Young Man, What Is Your Future? || AP Neem Candies
Acharya Prashant: What is the intention of the current education system?
The system is good, very good—at doing what it has been designed to do. But what is the intention of the designer, must that not be asked? And when you ask about the intention of the designer, you will have to ask, “What is your vision of the products of such a system?”
When you envisage a product of the current education system, what do you see? And related to that is the question—do you understand who is entering the education system? If you understand who is the one who enters the system, you would probably be nicely placed to see, who is it that must emerge from the system. In other words, do we know who we are, and therefore who we must be? The ones that we are is the input into the system; the ones that we must be , must be the output of the system. Do we know who enters the system at age three or five? And therefore, do we know what to expect from the one who emerges at the age of twenty-three, or twenty-five?
Do we understand both our fact, and our possibility? And is not education the movement from our sombre fact to our splendid possibility? Must that not be the very definition of our education: a movement from the sordid, primitive fact of our physical existence to the glorious, splendid possibility of the liberated human being?
Education is what must connect these two, right? But is that even the thought or the idea? Is that the intention? No, that is not the intention.
I’ll tell you what the intention is. The makers of the system think of the input as a raw material, and the output as the finished product—that must serve the needs of the social order, and in the process ingratiate itself as well.
So, if the existing social and economic order requires people who can produce shoes, then the education system will be directed towards educating kids and young men about leather, about tanning, about shoes, about marketing of shoes, and such things. In the process, it would be told that if you do this well, then you will get material comforts. “If you are a good manufacturer of the shoe, young man, or a good marketer of the shoe, young man, then you will get good material comforts from the society, young man.” In other words, if you provide the society with good material comforts in the form of good shoes then the society would reciprocate by providing you too with good material comforts like money, respect, and other physical and monetary things.
Is that not how our education system proceeds? Are we not producing goods for social consumption? In fact, is that not what we consider a great virtue in a college, or a university? The products of this university find good positions in industry, and we say, “Wow!”. The products of this university find good positions with government, and we say, “Wow!”. We fawn and grovel at placement figures, don’t we? What exactly is this thing called ‘placement’? “Absorption of the individual into the social-economic order,” is that not what placement is? And we take that as a great virtue. If that is happening, then we say that the education system is – practical.
Where is ‘Liberation’ in all this?
Where is ‘Truth’?
You are being educated to become something; you are not being educated to un-become what you erroneously have become.
Full article link: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles/why-doesnt-the-current-education-system-create-a-vivekananda-1_c1e9b7d
