This is actually one of my most readable books. Quite short and very interesting. However, this is also my most un-read book.
I think what dissuades a person from reading this book is the sterile word ‘education’ in the book title.
However, the fact is that this book is not about insipid formal education or about drab educational theories. This book is about what is missed in life when individuals are forced into long years of useless formal education.
There is a huge colourful world outside the classrooms. Most of the people live their lives without even getting the briefest of glimpses of this location.
This is book is about that location. It comes from my own personal interactions with the various facets and nooks & corners inside this location.
I am of the opinion that dutiful parents should read this book. It is quite small, and yet quite gripping in its stance and contentions.
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Last edited by VED on Sat Feb 03, 2024 4:22 am, edited 5 times in total.
The concept of compulsory education is an utter nonsense propagated by mediocre people who first of all do not know what they are saying. Second, they are persons who want to escape their responsibilities through an easy route. In nations like India, where the language is feudal, to develop the underdog, all they have to do is not to use the pejorative, lower indicant words towards them. And provide them the chance to learn English. Also talk to them in English.
Most of the suppression that come to bear upon the underdogs will disappear with these two things. However, the reality is that almost all of the people who really speak about improving the underdog will literally tremble at this type of improvement that can dawn upon the lower class. For, they would really improve and become equal to them.
However these crooks will still go on declaiming about discrimination and racism among the English folks, and many other things. At the same time, they would quite quietly forget that all discrimination starts with themselves, the moment they use lower indicant, pejorative feudal words and usages to their own fellowmen.
Knowing English is itself a great knowledge, and education. For instance, my own daughter who was brought up in perfect English since and even before infancy, could easily grasp more ideas than most other equally born Indians, who was in the lower levels of the Indian feudal language codes. I could understand that this was not because she was innately more intelligent or a genius, but simply because she was not at all bothered about the respect versus pejorative codes in the local language, which would be a major issue of botheration and concern.
Before discussing the various facets of education, I would like to give one simple illustration. Simply take the case of the English East India Company. It was a small London-based company which was to rule the geographical area currently comprising Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Burma. The person who really set up this empire was Robert Clive, who came to Madras (local name: Chennai) when he was eighteen. Within a few years, he was able to capture a major part of this geographical area, with the very enthusiastic support of the lower class native population of this area, who saw a first-time-in-history chance to break out of their centuries-old enslavement under the local native chieftains and feudal language.
Robert Clive was a school dropout, who literally was bored sitting in front of teachers who more or less knew feeble amount of knowledge outside their textbooks. As to textbook and other book knowledge, any man who knew English could learn them, without the necessary intervention of a teacher. {This was quite true in the case of my daughter, in that she was reading English novels at a very young age, was good in mathematics much above her school age standards, good in swimming (age less than 4), and many outdoor and indoor games, good in computers (expert in Adobe Acrobat and good levels at Macromedia Dreamweaver, apart from other ordinary things, at age 7) at a young age.
When she was put in school under the duress of police intervention, I am sure that there would have been zero number of teachers in her school who could compete with her in many of her accomplishments at age 9}.
5 #UNEDUATED ENGLISHMEN versus EDUCATED ENGLISHMEN
Many of the early East India Company officials who administrated districts and even senior army posts, in these colonial areas were not formal scholars, with many being even youngsters. Yet, they could create the foundations of the British Empire. What about the formally educated British men? What could they do? They could study translated versions of non-English ancient textbooks and writings and come up with the idea that what the Englishmen in colonies were doing was wrong. Robert Clive and many of the other British colonial officials had to face many criminal cases against them for their various acts that led to the creation of the colonial empire.
Actually Robert Clive committed suicide, when faced with an utter idiotic level of intellectualism in Britain, which could not understand the compulsions of feudal languages in Asian nations. At last, a lot of wise guys, formally fantastically educated, no doubt, had the intelligence to splinter the British Empires into pieces. They had no idea that Asian and African language codes could be terribly feudal. They had no idea that the British colonial officials were the focus of admiration from the lower class native population. They created a mess in these areas by giving up the colonies to the same class of feudal lords from whom the British colonial officials had saved the suppressed classes.
They gave up huge land areas to many such newly formed nations without the acquiescence of the native population that lived there. For example, the innumerable islands of Andaman and Nicobar were given to faraway India, with no feelings that the native people who lived there were not Indians and did not want to be Indians. Moreover, once they were handed over to the servitude of the Indian officials, they would be forcibly made to learn the Indian feudal languages and made to exist on the lower side of the Indian feudal indicant word array. They would be: Nee, Thoo, Avan, Uss, Aval and other such lower beings, while the Indian officials would be Aap, Adheham, Sar, Unn and such things. Clement Atlee, the super-nut and other accomplices did not have even a slight bit of understanding of what these words meant and their total affect on a person’s individuality.
Now, this is the correct difference between uneducated Englishmen who saw the world in its reality and the formally educated Englishmen who spends a huge number of years in classrooms, writing projects, engaging in discussions and debates, participating in elocutions and recitation competitions and much more.
Well, this is the tragedy of not just English people, but of most people all around the world. However, in the case of the Englishmen, the tragedy is much less than the others. For, the English-nation classrooms and schools function in perfect English, while most of the feudal language nation classrooms and schools function in feudal languages. What I am saying here can be explain thus: In the feudal language nations, the social communication is designed in a feudal lord versus serf manner. In a feudal language nations’ classroom and school, the same communication code is brought in. The teaching class is the feudal lord in the indicant words, while the students are the serfs, the slaves and the serving class. The teacher is the App, Unn, Adheham, Avar, Sar etc. while the student is the Thoo, Avan, Avan, Avattakal, Chekkan, Pennu etc.
I have gone into the aspect of feudal languages and its inflictions here due to its implications in education.
Coming back to what the educated Englishman can achieve, it is doubtful whether he or she can do anything better in school and college academic matters, better than any person of equal education in other nations like India.
Education is good to the extent that it does not limit other experiences, exposures, intelligences and capacities. Textbooks are not the only books to source out knowledge. There is an immensity of knowledge in other books also. General education should aim to equip the person with the adequate language knowledge and love for reading. For that, many years of school study is not a necessity in the case of many youngsters. That point itself deletes the need for compulsory schooling.
What is knowledge? Well, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Biology, Geography, Geology, Anthropology, Political Science, History and such things are knowledge. One gets to learn them from schools and colleges. Correct? Well, not fully correct. I studied the rudiments of them all from schools and colleges. But then, with my proficiency in English, I could read many and understand many of them on my own, from books that I got from outside schools and colleges. I am a graduate in Physics. Yet, I did have a reasonable level of information in many of them from this outside reading.
Well, did I feel that I was highly informed due to these readings? Well, the truth is that I was not sure.
I have rudimentary knowledge in many themes also. Now, consider astrology, Fengu-shi, Sanskrit Mantra, Vastushastra, Herbalism, Music, Painting, Handicrafts, Interior Design, Horticulture, Agriculture and such things. They are also knowledge. Actually, statistically a person has more chance of earning a profitable livelihood by learning astrology than by the 17 to 20 years of academic study, when one considers that in my own small state he or she has to compete with not only 700000 persons of his or her own age, also others of higher and lower age, who are all studying the same academic content.
I started my studies in a British curriculum school and later was crudely shifted to an English medium but, Malayalam speaking school when I was in my fifth class. The difference that I experienced between these two educational systems can be read from this link. In the former, only the menial workers used lower indicant pejorative words to the students. However, in the latter the teaching class used these words to the students. In many ways, the teachers of the latter schools were of the menial class behavioural mode.
One of my parents was a senior state government officer. Being good in English and also because of holding a senior official post, the general feeling was that she was quite intelligent and capable. For, English communication codes could help her override the limiting word structures of Malayalam, and allow her to express with more directness and articulation to her seniors than could be possible in Malayalam.
However, when I was getting into my college, I was bothered about one fact. Even though many other persons, who were involved in many other professions like businesses etc. showed her exquisite levels of homage and respect, as if she was the repository of many knowledge, basically she did not know much about the world. It was true that from a mentality of an official class family, many other professions were viewed with disdain, for those professionals had to invariably show respect to the officialdom. The other professionals also carried this mental inferiority complex about their own professions and businesses, for they also acknowledged their inferiority with regard to the officials of all levels. For the officials could literally make them beg for mercy, by withholding various papers, licenses, certificates etc. if they acted too smart.
I also had this feeling that she was quite well-informed. For, she would speak with a lot of authority on many themes connected to various government functions and also from a frame of knowing about other places, at least from her reading knowledge. Yet, later, much later, I came to understand that her information on a lot many things connected to government procedures were of the minimal, or non-existent. For example, when I was involved in business, there were the various government procedures connected to sales tax, and vehicle permits.
Almost all of them were of the nonsensical levels, and the wording carefully crafted to lend the official concerned the right ability to harass and fleece the common man. And to garner a lot of money for the luxurious pay and perks of the government employees}. In spite of being uninformed in these matters, the general feeling was that she was quite capable and well-informed. However, when I chanced to come across persons who were quite well-informed in these and many other matters, they were mentally struck by a feeling of inferiority when dealing with the bureaucracy. For, it is in the feudal language codes. The words for the government employee are of the golden levels, while for the common man, it can down from a slight lessening to real abominable levels.
15 #KNOWLEDGE IS NOT POWER; HIGHER FEUDAL INDICANT WORDS IS
Looking back, it is quite easy to see and understand that my mother’s seemingly extraordinary capabilities were more or less connected to her government position, the elevation given to her by the feudal word codes and her own ability to escape from its thraldom through English. The others were burdened by all these. Again here it is seen that it is not knowledge that really gave the seeming intelligence, but rather other extraneous things.
I was reasonably good in Physics, in that I had a very good awareness of such concepts as Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and many other themes in modern physics as well as in astronomy, at around my Class 9 age. However, there was a lot of other information all around me, which were treated with quite obvious scorn, by the academicians. Lorries were seen bringing in rice, wheat, vegetables, and many other things. Where were they bringing all these things from? Where were all these things being grown? What about the other immensity of things like plastics materials, machines, newspapers, books, textiles, leather goods and such things being brought from? How were they being manufactured? I could quite easily understand that after even spending some 17 years in formal education, one was not going to get any information or capacity in most of the activities with which the world was really involved with.
Everyday we buy fish. That thing really connected my mind to the sea. Could I swim in the sea or go in a boat? Well, no. Did my teacher know anything about fishing or going in the sea? Doubtful!
What was I really learning from 17 to 20 years in the schools and colleges? I knew swimming, but most of my classmates did not know it. I wanted to take part in the sports activities in the college. But then, when I was in my Pre-degree (Class 11 and 12), my college actively lobbied in the university and brought in a sports (athletes) team. These were basically students who had not got minimum pass marks in their tenth class exam, but were given moderation due to their being goods in some sports activities. They were from a sports school, where they were fed and trained into sort of giants. My college was focused on them in their sports activities, and the other real students were literally not cared for. It was impossible for the real students to get any space in the college’s preoccupation with these imported persons, who were there not for any academic reasons.
I mention this to delineate what the local education lends to an ordinary individual. I had interest in football, but in my school days, there was no formal time for such things. However, if one has connections to outside teams, there was chance to play such games. But then, again it is not connected to formal education. It is an outside-the-school experience.
In the college, I could learn Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, English and Malayalam. Well, I was reasonably good in English, yet there was much space for improving. However most of the classmates were from Malayalam medium schools, and were quite poor in English. So the teachers had to teach at their levels. Like making them write insipid notes, along with spelling out most words. It was an English learning that was quite awful. As to the students from the Malayalam medium, they had been fooled by their low-standard teachers, who not only did not know English, but also actively campaigned against them being taught English. As to the English teachers in the college, most of them were of horrible standards in English. However, some of them were of quite good standards. Yet, their calibre was simply wasted teaching the Malayalam medium students at nonsensical levels.
Now about the subject Malayalam. Actually, it was aimed at increasing the knowledge of Malayalam literature for the students. Whether it is worth the efforts and distraction is questionable. For Malayalam is the local vernacular. Anyone can improve his or her language skills by simply reading the newspapers and other reading materials available in plenty. And watching the visual media. Teaching it as a subject is also okay. But to make it a compulsory subject more or less makes the whole concept of education nonsense. Education is an opportunity for individuals to learn what they want, and not a situation wherein they are forced to learn things fro which they have no aptitude.
Even though I did attend some of the Malayalam periods, I did not study much. However, since I had an innate liking for old Malayalam film songs, I am reasonably good in Malayalam. I do English-to-Malayalam and Malayalam-to-English translation works at times as part of my freelance working stance. However, it is doubtful if I could write one paragraph correctly in Malayalam during my college days. Again, it is plain that my knowledge in Malayalam is also not connected to the compulsory Malayalam study that I was subjected to.
Now, to speak about my Physics class. The teachers definitely knew much more textbook Physics than me. There can be no doubt about that. However, I had an inner feeling that if I were to discuss many other outside-the-textbook themes that I was keenly interested in, in Physics, they would draw a blank. During my 9 to 12 class age, I was a keen reader of a Magazine called, SCIENCE TODAY. {Incidentally, it suddenly changed its name to 2001AD and changed into a more chic design, and died, as it lost all visual connection with its earlier form}. This magazine was a very good one, and even by modern standards, it was great reading. The contents were of very good quality and elevation. And quite readable.
Once I did show it to one of my professors, and I was shocked to see that he was not even aware of this magazine. One of the themes in Physics of which I was an avid reader in this magazine was news to him in every sense. Like most other Physics lectures, he had also written an M.Sc exam studying his textbooks and later landed the lecturers post. Everything outside the academic syllabus was quite unknown to him and also quite irrelevant to him. All that was relevant in the academic world was exam marks. {However, I must mention that as a person this lecturer was a nice person, and my relationship with him was cordial}.
But then, the teacher-student relationship in colleges was just like the menial class versus student communication code in my early British Curriculum school. Some to the teachers used to address the students with crude low indicant level Malayalam words. However, there are two things to be mentioned here. One is that the college was in South Kerala, and so the teacher-student communication was not as crude as in Malabar, where the Malayalam pejorative words for the subordinates and students were of a worse kind. However, in the Southern Malayalam of those times, the teachers had to be addressed with more elevated feudal words, than was required in Malabar of those times. However, now Malabar has both: more derogative words for lower persons (this is natural in Malabar), and more elevated feudal words for the teachers (this is imported from the south).
In my Physics degree class, the teacher would start with Constant whaaliyam Tharmomeettar (Constant Volume Thermometer). He would start dictating the notes in equally terrible pronunciations. The students from the Malayalam medium schools would show great deference to his teaching and write notes, while many of the students who had come from English medium schools would simply bear the tedious teaching. The students of the Malayalam schools were aware of the terrible feudal codes of Malayalam as an everyday event, and their firm purpose in life would be to get into the higher levels of the Malayalam codes, which was through a government job. Actually for most government jobs, this education is not required. However, there is college teaching jobs, scientist jobs etc. where this qualification was required.
My personal problem was to identify the teachers with the concept of professors. For many of them were ‘professors’. Yet, in my mind, the concept of lecturers and professors were of an elevated kind, good in English, disinclined to use lower level pejorative words to students, persons of a higher mental order etc. However, the teaching classes that I saw in the colleges were of the opposite kind. However, it would not be correct on my part to say that they were bad people. In fact, some of them were really good persons. However, they shouldn’t be the persons to don the robe of a professor. For, they were lending power and status to feudal, suppressive social communication codes, through their very stance as professors.
Now, just think of an English professor, who gets paid around 75,000 rupees per month (currently it is between 200 and 250 thousand rupees) as salary, a fabulous pension, that can literally continue for around 30 to 40 years after his or her retirement, commutation of pension, by which he or she can collect around seven and a half years of pension amount as a lump sum on immediately after the retirement, if he or she request for it. What is the quality of the students who have been taught by this person? How many of them have become good in English? It may be understood that learning English is not a difficult thing, and can be done without any help if one strives for it, even without formal education. However look at the quality of majority students who have passed out of formal college education. Their knowledge of English language as well as its finer elements is totally of the abysmal level. Many of them do know that they had been fooled.
This is the quality of the majority English teaching in formal education. If this be so, it might be correct to point out that the quality of all other subject education is also of the same level. However, the students do not have much problem, for they have all come for a formal qualification and not necessarily for knowledge and refinement. Since most of the government jobs are reserved for persons with formal qualification only, the jobs gets shared and distributed among a particular percentage of the students who have formal qualification. However, if the government jobs are not reserved for them, and they need to compete with people who may not have formal qualifications, but are of good calibre, the farce known as formal education would be heavily discussed.
For, it is people’s money that is being spent for this tomfoolery. And the students who come out with minor quality enhancement go above the common man, without the real intellectual inputs to show for the levels, they claim to. Their behaviour to the public, even with all levels of formal qualifications, is just feudal, suppressive, pejorative and rude type, unless the common-man can exhibit some powerful connections or designations. What is the use of this type of education to the people in this nation?
After my education, it was my stern decision that I would not join the government service, seeing the crudeness that was entering it. I saw the government officials as crude, low calibre, low-in-English, very feudal, self serving class, who were not only corrupt and useless to the core (for the work they were doing could be done more efficiently if there was a British management in place), but also that they were hell-bent on increasing their salary, pension and other benefits, including commutation of pension, beyond all levels of reasonableness.
It was this terrible decision that gave me a lot of information about various other knowledge, of which I had been quite unaware of, and which no school or college could give a person.
I am not intending to write a story here. However, as I moved around many places in the nation, with bare financial stability and great attachment to English communication codes, I came to see the various types of activities in which human beings were engaged. They all had information and knowledge. However, in the academic circles, these are not treated as knowledge or information. In the academic circles, Trigonometry, Calculus, Logarithm, Algebra, Polynomials and such things are knowledge.
[Actually, I did teach my daughter the rudiments some of these at a very early age like around 5 years.
This I did because I wanted her to be informally well informed in higher mathematics. However, I did not see any connection to this ambition with a formal schooling. And this ambition had no specific aim of getting her a fabulous job in mathematics, but simply to make her aware of the incredible possibilities in mathematics.]
Now, here I need to mention the use of studying mathematics and sciences. People study these subjects for getting jobs and not necessarily for getting knowledge in them. Knowledge in a specific field of human intellectual activity, may at times lead to a great discovery or insight. Or it may simply be as entertaining as playing chess.
Since I have mentioned Chess, there is need to compare playing Chess with studying Physics or some other theme like Mathematics. In my home state, around 700,000 students study write their tenth class exam every year. This is a very small state. Out of these students, how many will actually have any use with their calculus, trigonometry, logarithm, quadrilateral equations etc. knowledge in Mathematics? I would say that maybe of the 700,000 every year in my home state, around 5000 may have use of these things. Some two thousand may head for the doctors jobs, 10000 would get engineering graduations, but whether they get a job commensurate to their qualification is uncertain. Maybe some 20000 would go in for various scientific jobs. Well, totally may be, I am saying maybe, some 60,000 would totally get a job with a minor percentage of the various inputs they had received from their education.
In terms of percentage, may be around 10 percentage of the students might get a job connected to something that they had studied at school and college. Even then, most of them have to really go in for other higher education to really get a job. And on the job, most of them find that they need to study again, to get to know what the company knows. For the others, who go in for jobs unconnected with knowledge in higher Mathematics, it is just like knowing chess, or even worse than that. As to the jobs they enter into, they come with zero information and experience. Just for the sake of the other 10%, they had to study unconnected subjects, just to give the classrooms and study system a mass movement feeling.
Now about academic knowledge. There is this fact I noticed when my own sister was studying for Engineering. I found that that actually the five years of study was a waste in terms of what was being taught. For the first few years, actually a lot of unconnected things like History of Engineering etc. were taught as serious subjects, just to while away the time. She was studying for Electronics and Communication Engineering. However, there were a lot of subjects connected to such things as Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Electrical Engineering etc. that simply pushed the years to fill the five year period. At that time I was under the impression that all these things were needed to make a person a good Electronics and Communication Engineer.
However, when my young daughter at age 8 was studying C++, and saw that it was also a very serious subject in Software engineering, I really had to confirm certain of my doubts. She had already been good in such things as MS word, Ms PowerPoint, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, rudiments of audio and video editing, and Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Acrobat etc. I really could understand that a person could become an expert in Software engineering themes even without going to an Engineering college. Moreover, there is no need to study for four to five years, writing innumerable exams. A good mastery can be gained from six months to one year study, if the person is of calibre enough and was good in English. English helps.
I did notice that when my sister joined a government owned company as an Engineer, she had to learn the job. Now the question that should rise in my mind was whether the company really needed an Engineer for that job, or whether another person with adequate knowledge in other sciences would have been enough. The question could even extend to the level as to whether any other person of adequate intelligence can do the job, if he or she can be given proper knowledge foundations.
This question came into my mind when my sister was discussing about the difference between setting up an Engineering college and a Medical college. She mentioned that setting up an Engineering college was quite easy, for not much infrastructure was required other than a lab and some equipment. However, in the case of a Medical College, an immensity of things was required. The study was quite focused, and really required the full five years to complete. There was absolutely no time to study any extraneous stuff to fill in the years.
Now, this mention of Medical Collages brings another theme to my mind. I was discussing about Homeopathy with a qualified Homeopathy doctor. Homeopathy is a very effective medical system. It is really based on the software codes of human beings, life and reality. However these things are not quite really understood. Homeopathy was a treatment procedure in India which anyone could practise. For, it is like learning software-error finding and correcting. Does not really need any formal qualification, same as in the case of a computer software technician. In the US, I understand that it can be practised without any qualifications.
In India, suddenly the government established Homeopathy Medical colleges. The moment the newly graduated individuals came out, they demanded that all others should not be allowed to practise. All persons who had been practising Homeopathy for years suddenly became quacks, and the newly graduated Homeopaths became Doctors.
Now, when discussing with the Homeopath, he was of the tormented mind that the people were not extending equal levels of respect to Homeopath, who he claimed were doctors. The term Homeopath was anathema for the Homeopaths. They wanted to be described as Doctors. At first, the allopath doctors couldn’t bear sharing this exclusive term with others.
The Homeopaths take up the cause that they had studied for five years in a Homeopathy Medical college. However, on close examination, I was able to discern that actually only six month study is required to master Homeopathy. However as in the case of Engineering, it is extended to five years to give it the necessary ‘weight’. It cannot be said that the engineering and other professional course graduates are unhappy about this length of study. For, it really gives them a nice time to spend in college. Moreover, they get a qualification with which they can overwhelm other persons.
About the quackery issue, many other professionals have been turned into quacks by the so-called modern education. For example, Ayurveda practise has been a traditional medical practise extending from time immemorial. The skills, information, knowledge, experiences etc. have moved over the centuries from father to son or from elder to junior or from guru to shishya (disciple), in traditional ayurveda practising families. When the newly graduated professionals from the Ayurveda colleges came out, their first demand was to define the traditional practioners as quacks.
33 #ERASING TRADITIONAL, HERIDITARY, FAMILY and CLAN KNOWLEGE and SKILLS
Well, such cantankerous attitudes have played havoc on traditional skill, and many are simply disappearing. It is not possible for solitary practioners to go and file a Writ in the Supreme Court of India.
Talking about traditional skills being erased, by this nonsense called compulsory education that doesn’t even give good English to the student even after some 17 years of study, let me mention about carpentry. When I was small, I was witness to a group of carpenters arrayed under the leadership of the master carpenter, connecting the top frame of a huge building, in wood. It was a skill that called for exquisite mastery over the art of carpentry, wood quality, precision engineering, and a lot of management skills. However, none of them had been in an engineering college, or taken up a management degree. Beyond that, in the Indian feudal language codes of those times, carpentry came down below in rank.
Now, it would be quite difficult to find young persons of that calibre as carpenters. Actually, if the carpenters had been taught good English, the lower caste branding would have disappeared. Now, the question is what is the crime a good traditional carpenter is doing if he insists that his son should learn his skills by practising and learning the technical exercise along with them, instead of doing the insipid textbook exercises that a schoolteacher can dole out to the child? All the child wants is good English from the school, if he is interested in Carpentry. Moreover, how can the government insist that the child should sit in a school, where the feudal words give a lower ranking to his own father, in comparison to the doctors, engineers, teachers, government employees etc.? Is it not a case of forcefully taking a person hostage for being insulted?
As to the others, what have they received? A huge majority are of abysmal standards in English. Most of them do not get any adequate knowledge in computers. Computer skills would really come from computer usage and not from a textbook based computer class in a school. (When my daughter who was quite good in computer, and studying C++ at age 8, she was forcibly admitted into the local English medium school, had to deal with such questions in her computer class: What is an input device? What is CD drive? etc. It was like teaching cycle riding in school, with a textbook, and such questions as: ‘What is a bell? What is a pedal?’, asked for testing proficiency in cycling).
As to individuality, most of them are trained to be a sort of serving class of the teachers. The same feudalism they would be forced to exhibit to others who they should necessarily suppress with words, if they are to achieve social elevation. Indian formal education is simply dirtying the human being, instead of improving it.
Individuals grow up learning the power of words and what can garner respect. It is money that can garner respect and honour in a feudal language. Corruption is not a crime, but simply the necessary code of feudal languages, wherein homage is a requisite for displaying feudal respect. This is what the children learn from schools.
Now, let me simply list out the immensity of knowledge that is out there. Most of these things are items with which I was personally involved in my life in many places as a person trying to do business:
59. Aluminium vessels, Various works like recycling and refreshing of vessels
60. Electrolysis
61. Painting
62. Managing various business activities like construction, handloom production, carpentry, sawmill work
63. Jurisprudence, lawyers, legal experts
Well, many of these items mentioned above are things in which I was directly involved for a brief period in life. To understand the depth in each one of them, there was no need to be involved for a long period of time. Other items, I was not directly involved in, as in the case of Circus and acrobatics, but had the spectators’ impressions.
Each one of them has great complexity and information that can really be termed to be of more depth than textbook knowledge. I will just take a few illustrative examples to bring this out.
Twice in my lifetime, I was directly involved in Vegetable trade, wholesale. Even though a person viewing me from outside wouldn’t know the exact complexity that I was dealing with, the fact was that this was a very deep world of business. Actually, when I used to arrive in my base town (not my home town) in the morning hours, after unloading the lorry at the vegetable wholesale market, and wander around in my unkempt clothing, the casual and uninformed observer would only see a person who was literally a loafer.
At that particular time, I was staying in a place, where in the daytime, business activity would be done, and night-time would be my sleeping place. The actual fact was that the previous day, I would be a wholesale market in a neighbouring state (some 500 or so kilometres away), having the loading done, and travelling in the night, and arriving in the early morning hours.
That much for impressions.
Let me take the case of my dealing with the Bangalore Wholesale Vegetable Market. I had to deal with this place twice in my life. The first was at a very small level, and the second at a higher level, but both for extremely brief periods.
The very going there in the unearthly hours of around 4 am, and seeing the twilight zone scene of an immensity of lorries arriving from afar loaded with different type of vegetables was in itself a great experience for my school and college educated tiny brain. Each of these lorries would be carrying a specific vegetable. The senders of these cargoes were the farmers from different places in the state. There was a lot of information to be understood about the crops, the harvesting, the timing, the seasons, the rainfall, the dry seasons, the farmers’ expectations, their apprehensions, the various agents who takeover the cargo once it is inside the Wholesale market premises etc.
Once the cargo is in the hands of the agent, there is nothing much the farmers can do about the way it is sold. The cargo is literally in an unattached state, in the hands of the various market forces. Now, I have seen that this so-called market forces can be and do be manipulated and doctored. Even if the farmers do know it, and do foresee it, there is nothing they can do about it, unless they are themselves capable of outmanoeuvring these doctoring. The latter possibility is more or less an improbability in the case of most farmers.
Apart from all this, there are issues connected to the vehicle itself, its load carrying capacity, statutorily allowed load weight, permits, sale tax issues (perishables do not come under the sales tax plunder, but still the possibility that vehicles carrying perishables can smuggle things that do need permit would have its negative impact, if one were to don an attitude of a higher individuality than the sales tax thugges), the driver’s capacity, his individual weaknesses and frailties, the other persons in the vehicle, including the cargo owner and the cleaner (non-statutory title of an attendant to the driver, lending him leadership at his level) etc. Availability of eateries and motels, places for bathing, and other conveniences, also is issues that are slightly there, and can become major issues on odd occasions.
Next item that was also learned by me, was the daylight robbery in the night-time by the Indian policemen. They stand in roadsides and if the commercial vehicle is having a non-home-state licences plate, it is invariable flagged down. The driver has to give a sum, which need not be very high. It is all part of the game and if one is ready to play by the rules, there are actually no worries in this regard.
Other minor issues which may or may not come to the fore are tyre puncture and battery problems. The drivers usually know about the whereabouts of the type puncture repair shops and of the auto-electricians. However, if the farmer is a novice in this field, he may take a driver with him who may not know such things, and at odd times this issue can really be a powerful thing that decides if the load reaches the market in time. Precision of time is a critical element. For one thing, if the vehicle is delayed, it would not get the correct price, for the buying starts quite early, and there would be not much buyers, and practically no demand. However, beyond that, there is another more terrible issue.
The vehicle may not even be able to enter into the market, with so many smaller vehicles entering the market and going out with the goods after buying them. Moreover, many of the fully loaded vehicles would even be taken out without being unloaded, as the cargo could have been bid for and bought, and needs to be send elsewhere.
Beyond all that, there are restrictions on the entry of these big vehicles into Bangalore city areas after daybreak. The night-world is quite different from the day-world. It may be understood that when one mentions the word ‘nightlife’ of a city, the formally educated persons immediately associate it with another theme. However, there is this theme also about which the classroom educated persons never know about nightlife in a city.
Now coming to the world of vegetables, there is the quite fascinating theme of variety. First of all there is an immensity of vegetables that were present in the Bangalore Vegetable Wholesale market. Now, when I mention the words Bangalore Vegetable Wholesale Market, there is a discrepancy there itself. I have gone to the Bangalore Vegetable Wholesale Market with a relative of mine. However, that Wholesale market is not the one that I am speaking about. That one is a place the people go for buying things in more than a few kilos etc. For example, in the ordinary market if the price is Rs. 25, in this Wholesale market, if you buy some ten kilos, you would get it for Rs. 19.
However, the other Wholesale market that remains invisible to the majority local residents is a place where the buying is in 100 and 1000 of kilos, usually (not necessarily always). Where what you buy in the retail shop for Rs. 25 costs Rs. 8. However, you would need to buy in hundreds to thousands of kilos.
Now coming back to variety of vegetables, the scene is quite kaleidoscopic, in its content, colours, shapes, arrangements, noises, movement and activity, and haggling. Everything has a definite code.There was an immensity of vegetable, many of them, or rather most of them quite unfamiliar to me. For a person who was native of Kerala, many items were quite exotic. The very knowledge of the various names of the immensity of vegetables was in itself a technical or subject knowledge.
Apart from that, almost each of the individual vegetable had different varieties and names, some depending on their colour, size, shape and even taste. Then there were differences visible depending on the places where they were grown. For example, there was onion, coming in two quite different shades of red, from two quite different growing areas.
Now, about the trading system, also there was much information to be had. Many of the items were sold on a system of auction. There were agents for that. The agents would get a specific percentage, whatever the price at which an item was sold. In the systems of agents also there was the presence of assistance and others of their staff. There was an unwritten code among them that was aimed at hindering and blocking the entry of new traders to the scene, and also new suppliers of an item which was already being supplied by some other steady connections. All of this was aimed at maintaining a steadiness to the system and relationships.
Even though it may seem easy to make an entry into the trading scene, the unwritten code also included that there were specific hierarchies which had to be followed and emphasised. Any person entering inside the scene with a different mental hierarchy could be a disturbance and distraction to the social relationship inside the scene, unless he is there only for a brief period.
To see that the newcomers who do not fit in are filtered out, an auto-mechanism seems to note and register their presence. In the guise of helping, lending assistance and advice, some persons would enter into the scene and literally make the trading go haywire. However, persons who have the financial acumen to withstand the first reversal of fortunes and business reputation can overcome all these and become steady. However, in most cases the newcomers are financially weak persons who understand the frill elements of the business, and try to make a immediate profit in the first deal. They get wiped out, and the taste of this decisive defeat would be more terrible than they can withstand.
Beyond that, if a newcomer enters the market with an agricultural produce from a long distance, which is already being supplied here by another person, a particular type of market mechanism is made to play out. On the very day the newcomer arrives with the produce, the market prices are made to crash artificially. The newcomer wouldn’t at first understand what had suddenly happened and would literally have to bear witness to his items being sold heavily below standard market prices.
These are all knowledge that comes with experience and exposure, in the same manner a child learns to do arithmetic sums correctly after making a series of mistakes
Then there are things to be learnt about the art of bidding, inspection of products, knowing at which time of the year, which produce would have demand in which place. Contact with the various markets elsewhere, and with the agents therein is also acquired information. Apart from all that, there is also the frill requirement to have link with lorry brokers, who can arrange vehicle at much discounted cost by way of return lorry freight.
It would be wise to have ideas about loading also, even though the loading workers in the market would have the requisite idea about this. For, there are different issues connected to different kinds of vegetables. For many of them cannot withstand heavy pressure. Some have time limits, and some cannot be carried through certain climatic conditions without impairment of quality.
Take the issue of Tomatoes. There are a few varieties. Some cannot be used in curries, and some cannot be used as sauce. Different varieties have different rates of perishing.
Now, this much I have written. If the reader feels that he or she has understood the complexities of wholesale vegetable business from this meagre writing, I should caution that the reader has not got any idea of the scene. The only way to understand the real feel of the trade is not by simply going to the market place and viewing it. Such viewings can help a person get a doctorate, on a study of this scene. However, to really understand the feel and width of the business, I would suggest that the person do the trading for some time.
Now how much time would it take a person to really study the scene to become a sort of graduate in this field (not a master)? Well, I think six months exposure and experience would be enough. Now, let us compare this with the time a college going student would require to learn graduate or even post graduate level Nuclear Physics. It is my considered view that a reasonably intelligent person can study it within six months, or even less. No need for three years. However, graduation in the colleges are not in Nuclear Physics, but in Physics, which is a mixture of all kinds of Physics, all of which never reaches anywhere and no logical explanation is there as to what the young man is going to do with this kaleidoscopic mix of subjects.
I wrote so much about one single item to denote that each one of the items in the list also has superb complexity.
38 #A DEGRADED SUPER VOCATION and the DESPOILING of a PEOPLE
Now, let us take the case of a Real Estate Broker/ Agent. It is a self employment seen in many parts of the nation as low grade and fit for the un-educated. However, in such places as Bombay etc. wherein social evaluation at that level is not quite effective, all levels of persons practise this profession. For the earnings are quite high. In the other areas, not only the higher level society sees it as low grade, but the very practisers of this trade also mention it as low grade. In a way, it is a clever ploy to dissuade the higher level society from entering into this profession, which does not really require heavy financial inputs.
However, as a profession, it is quite a tough one, and given the general standards of dishonesty in the social culture, it is tougher proposition to extract a payment from persons who have been served well. Now, how does one improve the status of such professions? Well, does our compulsory education bring in any quality enhancement to such professions, or does it impair them with low quality indicant word status? The truth is that our Compulsory Education System does a great crime by reducing most of the jobs done by the natives here to abysmal levels by assigning lower indicant words to them.
To illustrate this point, let me say: A doctor’s son is studying in the school. There is a carpenter’s son also there. When referring to their fathers, the teachers invariably would use different indicant words for them: the doctor would be Unn, Avar, Adheham etc. in the various Indian languages. The carpenter could be: Uss, Ayaal, Avan etc. This is what the compulsory education is doing to the people and their means of livelihood here. Doesn’t the drafter’s of the Right to Compulsory Education deserve to be beaten into a pulp?
Now we come back to the theme of compulsory education. When a person enters into this system, then it is only logical that he or she has to go forward till its very end, to the PG levels. Dropping out in the middle is a retrograde step and the person has literally fallen on the way.
Now, the question here is about compulsory education that declares that the child should be taught a lot of things in their minute and mediocre qualities. Look at the list of businesses with which I had dealing with. In which all among them, is there the need for calculus, trigonometry, logarithm, polynomials, metrics, algebra, geometry, analytical chemistry, moles, molar, Avogadro number, Gas Laws, Spirogyra, Scientific Nomenclature, Cary Fosters’ Bridge, Ideal Machine, Polarity, Atomic Number, Wavelength, Doppler effect and such things.
Well, the truth is that there is not even a single connection. However, if the modern educated persons were to be told that a particular man does not know about these things, he is seen as an ignorant man. So, the persons who are engaged in the above-mentioned trades should be forced to learn it, even if the time spent on these extraneous things could turn out to be detrimental to their business concentration. What a diabolical idea!
However as in the case of my daughter, wherein I taught her Higher Mathematics just for letting her know that there are high intellectual possibilities in these things, it can be considered. However, the fact of the matter is that I did teach her Chess at age three and computer usage at four, including Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Photoshop. If I had possessed a computer before that time, I would possibly have taught her at age one itself. For, I took her for swimming at age eight months.
Now, take the case of a Vegetable Wholesale Trader, who wants to teach his son the secret intricacies of his trade. For, in his trade even a phone number of an outside-state trader with whom he has connection is a trade secret worth its value in gold. If he were to give the charge of this establishment to another man (his assistant), the chance of such information leaking out or even being used by that man himself is great. However, he can’t bring his young son into the trade, for the Compulsory Education Act states that the child should be given to care of teachers. They have the right over his son, and through his son, over him also.
Now, who are these teachers? Well, in all probability, they would be persons who do not know much about anything that has been listed above as business, trade or skill information. Their only qualification would be their textbook knowledge and marks, both of which really have no value in real life, other than what has been loaded on to them through artificial means. However, if they can teach the child good-quality English, it is a great teaching. However, in a nation like India, majority of the teachers not only do not know English, but also actively campaign against teaching English to students.
41 #FEAR of a QUALITY POPULATION; VALUE of INFORMATION
The antipathy to teaching English is basically connected to the fear that the children would really become good and superior quality. In a nation with feudal language communication, the seeing of the lower positioned persons improving in standards and quality, and popping up as real equals, is a real torment.
Now one needs to think about the quality and usefulness of knowledge that is being imparted in schools and colleges. These are information that the teachers have no qualms about teaching. They have no tension when the child learns what they teach. However, look at all the trades that I have listed out. It is my very powerful understanding that persons who are knowledgeable in these trades, activities, skills, techniques, technologies etc. take a huge amount of strain to see that they do not educate others about its intricacies and understandings. In fact, they take pain to give wrong information. The information they possess is valuable, and they wouldn’t give it to other easily.
What is this comparison meant to mean? Well, it can mean that the general idea is that knowledge, information, understandings, exposures and experiences given by schools and colleges are simply keeping a child away from real valuable themes.
Now, we need to go into their exclusivities and peculiar rights. One of the methods maintained to garner value for formal education is that many government professions are kept apart for formally qualified persons. Even such silly jobs like a government clerk are kept apart for formally educated people. However, the quality of the persons who become government clerks is of the abysmal levels, given that most of them are quite bad in English.
Now, before concluding this writing, I need to mention that I am not speaking against formal education, but against the compulsory part of it. A carpenter has the right to teach his child his knowledge, skills, information, understandings and awareness. The government has the duty to give the child an opportunity to learn good English. The word ‘good’ has to be stressed. English teaching should not be given to present-day schoolteachers. Moreover, elementary class teachers should be of the best calibre, good in English, well-read in English classics, well informed in English fairytales, and well-versed in English nursery rhymes and folksongs. And not the menial servant class people who currently teach in the nursery classes.
There is this thing also to be mentioned about children going in for business and other enterprises. When I was a small child living in north Malabar, I was witness to a very exquisite social happening. The place was full of Muslim (Mappillah) families. Almost everyone, Hindus as well as Muslims, and also the Christians in that area were quite uneducated. However, it would be quite untrue to state that they were idiotic or stupid. They functioned quite intelligently.
Mappila Muslims had a slightly different language dialect, in which the full hardcore feudalism of Malayalam was less. The Muslim boys of age around 5 and 7 and beyond would be seen going around the streets and small village townships, selling groundnuts. Some would even be seen selling fish and such other things. It was not that the children were send by their families to earn the money. It was purely business enterprise by the children. They would buy groundnut from afar, and sell it in small quantities for 5 and 10 paisa. Surely there would be heady profits.
I would like to mention in passing that when I was in my third or fourth class, I did study such things as Prime numbers, HCF, LCF etc. Quite frankly speaking, the Muslim boys who went in for a heady experience of retail selling were not aware of such concepts. However, they could do their business arithmetic much faster than my own academically trained mind.
Moreover, when I would mix with them, even with my academic brilliance, they did not show any feeling of inferiority complex. It was I who was the odd one out. This point I am stressing to inform that the feeling of being an odd one, is more connected to not being part of the general crowd, and not necessarily being not formally educated.
In my own household, all these business activities of Muslim kids were seen as the low-class family system of the Muslims. Yet, later by the time I had graduated, with practically nothing in my mind other than dry academic items, these kids had all graduated into powerful businessmen, with a lot of ‘higher educated’ persons working under them as their staff.
45 #ABOLISHING a CHILD’s RIGHT to WORK and ENTERPRISE
Here the theme does stray the theme of the Act abolishing child labour. A blanket ban on Child labour, coupled with Compulsory Education does infringe on an individual’s certain innate rights. A child has the right to labour, and to engage himself or herself in decent labour. The right of the government to step in comes only if the child is being exploited or being abused or misused. However, the fact is that the government should necessarily step in, when anyone, not just a child, is being exploited.
Here I need to input one of my observations with regard to working children. I have had the opportunity to see young boys working in automobile workshops. They were quite disciplined, focused and eager for improving their knowledge and skills. They had no time for drugs and such other themes, other than for the fact that they did not know English. Due to this deficiency, there was a great substandard-ness and colloquialism in their subject matter of conversation. If English was known to them, I am sure that their level of intellectualism would have improved tremendously. However, it would be quite a nonsense that they were idiotic and stupid and intellectually behind a student who spends his time in a government school.
As to the work culture, it is true that they come under the control and thraldom of some seniors in the workshop. However, this is true in the case of students in schools also. Once I did have a chance for a close observation of students in a government schools. The teachers were literally treating their wards as their servants and other serving persons. They profusely used words like ‘Nee’, ‘Eda’, ‘Edi’ etc. all of which were more or less words that one uses to one’s servants over whom one has unlimited powers.
These kids later grow up to become good quality motor vehicle technicians. However, their lack of English knowledge haunts them till the end of their lives.
47 #The DECEITFUL CERTITUDE inside SCHOOLS and COLLEGES
Now, what is the mentality in a school and college going student? Well, they are not much bothered about the future or about improving their skills in anything. All that they are focused upon is marks. What can one do with marks? Well, one can’t actually make even a pillow with it.
Children in formal schooling and college studies simply waste their time with a false sense of security. The general feeling is that there is a pot of gold at the far end of the rainbow. The fact is that there is no such pot of gold at the far end of the mirage. For most people, at the end of their formal education, they do not know what to do with all the bookish knowledge that they had received. Most of them have to go in for extra studies to make themselves work worthy and business worthy. Here it may be mentioned that for individuals who have an innate inclination entrepreneurship, formal education is a total misguidance. There is absolutely no connection between a 17 to 20 years formal education and entrepreneurship.
However a lot of jobs are reserved for them. That much assurance is there for them. For a person without formal qualifications cannot compete with them. He or she is a lower caste as far as right to compete with them is concerned. {It may be remembered that in the ancient periods in India, the lower castes were barred from competing with the higher castes in any sort of competitions. In fact, in the Indian epic, Mahabharatha, there is this incident wherein Karna is not allowed to compete against Arjuna, as the latter was from a royal blood, while the former was known to be from a lower caste}. The fact is that if the government posts are opened for competition in the Public Service Exams, for the non-formally educated also, the real value of this so-called formal education can be seen.
Beyond that, from my own daughter’s experience, I have to say this much also. It is an experience connected to Indian schooling. An individual who was quite active in outdoor activities including swimming, suddenly went into a routine of 1½ hours bus travel in the morning and 1½ hours bus travel in the evening; 6 days a week of 8 hours in the classroom; all extra time writing notes and projects; no time for any physical activity; listening to teachers with literally bad English pronunciation, and accent, bare travel experience and much more. No more swimming, chess, football, cricket, computer work, creative writing and much else.
Simply study the same things that around 700000 people from this small state alone are studying. That is, she was studying themes in which there was an abundance of people also competing. She was not allowed to go on a different route. This much I mentioned not because of any personal issues, but just to mention the case of the odd one outs in this nation, who try to keep off the beaten path, and try to go in a different direction, making a new path.}
49 #The SENSELESS SQUANDERING of PRECIOUS TIME and RESOURCES
However in the case of nations like the US, the huge number of youngsters simply spend fastidious lives, with no concern about the future, and see the world from the false security of the classrooms. Many of them would have enough spare time and boredom to try out drugs, alcohol and sexual activities. In fact, the nation of US is living on the bank balance of a grand heritage, simply squandering away that splendid legacy. One super-nut American president went around speaking to children in classroom advising them to spruce up their maths knowledge, instead of seeing that he was leading the nation to absolute financial disaster, by not closing the leaks in the American economy. It is not Maths knowledge that is going to protect a nation and its economy.
50 #WOULD the KIDS REPLACE the ADULTS at WORKPLACES?
Now, one needs to take up the economic affect of children doing work. There is this grave issue that adults would find themselves facing competition from youngsters. Well, this would be there to a limited extent. This was also a competition that adult males faced with females started joining the workforce. However, in the case of nations like the US etc., there native adult work force is as it is facing stiff competition from immigrant workers and also from outsourcing. When such terribly destructive things can be allowed, putting a restrain on children working can really be of laughable content.
There is one more last item to be added here. It is generally connected to an erroneous and totally un-understood theme of US being a great nation due to its scientific achievements. It is not true. The US is not a great nation due to its scientific achievements, or of it being able to send man to the moon or land on the Mars. It is a great nation due to the quality of its people, who speak English in a form more or less quite near to that of pristine English of England. For that matter, miniscule England is also a great nation, without being able to put man on the moon or land on Mars. In fact, England is a greater nation that the US.
To make a nation great, what is require is people quality improvement. This does not come with creating more engineers, doctors and scientists, but by improving the quality of all persons.
The government has the duty to step in if there is exploitation and despoiling. If the government does not step in, that is a great crime. In this context, the right of a person against be despoiled by lower indicant feudal words in Indian languages would come in. The government has the duty to abolish such words, and not the decent labour a child would like to do. However, would the government dare to say that certain Malayalam (Indian) words have to be abolished, as it was done in Post Revolution France?
Last, there is nothing wrong in people studying the universe, stars, supernova, big bang, and such things, and discussing whether Pluto needs to be plutoed or not, and reverted back to planet-hood. Higgs-bosonian particles also can be studied. However, a huge mass of youngsters need not be forced to stay focused on such things. Also for communicating with aliens. For, some people are needed to focus on such ordinary themes as finding a way to communicate with the immensity of living beings currently living alongside human beings. And for other frill knowledge, that really do run the world of human affairs, without the truculence of academic interferences.
As to England, let it learn from its historical experiences that it is not by enslaving a huge section of its young population inside schools that the nation went to global greatness.
There are some more things to be mentioned. I will do it later.
