Are you cheating the system, or are your parents cheating you?
I’ve grown up with a very multi-farious education, being shipped from place to place. From my first grade till graduation, I spent an equal amount of time in four schools across two nations of not just differing standards but also completely varying social stratification. My first school was Habib Public School (only reason I was there was because of Ammi’s brothers), where I got my first taste of the Shiite-Sunni schism – where children as young as six years old were more worried about what caste I was than who I was. I didn’t care.
Before I reached class three, my brother was shipped off to St. Pauls and obviously I had to follow. I went from a highly fragmented and disjointed school to a much more organized and formalized one. This was where I first realized that being a Muslim meant that I was in the majority and that it was uncool to talk to Catholics. So naturally the first thing I did was befriend a catholic. My only friend was a catholic.
By the time my primary schooling was over, studies and education were the last things on my mind. Since they came so naturally to me, I couldn’t care less about what I was studying, or even what learning meant. I was far more interested in finding out more and more about my Catholic friend, hanging out with him and learning about his culture. I did like my singing classes which popped up from time to time without any set routine. It’s all too hazy now. Only thing I took away from my St. Paul’s experience was that my brother was some sort of Paulian hotshot (smart, popular, head boy and all that jazz) and that I was pretty much a loner who was happy in his own little world. At the same time, there was that inherent passion for music.
Immediately after primary school came the first realization that there is such a thing as studies and they actually mean something. I was taken out of Paul’s and put in Pat’s. But I didn’t care then. I went through the motions like I was meant to. At least however, by the end of my 6th year, I had friends and a decent social and scholastic life. But then I was in for one of the biggest shocks of my life. My mother brought home some stupid dingbat who could barely speak to tutor me in a couple subjects because I was not doing as well as she thought I should be. But I thought I was doing fine. And I always got my way, so I underperformed on purpose (sorry mom) so that I could get rid of the stupid dingbat who thought he could teach me. Instinctively I knew that getting tutored was wrong. The very same parents who had preached the sanctity of education within a school were now bowing down to the pressures of society simply because it seemed like I wasn’t a super-intelligent inhumanly talented kid. Wait I did have a strong talent for music and my parents did everything in their power to support it. However, knowing that music could not be a career choice, I continued to drag on with my education, instead of adequately pursuing my creative talent.
Well, as soon as I got rid of the stupid dingbat, I decided to show my mom my smarts and actually studied for once. I told everyone in my class that, don’t worry I’m coming first the next time. I got laughed at and ridiculed. But shut everyone up when I actually did.
That was the last time my mother bothered with my studies, or worried about them. And that was when my talent and interest in music peaked. But a slight hesitancy on my part stemmed out of years of confusions over the true prospects of a career in music led me to keep it aside as merely a hobby.
Private tuition is one of the worst things parents do to their children. I have always believed it and my mind cannot be changed. Additional help is great but only when required in extreme cases of obvious psychological impairments. However, there is no substitution for the right choices in the early years of childhood. There is no substitute for good parenting. And some would argue that assigning tutors and spending thousands of extra rupees on private tuition is part of good parenting. However, I beg to differ. It’s a fairly modern sociological phenomena which does nothing but create a circle of failures.
First, private tuition is negative re-enforcement for a child that they are not academically gifted enough to achieve success on their own. In some extreme cases, children forget that they have their own learning capabilities and can learn without being spoon-fed. The concept of self-achievement dies the moment the child becomes dependent on someone else for good grades. Second, it gives a nod of approval to a failing school system where teachers become part of the vicious cycle themselves. Since they already know that the children they are supposed to be teaching are getting tuitions, they no longer have to strive to fulfill their end of the bargain. This leads to the schooling system becoming farcical and superficial as we have parents who, by virtue of buying good grades for their children through private tuition, are also giving teachers adequate freedom to under-perform.
The primary goal of education, it seems, at least as far the middle class and upper class is concerned, is no longer one of learning but of pushing children to become assimilated in the highly competitive workforce (as discussed in my last article). Instead of education remaining an independent superstructure capable of instilling human minds with ideas, it has become a significant and highly controlled sub-structure of the all encompassing capitalist economic system. Instead of creating children capable of free thought and critical thinking about the social structures of the world, we have masses of skill-less, talentless drones designed to fit into missing clogs of the immortal corporate superstructure.
Since the goal of any parent is no longer to nurture and nourish their children’s latent talents, but to convert them into mechanical pieces of the corporate machine, they take the easy way out. They allow the sub-standard education system to thrive and succeed by giving their children the tools they need to succeed at the schooling level – without needing to instill the value of creativity. Art (includes all forms), social science, philosophy and literature – subjects that require creativity and critical thinking – are nearly dead, or dying as a direct result of the parento-corporate agenda. Parents, armed with the knowledge that Art, social science and literature result in poor pay (because the corporation keeps it that way), prepare children to become part of the corporate set up where they can maximize their gain. Hence, any child that exhibits creative talent is encouraged to maintain that as a hobby rather than convert it into source of primary income.
It may have been a fad of the past to condemn the corporation for the bastardization of child-nurture, but in this case, some of the blame has to lie with the parents who have been thoroughly convinced into accepting the corporate dream and work day and night on their children to prepare them for a life of corporate slavery. Now don’t think that just because corporate life is a form of slavery that it leads to unhappiness and discontent. Those who have made this corporate dream a life long aspiration, are very happy because that is the only life they know. Since it was instilled into them since childhood that happiness stems from materialism, they grow up unaware of the existence of other possibilities.
As children, we are fervently taught that “You don’t have to enjoy your work, you just have to do it.” and “What, do you think that I enjoyed my work?” and “Work is not supposed to be fun.” Name a parent who has not said that to their child at least once and I will re-tract all my statements. We grow up with these messages because that’s what the corporate superstructure wants us to believe. And parents who teach their children to stop anticipating a future of happy work and family life make the biggest mistake of humankind. Because eventually, these children will become parents themselves and they will continue to mindlessly preach what they have learnt till eventually a time will come when we will be born incapable of creativity and critical thought.
