This article has been submitted by Nihal Som for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think it’s a good read, ‘Like’ the article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘Comments’ section below.
I recently read an article about our education system providing information which corrupts ‘knowledge’. Before going any further, let us understand the difference between knowledge and information. Information is what you know, when you read a certain fact. Knowledge is when you completely comprehend the information. Sadly, our present education system is concentrating on enhancing the amount of information rather than ensuring that a child comprehends the information. The main cause of this could be the fast increasing competition in the contemporary world. On competition, my views are quite negative. Yes, competition is what runs the world, without competition the world cannot progress. It is something in the genes of every organism to be better than the other. I respect competition; it is something out of my power. But, there are few common questions in my mind- Why should we only learn so as to pass in an exam? Why don’t we learn for the sake of learning, for the sake of knowledge? Why is it that countries tend to develop so as to be better than other countries? Competition has played a big part in shaping the present world, but it has nonetheless on the other end disseminated the spirit for doing something valuable for the sake of ourselves, not to better than others. The day when people forget about competition will be the day we can be called “Learned”.
“Fear” is another important aspect that is responsible for this degeneration of education. However, its causes and effects are directly on the student. It is an entity also responsible for the “running” of our world and also for the “ruining” of it. The reach of fear is spread worldwide, we generally do many things just because we are scared of the aftermath of ‘not doing’ that event. “If I don’t get 100 in maths this term my dad will throw me out of the house.” “If I don’t complete this project, Ma’am will send me to the principal”.
These have become clichés to every student. It is common for most of our institutions and special classes that prepare students for competitive examinations (the sad fact is that these organizations don’t prepare students to face failure) to work on the principle of Fear. I believe Fear should be eliminated from the world, and then only can we truly understand the reason for our actions to be profitable to both us and our fraternity. Education is a lifelong process; our school life only lays the foundation for our further learning. I say- How good is the foundation laid on the basis of ‘Fear’ and ‘competition’? How strong will the foundation be which only preaches ‘information’ not ‘knowledge’ (creativity is something forgotten in school, so me mentioning it will have no effect). Well, at the end it’s up to our world to change and anyway, the last Renaissance was long ago!
