Did we realize that it was the ultimate trap of the education system we went through?

There are some schools, which have taken bold steps to challenge the status quo of the current education system. The Krishnamurti schools, the Waldorf schools, the few “alternative” schools in different parts of the country. In their own ways, they have addressed the problem of conditioning the child. They have attempted to provide an environment where the children can explore themselves from within in the truest sense. They have tried to make the children sensitive to their own selves, their fears, their desires, their tendencies, their potential and their emotions. They have also attempted to sensitize them to the world around them, the people, the insects, the dogs, the plants and the rivers, and explore their relationship with them. The attempts have been great in teaching academics better as well. In the sense that the delivery of academics has been more relevant, more meaningful and joyful.

With all this being done, there is one final trap, final but the most powerful weapon of the current education system that even the best of schools have not yet disabled - the examination system. The board exams and the entrance exams in their current form. The real core of the nuclear bomb called the education system.

It’s a miracle if even one child escaped the tranquillizing trap of appearing for one of these examinations. Even the best of the schools end up getting affiliated to one of these boards.

In essence, these extraordinary schools have nurtured the bird to realize that it is an eagle, that it can fly great heights, that it has exceptional eyesight to spot prey from huge distances, that it can control can flight in the most beautiful ways. Then just as the eagle is going to mature, we make it prepare for the 100-meter running race.

If we want to build a beautiful world, it begins of course by exploring an authentic, radically different way of approaching education. And that is possible only by challenging the very core, the very power centre of the current education system. The examination system of today. It needs to be dismantled, uprooted, deweeded at the deepest levels possible.

An alternative needs to be found. And every other solution that is built for the new way of education, needs to be so with complete disregard to the current boards/examinations.