Education is a prime facet of every society whether today or in the past. In this age of democracy where the concept and practice of ‘welfare state’ has been accepted as the model and objective for every government policy and action, a lion’s share of the country’s annual budget is usually and unsurprisingly consumed by the education ministry simply because this ministry deals with the most fundamental aspect of meeting the inquisitive and learning aspirations of the upcoming generation which is intrinsically linked to the production of well-informed, qualified and responsible citizens . We generally associate education with enrolling a student in a school, college or university wherein he pursues a certain course of study and is awarded with a degree after the completion of the course. This is the normal and mass idea of education.
But real education may have a much wider and accommodative nature than this normally conceived idea of attending a formal school or college. It is said that learning takes place form cradle till grave. In other words, learning starts even before one is enrolled in a school and it goes on even after college and university. Attending school and college with the mere motive of procuring a degree in order to find employment in the govt. sector or some reputed companies may turn out to be a rather narrow attitude in the end because life is not only about what we get but more about what we give back to humanity.
It is said that real education does not happen in the confines of a university but in the wide open universe. That means, the moment a person comes out of his mother’s womb, he is admitted into the universe and his schooling has in fact started. And how does the schooling starts at such a tender age? It starts through the five senses with which man has been endowed by the creator. The five senses are the ability to see, hear, touch, smell and taste. From the moment a child comes out of the mother’s womb, he starts to learn through these senses even before he ever gets admitted to a formal school. And these senses are more than enough to make the baby laugh, cry, smile, frown or explode in fear or anger even in the absence of verbal communication. Thus his education process starts not in the university but in the open universe and this is real and direct education unlike the second-hand and indirect education offered in the universities.
The kind of bookish education that is offered in a formal university may make a person qualified and eligible for certain professions and careers. But is life only about that? I believe life has much more to offer than simply searching for and getting employment. However, this does not mean schools and colleges are of no use. Schools and colleges have its own significance for the reason that they provide a platform for the child to come into contact with the world. For instance, if there are no schools or colleges, the child will have to spend the first 20 years of life without any desirable sort of mentorship or guidance outside of the home. And therefore even if we are to discard this system of formal school and college, we still have to come up with a platform or medium through which our young ones can come into contact with the real world outside of their homes and grow and develop in a healthy and desirable manner. The role of the schools, colleges and universities is important in this sense because they provide this medium to the young ones through which they come in contact with the real world and get an environment to grow and develop in a desirable and healthy way.
But it would be a wrong of massive proportion to assume our young ones can learn only through schools and colleges. Learning is always taking place everywhere through their five senses. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “see no evil, hear no evil and do no evil”. And it is the role of the educational institutes to ensure that our young ones are seeing, hearing and doing the right things which they should be seeing, hearing or doing at their age. The five senses are at work the moment a child is out of his mother’s womb. So it is extremely important that these five senses of the child are exposed only to the right milieu. If a child is left unattended and unsupervised in a random environment where he has the potential to see, hear, taste, smell or touch unsavory things, the ultimate outcome would not be good. So this is another reason why schools and colleges become important and inevitable.
There is an old Angami love song which says, “leshü phrü di zhalie nyürei uneimia u ketsilie” which means “I want to grow up learning but I am distracted by the girls I like”. This song again exhibits strongly the innermost feelings of human beings. We have 5 senses and our emotions and sentiments are real and therefore, no matter in what setting we are in, feelings and emotions are sure to come out and this is what makes us humans. And real education should also acknowledge and address these real and most basic emotions and feelings rather than simply imparting mere bookish knowledge in which a child may have little or no interest.
Rousseau said “man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”. So a student should not feel he is in chains because of learning pressures. In many ways, it may produce better results if learning is made free, voluntary and enjoyable because it would bring out the best in the students. Forcing our young ones to acquire bookish knowledge may be suicidal in many ways because it kills their creativity and critical thinking.
And who says that being an excellent student in school or college will guarantee success or fulfillment in life. Of course, it may help in acquiring some jobs which require degrees from a university. But is that all that is to life? Life is much more bigger, greater and amazing than procuring a formal education from a university. And some of the most amazing persons in history have been school dropouts and people who were labeled as unfit and ineligible for formal education. They were labeled as unworthy and unfit by the university. But the universe did not think so. And, in the end, they were awarded with degrees and endorsements which continue to shine and inspire to this day.
We also cannot deny that our universities, despite the many courses and disciplines that they offer, do not teach us some of the most fundamental aspects of life. They may teach us about the many battles of history, the complicated mathematical formulas and theories or the various laws and equations that govern science. But how much use are these to a man in his daily day-to-day practical life? So, there are still many things which a man has to learn on his own and from other sources outside of the university.
So, in the ultimate analysis, our present system of education is good and inevitable in many ways. But it has its own limitations and flaws. Therefore, to consider our universities as the alpha and omega of learning would be an erroneous belief. Our real temple of learning is never the university but the universe. Our universe can teach much more and much better than any university that we may attend. And no matter how sophisticated, advanced or refined we become through our university education, we will still remain nakedly human at the core of our hearts and our basic desires, needs and aspirations would remain the same till the day we die. As is rightly said, the Bible is still relevant today because human nature is still the same as in ancient times. And the truth is that our five senses will never stop teaching us even if we are lying in our death-beds. Therefore, to think that education begins or ends with University is nothing short of stupidity and fallacy.
The right way to view education would be to view it from the perspective of the Creator Himself who created everything including our five senses and is constantly guiding us through every step of our journey to make us realize the true meaning and purpose of life and draw us closer to Himself. And this is why our education starts the moment we come out of our mothers’ wombs and continues till we are swallowed up inside the dust from where we were created. And in between the cradle and the grave is the time which the Universe uses to make us realize the true meaning of our creation and brief existence on this planet.
