Education?

Imagine yourself in a place that’s unknown to you, say, a jungle you’ve never been inside. Take it like you were blindfolded and put in the middle of a jungle. When you remove the blindfold, you find you have no idea of the way out. It’s not dangerous, just that getting out isn’t very easy. Now two scenarios happen.

One, you find someone, a ‘jungle veteran’ who knows the place inside out. She/he tells you the way out, or even walks you to the edge of the forest and shows you the direction to the nearest village.

Two, you are alone, so you start exploring. After some days, getting lost on some days, discovering a beautiful creek on another, you finally reach the end of the forest. You have some bruises, you got some memories.

Think of it, in which scenario will you come out wiser. Even keeping aside wisdom gained, which one would you prefer?

Once my friend, seeing me trying to solve a Rubik’s cube to some extent, asked me what is the procedure to get all the elements of one colour on one face (for at least one colour). I gave him the cube and said ‘just try’. After some time, and moments before he would lose his temper over my unconcern and thrash me to telling the procedure, my friend got it right. He explored his way to knowing the procedure, and in the process learned other tricks that were useful in the 3x3x3 puzzle. Had I told him the process, he would not have explored into knowing the other moves. He said this and thanked me for not helping.

Once it was considered that atom could not be divided further. The word atom itself came from the root ‘atma’ (the Sanskrit one, as in mahatma and that ghost ‘atma’), meaning indestructible. So once it was declared and announced that it was indivisible, people moved on to finding other properties of atom. No one gave another thought over the division of atom, as it was made like a thumb rule that it is not possible. Like we now have one that nothing can exceed the speed of light.

It was only when some people came along who gave a thumbs down to the thumb rule, that proton, neutron and electrons were discovered, disrupting every research that had been done on atomic properties and behaviour to the extent of rewriting them. Next wave came with quantum theory, and later with the discovery of quarks.

Why would it take decades to find out that atom can be divided. It was not technological incapability that hindered discovery of sub-atomic particles, it was a theoretical hurdle. If you teach a child from the days of school that atom cannot be divided, she/he wouldn't give a thought on dividing it. It would take a fool to think that all of the world’s scientists are saying wrong, and she/he is right. And such fools are rare. Thus the delay in the discovery of nucleus, quarks.

Why it is that a book gives more vividness and life to a story than an adaptation by even the best directors into a movie? When you read a book, your brain imagines and creates scenes and scenarios. While in a movie, it is pre-created for you. You don’t have to apply your imagination. Making a visual of the imagined scene by the director itself limits and kills the creativity and imagination of the scene. It restricts the thought process to the scenes we see. In that context, even paraphrasing some idea by writing makes it less imaginative and creative. Just by reading this, you are limiting your thoughts now to what is written. If I were to somehow infuse this idea directly to your mind, you could have imagined it and get a better sense out of it. It may seem like a mad concept, but just by expressing something, we limit our ability to express the idea.

Now connecting all the points I've put forth above in a horribly unstructured way. If you show someone a way, give him a direction of thought, or put your thoughts, you can significantly reduce the capability of the person to think the other way. And that is what education is doing, though it was meant to be otherwise.