Musings on the whole education debate…

The biggest role of formal education today is to get a job.
If you really want to change the world, then it’s totally irrelevant.

You have educated idiots.
You have uneducated idiots.
You have educated greats.
You have uneducated greats.
Focus on the individual not his/her education.

Would Mani say…
How can a poorly educated person (Maken) comment on an even more poorly educated person (Smriti)?
#ChaiwallahKaSequel

Congress to BJP…
Hamaare 12th class pass hamaare hai, pyaare hai,
Tumhaare 12th class pass zindagi se hare hai.
#SmritiIrani

You need education to be a doctor, engineer, lawyer, rocket scientist…
You don’t need education to be a successful businessman or a leader.

Simple definitions…
Illiterate: Can’t read or write.
Educated: Went to school or college.
Uneducated: Didn’t go to school.
12th Pass: Educated, just didn’t go to college.
Dictionary definition of education…
The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.
Note: This particular definition of education has absolutely nothing to do with school, college or degrees of any kind.

The Manmohan Cabinet had many Oxbridge-Harvard Ministers.
The Modi Cabinet has many who never went to college.
Let’s see who performs better.

These versions by Sunil Rajguru

A career in India

Do you want to pursue a serious career in India? You might need nearly a decade of specialized study.

In most countries, a matriculate is assured of being at least a clerk and a BA a handsome teacher’s post. In our country even a doctorate is uncertain of something of his choice.

In the good old days, schooling used to begin at the ages of 4-5 years and a person would start earning before the age of 20. Not anymore. Today schooling starts at the age of two and nobody knows when the process of education will end.

Do you want to become a lawyer? It’s three years of graduation plus three years of LLB, which is six years. The total is eight years after matriculation, and a matric was ‘really educated’ once upon the time. A doctor? It’s four years of graduation plus a year of internship plus two years of specialization, which is 7 years. A Chartered Accountant? It’s three years of graduation plus about four years of CA, which is seven years. Then hardly anyone completes their CA on time. And with those who do, it has become a fashion to collect additional allied degrees like ICWA, CS… so God knows how much time they will spend on that. Want to be a scientist in an institution or a professor in a university? It’s three years of graduation plus two years of PG plus at least three years of doctorate studies. To those eight long plus years you can safely add a year’s delay in the form of strikes and about two years to really settle down in your respective career.

Again, an engineer today isn’t satisfied with a simple BE/BTech. He’ll either go for post graduation, doctorate or for an MBA/IAS. Now a “technocrat-bureaucrat” or a “technocrat executive” sounds good, but is practically not so. He’ll only be a hard-core bureaucrat or executive. All he has done is wasted a couple of years and at the same time blocked a seat which could have gone to somebody else.

So where are we heading? Who wants to be educated anyway? All they want is a good job which is provided by either a professional degree from a reputed institute or clearing a competitive exam. Basic education ends at matriculation, so a BA or BSc has just wasted 5 years after 10th on non-professional education, nothing which will really help him with his future job.

With the current trend, in the future a baby will start some sort of schooling soon after it is born and it’ll be an achievement if he gets a good footing in his career before the age of 30.

(This appeared in a student’s publication called Cheel in Jodhpur in July 1993)