Technology, Money & Questions

I just can't imagine I was once a kid with unwavering doubts and questions almost about everything. I'm pretty much sure that you were also a child with curiosity and eagerness towards every simple thing life threw at you. Why wouldn't you be? Our thoughts were pure, our ideologies were not skewed, we had a really broad acceptance range; mainly we all had a burning curiosity that is not judgmental and we're not afraid of being wrong.

I've always marveled this peculiar characteristics of children, the ability to come up with an answer never worrying about the relevancy towards the context. Indeed excellent. Though we surely know the child wouldn't know the answer for a question, we still ask. Just to marvel the beauty of the child's handy work.

It is the annual day celebration of Sophie play school. Three kids, dressed up like fruits, slowly ascended the stage with a timid look on their tiny fish eyes. The first kid wore a bright yellow banana dress, the dark red apple dress made the second kid ravishingly beautiful and the third one had a plump orange dress. Too afraid of the crowd, they tried to stand as close as possible in vain because of their larger than life fruit costume. All they have to do is to speak two lines about the fruit they depict. Mr. Banana is slated to start first and the bell rang, yes that's the cue.

Mr. Banana took a step forward, looked at the crowd, smiled and happily said, "I'm banana. I'm very yellow and I'll make you a strong fellow."

Next it is Mr. Apple's turn. Panic struck him as soon as he saw the crowd. For his surprise, he felt good after a couple of hard minutes. He let out an audible sigh and said, "I'm Orange. I'm round like a ball and I'm good for all." Everybody laughed and clapped, which made Mr. Apple very happy without realizing his mistake.

Of course, Mr. Orange is in the line of fire now. Mr. Orange could not fathom what to do next, it's his turn and his friend spoke his dialogue. Poor boy. He moved forward, saw the crowd and loudly said, "I'm Apple, but orange in color." and looked at Mr.Apple, "I do not remember his dialogue." The hall was deafeningly silent and later everyone broke into an hilarious laughter after grasping what Mr. Orange had said.

This is what a child can do, face the situation without any fear of being wrong. As we grow up, we lose this ability because of our education system. Our education system teaches us how to be correct all the time and we get our due punishments every single we are wrong thus creating a mental block of aversion towards being wrong. We miss something terribly important, if there are no mistakes, there would be no new inventions.

All the education system around the universe advocates similar kind of preference over the subjects. Almost everywhere, Maths gets the highest priority followed by Science and then other subjects. Irrespective of the place or culture, mostly, art comes at last. Even in arts, music and instruments is preferred more than dance and drama. Why is this disparity? Is this what our current civilization wants?

All these education systems are the outcome of the Industrial age of the 19th century. The education systems prioritized its curriculum mainly based on the available demand for the knowledge. In the industrial age, Maths and engineering skills were in very high demand and hence, the importance for this stream. In the 19th century, all you need to get a job is to have a degree. If you had a degree, still you were unemployed, it just meant that you did not want the job.

We no more live in the industrial age, the requirements and demands have changed, but our education systems are not reflexive enough to grab the changes.

We are in a high state of "education inflation". With more and more people graduating year after year, college degree and the traditional subjects lost its value. Education system is designed based on the needs of the industry and the current information industries requirements are multi-fold. We need a change, a change for brighter future of the next generation.

Why don't our education system teaches dance as the way Maths is taught? Creativity and intuition are equally important now. Education system should not preempt the children, rather they should nurture their creativity and help them to take it to the next level.