RIGHT TO EDUCATION

Education cannot be limited to the classrooms. It has to go beyond the doors of universities and step out into the real world to meet the real people out there.

In a developing nation that we are and moving on to the developed stage the only bridge of connection could be education. The right to education act today is a specific move to do just the same.

For a nation however where many sleep hungry it is not easy to implement this act. India has to first get rid of its poverty. India has to work hard to make its very rich a little less rich and its very poor a little less poor. This however cannot be done by robbing the rich of their wealth and packing it up in the empty bags of the poor. Here the role of education comes to rescue.  People have to be trained to collect what they need and not more and also to learn to work hard to collect their needs.

Also our country is deeply covered in the blankets of casteism and classism where there is an unnecessary worth given to a high class or a high caste person robbing the dignity of an individual who belongs to a lower class or caste. Education will help eradicate such nonsense beliefs.

Education broadens the vision of an individual. After all each of us will have to depart from this journey of life. When our time of departure will come will not have a bother about a seat or a reservation. Our flight beyond will be confirmed and certainly on the ordained time.  Our luggage won’t be our priced possessions which we probably would have collected with all the wealth accumulated with or without education. But our priced possession which will certainly form our luggage will be our good deeds. W e won’t even have to bother about a passport for our humanity will be it. Our love will be our visa. The more we will have learnt to love all on the journey of life the more our stay will be guaranteed. And our quality education will give us the business class journey which will give a great comfort to our soul.

However  how will the education in our schools or colleges give us the right direction to move on? Our system has made us into rats running the rat race to win not realizing  that even if we successfully win the race we will be winning rats. But I do not want to be a prized  rat. I want to move above the competitive instinct the education in my nation imparts to me. I want to move on beyond  competition to contribution and transform my life from being a celebration.

The right to education will teach us, every individual to celebrate  the light of knowledge which will prevent us to grovel in the darkness of bribes . intruthfullness, bitterness, pride, ego, unlawfulness, and many other such imperfect fullnesses which will rob us of our human worth and make us empty within.

Education will help us create  our destinies. Education will guide each one of us to act, speak and think in a dignified manner. A manner worthy of humans. Education will bind us into a thick and a strong team of people who will understand that beyond being hindus, muslims, Christians, parsees, jews, Sikhs, we all are humans. It will help us to understand that when one man dies, his marks of blood will dirty the clothing of all of us. It will make us intelligent out of the idiots that we are where we will realize that in war there are no winners but only losers. When one team loses more than the other  it cannot be rightly called a winner overlooking its loss. Only an idiot will do that. They say that ‘history repeats itself’ and we have been learning history  since ages. Then why are there no end to wars?  Was not world war I and II enough to teach the people that wars only bring suffering . more to some and less to some? If this basic fact cannot be understood by the educated people then there is need for a change in our education.

The right to education therefore I believe should be not just  to enroll the masses in basic primary, secondary and higher secondary education but to broaden their vision with the right education. To bring in an example I would like to share a story where a student studying religion, married and with a child had to find a part time job to survive. He found this job in a bar as a bartender and was worried that if the dean of his education institution were to learn about this he would be disqualified. Anyways he had no option but to go ahead with the job or else he would not even have the fees to  pay for his tuitions. Sooner or later the information he had tried to hide he knew would reach the ears of his dean. Rather than live in tension he decided to one day go himself and reveal the matter to the dean. When he gathered enough courage to do the same he was surprised at the reaction of the dean. The dean looked at him intently and said congratulations.  This came as a sudden surprise to the student who had never expected such. The dean however told him that he would get first hand learning experience at the bar as only suffering souls would be a large number of its customers. As a student of religious philosophy he would have ample opportunity to practice his lessons in practical at the bar to transform all those suffering souls. However the deal advised him three things, namely, have a broader vision, don’t be judgemental and be a part of the change. The day we will have such teachers , all the students of our nation will form a mass of revolution which will make a difference not only to our country but to the world at large. Such a mass revolution will have revolutionary ideas which will come back to us by paying attention to the great words of great masters whom we have neglected in the syllabus of our modern times. When we will begin to focus on the great forgotten or neglected wisdom of those seers, we will learn that though ‘in every religion there is love, yet love has no religion!’ Rumi

The right to education where our government wants every citizen to be educated is of course an excellent idea but what I feel is that our government must pay more attention to the right education, since the education that we have got till now has not prevented us from blowing up our neighbours.

The government must very attentively focus on educating its children who must be urgently taught to prevent wars and not instead be killed for some idea taught to them as life is a holy gift which must be nurtured and not be blown up. Its high time our society get the right to share love instead of hate, antagonism, envy and destruction.

Feelings of love must be so strong in every educated man to stand up against any injustice not only in his land but also in any part of his world as he today is taught that he is a global citizen.

As we sit here today writing this essay how many of us are thinking about the innocent being butchered in Syria? Why even go as far as Syria, how many of us know about Dardpora – a small village in Kashmir where its male population has gone extinct due to the strife of two countries?  How many of us educated people would want to bring home those suffering ,lonely,and  scared women into our homes. What is the use of our education if we can read about the sad happening s in the world but do nothing about it in our own small way?  The right to education must be therefore urgently changed to the right education. An sms on my mobile  reflects my educated level when I  read a joke which says that when the father of our nation was present he saved the innocents with the knowledge of law but now that he is no more how will we succeed in saving our innocents. And  a statement further states that we will do so with his picture on our currency notes. As I read this. If a smile comes on my lips I need to reflect on my education . again I say its not the right to education but the need to be rightly educated.

A great English poet has said that a country is not known by its architecture made by its educated men or its great palaces built by its experts  but by men of values and morals  then even if the country has a few ragged houses, it will still be a great country. Our country today has great rising sky scrappers but can we say the same for our ground floor value system?

These are some of the questions I think the right to education needs to inquire into. To inquire rightly will itself be a good beginning of moving towards real intelligence beyond the borrowed one from the books. The right education will help us to move beyond ordinary convictions, opinions, assertions and denials. Simplicity will then become the crown of education.

The wise man knows himself to be a fool but the fool doth know himself to be wise ‘ was said centuries ago by William Shakespeare but the truth of those words have stood the test of time. The moment we say ‘we know’ we are on the path of ignorance but when we say ‘we do not know’ and display our ignorance , it is the beginning of wisdom as ‘the first step towards wisdom is the acceptance of ignorance.

The wise men of our government have come up time and again with innovative ideas to rightly inculcate education in the lives of the poor who are their responsibility by putting them into door step schools or forcing them into the international schools but have they furnished the international level rich to be humbled enough with the right education to open their class doors to the lower classes? Have they thought of the embarrassment and the neglect the poor will feel in such situations?  Before inculcating the right education won’t it be a folly on the part of governance to introduce such right to education?

To sum it I would like to say that it is only in the simplicity of our knowledge will we understand and learn that to learn is not to accumulate knowledge, things or relationships. We all certainly have the right to education for such right education.