibility of one's life and externalize control to be exploited by the consumerist machinery outside.

Domination

The modern project to observe nature to be able to dominate it - reflects in modern schooling as well. Every morning, Assemblies have been the force to organise children in lines based on their standard categories. The innumerable ways in which children could learn and interact with other children is suppressed with  force in the name of ‘disciplining’ and so are other natural yearnings to be curious, to connect and to co-create.

Competition

Competition is human nature too - so is cooperation. However, schools are built on total ignorance of cooperation and over emphasis on competition. Schools are designed to lock children in their isolated selves, alone fighting their way in a hostile world. The natural need to cooperate with fellow human beings is frowned upon - sometimes called cheating in exams, sometimes gossip in classrooms.

Othering 

A phenomena connected to Competition is othering. Children are educated in a world view that enhances the notion of separateness and is against the understanding of interconnectedness of all life. We constantly learn to externalize what’s not right with us. In subtle ways, schools reinforces the divides of the society - based on religion, caste, culture and gender and othering anything that Is not like ‘me’ - the other gender, the other country, the other caste ….

Monoculture 

The cultural lack of confidence that we inherited from our ancestors is a gift of colonialism and colonial education. India is not the only one to have it, its present in many communities, cultures and countries around the world. All of us seem to consider the white American culture to be far superior than any other. Monoculture is reflected in standardized food we have come to eat across the world, films we watch, attire we wear, music we listen to, language we speak and think in, crops we grow, malls we shop in and so on.

With your experience of schooling, how do you notice these design principles showing in your life, now or then?

Schooling has become the most dominant way we prepare our children to inhabit the world of the future with the above design principles shaping their personality and character and dare we say, their spirit. They become great ‘human resources’ to do the ‘work’ of furthering the business as usual. The one who rebel are tagged failures leading to loss of their self - confidence and purpose. The interconnected crises that we face today in the world needs us to step out of these patterns of behaviour and step into a ‘being’ based on fearlessness, courage, pluriverse, collaboration and surrender. What kind of education would we need to create as a process to cultivate such tendencies in human beings? What shape, form and spirit the school shall transform into, if school were to take responsibility to this education? What would it mean to reforest our minds with the diversity of human experience, culture, languages and spirit?

Many indeginous people have very evolved ways of evaluating the health of the forest. They never refer to the top of the food chain or with the number of fruits. They look at honey bees at 7 layers above the soil; they look at microbes under the soil; they look at the density and texture of root hair; they even listen to the songs of the birds; the depth of dead leaves in the fall. What will be all these indicators to understand the process of reforesting our minds with education?