Education in India – Urban or Rural

Education in India – Urban or Rural?

 

Education: for a future we do not yet fully understand

 

I must admit I was not the most attentive of listeners, at the NUEPA – Foundation Day Lecture delivered on August 12, 2013. Caught myself dozing off and going by my friends’ version, they swear that I even occasionally snored ... Gosh, I just wish it were not true, but what if?!

 

Notwithstanding the somnolence, in my bouts of wakefulness, some questions came to my mind. Would love for you to take a look at them! “Is education an escape into anonymity?” put differently “Is the myopic quest for education a passport to anonymity? “Pursuit of education an attempt to embrace anonymity?” The lecture clearly brought home the point - the almost symbiotic relationship between education and modernity, where one literally feeds of the other ... and interestingly ‘the one’ could be either one of them.

 

From the ‘claustrophobic’ known environs of ‘familiar shores’ is the legend of Joseph Campbell’s ‘heroic quest’ being replayed, albeit in less ‘glamorous versions’ in our quest for ‘knowledge’ and ‘education’  ... well, legitimate pursuits aren’t they?

 

Our penchant to celebrate symbols over substance is most prominent in the paeans to our villages! The incongruity of “India lives in her villages” and “Education for all” begs a rethink! Willy nilly, aren’t we ringing the death knell for our villages in our vaunted ambitions to become a “knowledge economy”?

 

When ‘knowledge’ inveigles one into ‘anonymity’ one wonders at the level of ‘engagement’ of such individuals in their new found ‘anonymous environs’ vis-a-vis John Dewey’s open-minded, responsible, and wholehearted - reflective individual. 

 

Thank you dear Prof. Krishna Kumar, for provoking me to such questions!