Education and degrees

Recently I was appalled by the fact that, at least in India, for a fresher it is almost impossible to get a job if not through campus placement! So much so that one of my friends decided to join an MBA program just to have access to the placement drama!! Which means that he is confident of doing well in a job; but needs a 'degree' and placement.

Do the conventional education and degree mean much? My views will be biased in that I am myself a product and benefactor of the system, and will be non-academic from the fact that I got no 'degree' in education or sociology!

If we look back, formal education was historically affordable and imparted only to the elite few. Most (if not all) old fathers of science and humanities are either from royalty or from clergy background. So, I guess, they tried their best to make education the business of the elite. And now we have something which breeds elitism! A mason puts more mental and physical effort than me, but gets paid less. This is morally wrong.

Besides the moral dimension, the other dimension to this whole debate is practicality. There was a time when the way (most) people got trained was through apprentice programs! This got different flavours in the orient and in the occident. But in today's world, without a piece of paper, you are not recognised. And that piece of papers needs years and years of effort and loads of money. It just does not make much sense to me.

What is the solution? Well I don't know and thats why this column is coined "Confusion"!!

Pancha-klesha (five miseries)

(The real meaning of yoga is the way to get united with the real knowledge. And Patanjali (2nd century BC) is well regarded as the father of yoga. His work the Yoga-sutras is a list of aphorisms, each worth hundred hours of meditation. In the current post I will explain one of the sutras from Yoga-sutra, as explained to me by my father.)

Very lucidly this sutra says that "agyana, asmita, raga, dwesha, abhinibesha: pancha-kleshah". The five miseries of life are lack of proper knowledge, I-ness, desire to get good things and not to get bad things, fear of death or time! It all starts with the lack of proper knowledge (agyana). Everyone, everything and every event is interlinked and interwoven in an amazing seamless manner. Open your eyes and try to find a single event without any cause. There aint any. Every event every thing and everyone affects every other event, thing and person. In such a creation, no one has any independent existence. Independence and choice are but illusions. Because many of us don't care to look out and think, we think  we are different and separate. We develop ego and I-ness (asmita). Ego is nothing but the accumulation of some past experiences, which in turn define our character and personality. When in an undivided wholeness we assume a separate entity, then we make an evasive boundary. This makes two type of choices. We either like (raga) a thing/person/event or dislike (dwesha) it. This in turn will bring us to the point where we start remaining scared of time! Why? Because we are scared that the desirable thing that we have now will be snatched by the flow of time or the thing we desire to happen or come in future will not happen. This brings us to the last misery, fear of time or death (abhinibesha).

So as we can see, all the miseries start step by step from a single thing, i.e. the lack of right knowledge (agyana). But how can someone who is within the miseries of asmita, raga, dwesha, abhinibesha obtain knowledge? Then this becomes like a vicious circle! The only way to break it is meditation!

An old story

I have heard this story long ago. There was a woodcutter who would go to the jungle everyday to cut wood. One day he was cutting a branch of a tree which leaned into a river and his axe fell into the river. Our poor woodcutter was devastated. He sat beside the river and cried. Then the river-Goddess could no longer see his plight, She came out and asked what has happened. On knowing the reason She went in and brought a big gold axe and asked him to take it. Our woodcutter denied that that was not his axe. Then She went in again and brought a silver axe which was also denied by our woodcutter. Finally she gave him back him old iron axe and he was happy. This pleased the Goddess and she blessed him profusely.

Many times in life because of circumstances we are separated from our loved ones and we  miss our loved ones. And people console that no worries, move ahead, you will get many better ones! I would say, thank you very much for your kind support but I need my old iron axe back. Because that was MINE and I could cut the woods with it. I want an axe to make a living and life, not some gold and silver!

Self reliance

It's a well known fact that if we start depending on others for our comfort zone, then our comfort becomes short-lived. E.g. if I derive my joy from staying near a loved-one, then when that loved-one goes far or does not react in a desired way, I get sad. I lose my peace. So what we are invariably advised is "try to be self reliant", try not to depend heavily on other (persons or stuffs) too much.

I think I don't agree with the above old wisdom. If we do not depend on anyone, then what is the benefit of a human life? If we do not feel pain then how can we feel pleasure? If we are scared of being too much dependent on someone then we will never be able to enjoy life to its fullest extent.

The above logic reminds me of a line from Narada's Bhakti Sutra (Formulas of devotion). For the uninitiated, Sutras in Indian philosophy are sets of very concise adages (sutra = formula)! This particular sutra  reads as "biraha-shakta". (As you can see it's just two words). It means "attracted to separation". One wise man explains this as the fact that the lover is attracted even to separation from the beloved one. Why? Because even if it's separation, separation from whom? From the beloved one! How can the lover not fall in love with anything related to the beloved one?

Philosophies aside, I think I will advise to continue being dependent! Separation makes you weak, but that also makes you feel the joy of reunion. Dependence makes your joy capricious; but then what is permanent in this nature? Embrace life to the full extent. Leave all inhibitions when you are in love. You have nothing to lose!

Swaraj vs. Suraj

Of late I am getting more and more convinced that like "organised" religion, nationalism is also one more opium for the masses. People just want to feel good for the fact that they belong to something bigger than a five to six feet tall body frame. And thats why they start believing in things like nation, country, state etc. And this sort of feeling is well moulded into making systems like democracy and notions like "swaraj" (self-governance). If I am being ruled by someone of my own type (and type can be anything starting from colour to caste) then I feel good! And if that someone can get a fake support like what we call "mandate", then the system becomes holy.

The hoipoloi really do not care about what is the colour of the skin of the president or what his religious beliefs are. We care about a good quality peaceful life, what we call as Suraaj or good governance. I have heard that in Saudi Arab, the young princes are trained as per the portfolio that they will take care of in their future life. They become trained to do a certain thing better. And given that he is not a tyrant (and believe me you can get tyrants of demonical magnitude in democracy as well), he can give a much better governance than democracy. Just because we do not know of a better system than democracy, does not make it the best. Just because some nations do well under democracy does not mean that its a panacea for all. I do not have an alternative. But I just can not stand the fake Swaraaj (self governance).

And today is India's umpteenth independence day. A day which should actually be observed as a black day, because this was the day when thousands of people were suddenly told that they are foreigners and need to leave the land; this was the day when neighbours killed, looted, raped neighbours. This was the day which showed the real demon in man. And what have we achieved yet? The inherently unapt system of democracy caused in highly concentrated growth. And the result is quite clear from our ex-home minister (Mr. Chidambaram)'s statement that currently around 30% of the nation's land is under some sort of parallel governance, like Naxals. It is high time, we should stop following the developed nations and seriously look for alternatives. Time to say "Thank you" to Swaraj and think of real "Suraaj".

Education

I have been in the 'business' of education for past six year now. I guess I have earned a bit of right to comment on education! The big question hovering over all of us today is "are we prepared to educate the future"? Contrary to popular belief "What do we teach" is a much bigger thing to decide than "How do we teach". Hamming roughly proved in one of his futuristic books (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Doing-Science-Engineering-Learning/dp/9056995006) that the amount of knowledge almost doubles every one to one-and-half years! Its a bewildering fact. So the first question is how do we keep ourselves abreast of all this huge amount of knowledge? And the second (and more difficult) question is how to make sure that you teach the thing that the student will really need? And there are many sub-queries like how to make sure that the student is not drifting aside from what you teach by the availability of limitless facts and knowledge in the cyber-space. This makes the whole vintage University  education system inefficient and, if I may dare say, useless! I strongly believe that what the Universities are selling for the exuberant amount of money they take is not knowledge or education; its a brand name. And if you think my job as an educator is difficult, then think of the poor man who is assigned to choose the employees for a firm! How does (s)he make sure that s(he) is not fooled by the name of the degree? How does s(he) keeps abreast of the knowledge so as to examine the candidates? And more importantly, what would s(he) examine the candidates on? Surely s(he) can not expect them to be aware of the narrow domain in which the company is working! Hence, a quick on the job training is a must for the new employees. This makes the university education even more redundant!

I, sincerely, do not know the answer. But I think the way to go is to scrap the high sounding degrees in applied stuffs, like business administration or engineering. They are impossible degrees in the current world. Anyone who claims s(he) can teach engineering or management is a lier and I can say it to anyone's face! My firm belief is that the time has come to go back to the basic degree system of pure science and arts with at least one years of generic training on mental and physical wellbeing.