Sunday, September 24, 2017

An invitation for action…

Wow! There were justifications and arguments again! Anitha  scored 1176 in school exam but only 86 in the entrance exam; would you like to get treated by such a doctor (if she had become a doctor); she died in spite of getting aeronautical engineering seat in MIT and she  went to private school not to government school are some of the arguments against கறை!

Let me take one chunk at a time "Anitha  scored 1176 in school exam but only 86 in the entrance exam; would you like to get treated by such a doctor (if she had become a doctor); she  went to private school not to government school"!! She scored 1176 in exam and 86 in entrance exam! That is the whole point!! If she was able to score so well, why was she not able to score in entrance? The scope of her studies is different from the scope of entrance exam. Let us not forget that!! Was she given an opportunity to prepare?  Sure, the school will not be able to address the scope (or syllabus) issue; who should have done that? Is it not the government? If they are not prepared to give better / wider scope to the children, how can they change the approach at the last minute? How will 12th standard students be able to mediate between the state and central governments to come to a conclusions? Both these governments should have handled it more systematically! That would happen only if we have governments! But, we don’t, unfortunately!!  Did we ever question these guys for actions / inactions? The next argument of memorizing vs. application of knowledge proven by the stark difference in the marks! If someone scored 1176/1200, their cognitive ability is much better than many others. Of course remembering and recalling are first order intelligence and applying & solving are higher order intelligence. For someone who was so very high in first order intelligence how long it would have taken to get into higher orders if given right support? Whose mistake is that she did not get the support? If the supposedly better private schools also did not give her the support, who is answerable? As a society, did we ever question the quality of these private and public schools?

"She died in spite of getting aeronautical engineering seat in MIT" What a pity! She could have called herself as junior of the great Dr Kalam; he studied in MIT and the same course - aerospace engineering!! How come we failed as a society to educate our children to aim high but at the same time celebrate the achievements? Why did we not teach our children to weigh the options? Why did we not teach our children to see the reality of life and move forward with courage? Who should have done this - parents, teachers, relatives, friends and who else? Even if we assume that someone provoked her to commit suicide, we are failing as a society to educate our children to evaluate any instructions and address provocations sensibly. On one end, we seem to be too happy / content with what is happening around us and on the other end we seem to be too fragile to handle any difficulty. Have we lost our ability to understand ground reality and respond to it positively?

I am thinking of my friends from Lebanon, a war torn nation; they were able to accept that bombing and losing loved ones as the reality of life but still able to focus on studies and come up in life. I am generalising a bit here - but - my Lebanese friends are the happiest human beings I have ever met in my life. Our reality of life is, we have "leaders" who are not interested in leading the nation; we have rulers who are keen about their welfare but not public welfare; we have politicians but not statesmen rule our country. What is our role in such a scenario? The only option we have is to focus on our social welfare on our own! Children without parents need to take care of themselves! A nation who does not have leaders should shake itself, start behaving itself and should help itself rebuild from scratch. How long can we blame Mecaulay for screwing up Indian education system and Indian culture? We don’t even know if the blame is correct. It may be a truth in all probabilities given that any country who invades other country would like to keep them as slaves and for the slaves to continue that way, their competence and confidence should be killed. But we are an independent country for the past 70 years. What have we done? We have grown from 30 crores to 130 crores in about 100 years! Many times, it feels like the only core competence! Shame on us!

After reading through or hearing all the arguments, I feel, the only thing from the great ancient India we still carry is our ability to argue for and against almost anything! Sure, this country encouraged people to argue; winning an argument by logic was respected highly. Let us remember that this country also believed strongly in integrity and duty. It is high time we move from the argument mode to action mode! I put forth my response only to clarify why I am upset with Anitha's death. The girl died a few week ago but it still hurts as fresh. In my view, any dissatisfaction or hurt should lead to a positive movement, every time. For any harm others do, the only revenge one can take is moving forward with a smile and determination. If the governments are deceiving us, the only way we have is to make them obsolete by proving that we don’t need them for our well-being. I invite each one of you to respond with your actions not with arguments anymore please. Your actions can be of any size and it can be in any aspect of social well-being… please do your bit…


You can join us in helping the students learn better and face life better. Please write to me or call me if you are keen.

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