Disenchanted, Disengaged, Deprived & Dropped out?

Why are we feeling lost and unhappy in our professional and personal lives ?

A Systematic approach to batch manufacturing

Historically speaking, we had a robust and well developed education system. which was very practical and efficient.

There were two major parts of this system. First part was the “Brahmacharya Ashram” i.e. Student Life stage. Wherein a student used to live with his Guru (Teacher) and acquire knowledge of Science, Philosophy, Scriptures, Logic, Practicing self-discipline, working to earn money so that he can pay his teacher “Dakshina” i.e. a offering which is given out of one’s capability and willingness. That means, a student used to learn various life skills from his Guru. He used to earn his livelihood by offering these life skills as a service to other people. Once these offering (Dakshina) were accepted by the Guru, student could enter into second stage of life, which was about starting and raising a family.

The second major part of imparting life skill education was about parents or senior members of the joint family and their children and junior family members. In those days a typical self-sufficient village or city, used to have professionals who used to supply different types of products and services. These professionals used to acquire technology and knowledge from the senior members of the family and parents. In this way, knowledge and technology of the trade used to pass from one generation to another. These were typical family businesses which used to flourish under one roof under the expert supervision of the senior family member. This was a typical Agricultural Model of Education wherein, parents and senior members of the family or Guru, used to sow the seed of life skill and profession in the mind of a young student and used to let it grow and flourish at its own pace and comfort. Guru or parents used to coach, mentor this process of continuous education.

The basic process of learning was based on observations, vivid imagination, visualization, thinking about multiple possibilities and opportunities behind every thought or action or circumstance. The basic function of the brain was to analyze the situation when our ancient ancestors the hunter gatherers were wandering in the open spaces full of dangers like animals & natural calamities etc searching for food. They had to choose their behaviors from the three available options to them: First was to freeze and do nothing, second option was Flight i.e. to run away from the danger and third option was Fight i.e. fight it out with the danger present in front of you and survive.

The basic fundamental working of brain is still based on the same principles. We are no longer facing dangers in the open while searching for food. We are no longer facing life and death situations daily because of animal attacks or natural calamities. In our modern working and living environments, we are comparatively very safe. But the brain still functions in the same manner. For every action or thought, our brain applies the same logic of deciding if the action or thought is a potential danger or not. If it perceives the situation to be dangerous, it makes us select one of the three options of Freeze, Flight or Fight and take necessary actions immediately. Our education needs to teach us to take a well thought out and informed decision under such circumstances. This decision making obviously needs brain to process more data, analyze more options available and take proper action after thinking about all the possible outcomes and consequences.

This level of sophisticated decision making cannot be achieved without using our creative thinking capacity, critical problem solving skills and innovative ideas. For these advanced skills to kick in action, we’ll have to train our minds to defer decisions of Freeze, Flight or Fight till we reach to a well informed decisions. This training of mind is the most important missing part of the education system. We are being made to memorize the answers and regurgitate them in the answer sheets to achieve good marks/grades. This method of education is disturbing and destroying our learning process and capacity.

With the invasions by the outsiders, this self-sufficient system of education was destroyed sometimes by accidents or inevitable societal changes but mostly intentionally. These acts were perpetrated in order to destroy the self-reliance of the common populace and to make them loose their pride in their art/profession making them embrace new lines of work. Very highly technical and accomplished professional knowledge and technologies were thus lost in the process of mismanaged transfer from one generation to another due to these gaps and lack of documentation. Once self-reliance was destroyed, self-esteem was a natural victim resulting into accepting superiority of the knowledge and technology of the invaders. In the process, we had lost our education system which was a critical part of our ancient culture and history. Most of the nations in the world were having a very primitive or no education system during this period.

At the same time, western countries were making rapid progress in Industrial manufacturing. In the late 18^th century, Britain was leading the Industrial revolution based on technical breakthroughs achieved in Steam powered engines and Mechanical production equipment. This industrial revolution initiated the automation of jobs on a very large scale. The Industries started looking for employees who could perform the batch production tasks repeatedly without asking innovative, curious or creative questions. The objective was to have literate employees who could follow the instructions given without getting into reasons behind the instructions. This sudden requirement of labor pushed governments and industry think tanks to create New Education factories which could churn a large number of potential employees. These employees were required to learn a certain skill once in their lifetime and were expected to perform their job for the rest of the life using the same skillset. Minor upgrades and revisions in these skillsets, if necessary were required. But the idea was to learn a skill and keep on using the same skill to fulfil prescribed tasks in the company without any possibility or the need of learning a new skill.

As per the industrial demand and government directives, schools and colleges were established with a certain set syllabi wherein this new batch manufacturing of skilled labors started on industrial and global scale. With the advent of the First industrial revolution with Britain at the forefront and their rule over vast areas of the world, Industrial batch manufacturing school education system spread like a wildfire across all of these places and countries. Almost all the countries under British rule immediately adopted the new system of modern education. As expected, almost everybody got the job after getting educated in this system in those days. This setup has been working very effectively for almost two centuries now.

There are no major changes to this Industrial Grade Batch manufacturing education systems, except revision of the syllabus and new methods of teaching students. The basic objective of the education system still remains the same. It is to manufacture batches of intelligent, professional employees with excellent domain knowledge with very limited or completely stifled Creativity, Innovation skills and thought processes.

Even after the 1970-1980 industrial revolution of Electronics & IT Automated production, the education systems are still running the very efficient batch manufacturing of employees with specific domain knowledge. They are not very active on promoting basic life skills or creativity or innovation.

This education system is like a fast food chain. All the products available on the menu can be served very quickly since all the processes required in manufacturing these fast food items are standardized to avoid any deviation or non-conformity from the set standards. Most of the time, fast food items are readily available and almost every time they do not have any nutrition for our mind and body. On the other hand, very few education systems are like Specialty restaurants or Michelin Star restaurants, wherein Creativity and Innovation are the most awarded features.

Unfortunately, this education system based on standardized assembly lines principle, measures the performance of all the students in the system against a fixed set of standardized question sets. Any deviations from the standard answers are not given any marks and hence the students who memorize and regurgitate the answers to these questions pass with flying colors. On the other hand, a student with his own view on the question comes with an answer which does not conform with the set answers, hence this creative and curious student is not given any marks and fails the exam. Failure in this exam amounts to no chances of getting a job on the automatic assembly line.

This is exactly why most of us even after getting good education are not happy with our jobs or professions. These jobs or professions were not selected by us but were the direct result of our training and education. We are loosing our interest in doing these jobs because they are not helping us with the intellectual or emotional stimulus that all of crave for genetically. Once we start loosing interest in the work we are doing, our efficiency starts getting affected, we are no longer at our optimum level of capacity. We start thinking about other options which might help us enjoy our work while helping us earn our livelihood. Most of us have the luxury of feeling disenchanted or disengaged with the work, but there is a section of society who does not have a chance to get formal education and hence are deprived and dropped out of the modern education system.

Categories: : Non-Fiction