In defence of formal education

It has become a fad nowadays to denounce formal education. If not denounce, a lot of us think the process is futile, and that the knowledge gathered there would be of no use in the future in most of the professions we go into. This idea was triggered more by Rashmi's posts trying to answer her daughter's questions about why she needs to go to school. (Read the second part here) Make no mistake, I agree with a lot of her points of view. But the point that I don't agree with is that you have learned most of what you will need to know (the three R's and basic math and social science) and should be done with formal education from then on. I've heard similar views from other people over cups of tea, when they cut jokes like "Why the hell do I need to know what wars Akbar fought?" or "Why should I care what type of ocean drift goes past Russia?". This post actually is a response to such questions.

The idea is not to assimilate facts, but to discover facts out of interest. Ask a teenager about the statistics of random stars from 20-20 cricket, and you will get the exact scores he made in the world cup per match, and even a detailed analysis of the way he was dismissed in the inning. When I was a kid, my parents and others used to scold me because of this: "You remember everything about a cricket match. Why can't you put the same devotion to studies?". The answer, I now believe, was that the content wasn't made as interesting. The onus isn't upon the child to apply interest into things. The onus is upon the adults to create content that is interesting enough so that children may follow them with the same zeal they devote to a cricket match. That is why programs on Discovery such as "How its made" is much more informative and interesting to a kid than the details in the textbook preached in a classroom. You see, the content in the textbooks isn't at fault. It is the way they are presented to a child that makes or breaks the education. The goal of a teacher should be to pique the interest of the child enough to make him/her read the book out of interest. It definitely should not be to test and find out which child can memorize the facts the best. This way, a test will actually be fun to take rather than a mechanism invented to torture a student.

Let me give you an example here. We were at my grandparents' place and my brother was complaining to my grandfather that history was so boring: it was meaningless to know what happened when Babar attacked from the North-West. While I sat beside the two of them, my grandfather just described one battle, with all the factors leading to it and the consequences to my brother in about a couple of hours. That night, my brother did not leave his side until late at night. When he went home, he read the textbook chapter he had with ferocious interest, and aced the test that was presented after the summer vacation on the topic.

I cannot do justice to the depth of knowledge and philosophy that my grandfather has. Not in one post, not in maybe a thousand. But the point here is, the topic in itself wasn't useless. It was the way it was being taught that was at fault. While the best of teachers may not be available everywhere, what do you as a parent do? Instead of asking a child why he can rattle off cricket match statistics and not number multiple tables, you should ask the question to yourself.

How can one leave behind history or the science books? Every chapter in a history book is a thousand years of wisdom summarized, every chemical reaction in a book is the life's work of a brilliant mind. Why don't we re-invent the wheel from scratch? Because someone already did that, and there is no need to do it. But you will want to learn better ways of making a wheel only when you try making one yourself. Necessity will be the mother of invention as well as discovery for all time to come. It is the necessity that you need to create in a child's mind to make him learn things. Imagine if you were interested in chemistry. Very deeply interested: you wondered why the phenol you bought to get rid of snakes stings your skin or why people put lime-and-turmeric on a sprained ankle. Then, you started mixing turmeric with random stuff to find out what happened. It will be aimless, and most probably futile. But then you pick up a book on chemistry and happen to read the reactions governing them -- what is in turmeric, and why does it change color in lime. It is only now that you will truly appreciate what is written in that book. How every scientist and alchemist of the past toiled through endless hours to isolate a single chemical. How the periodic table happened, how the protons happened. You see, what is in front of a child in a single page is the wisdom of a hundred sages condensed into something for you. As an adult, it is up to you to make the child interested in it. Most importantly, formal education provides you the terms to articulate your thoughts and ideas. To discover that there is a term for an abstract idea that you have been mulling over, and that the term conveys what you mean exactly to other people -- this is a joy in itself.

Finally, about the utility of knowing all this stuff. To make a proper choice, you must know the horizon first. If you limit yourself to the first opportunity that came along, you will never know what treasures lay beyond the chamber you've just stepped into. The passion for a topic comes from within, I agree. But the motivation must come from without. You must demonstrate to an evolving brain what challenges exist there out in the world, and how as civilization has progressed, so has his formal education over the years. The classes, the tests, the common content till Class X, then the specialized classrooms till XII -- there is a reason why they were created. The method may be flawed, but the content is still worth a thousand gems. As an adult, it is up to you to show the children the sparkle. Else, the gems remain just another pebble by the roadside.