Don't teach, don't learn

But tell me how are you better than others, for example artisans like potters, blacksmiths and archers, who use their skills in applied art? What is education if not a set of skills used in the applied art of life? Take the No Child Left Behind Act in the USA. No young man or woman in America will finish the 12th grade without rigorous training that equips them for college or the technological proficiency needed to thrive in their information-based economy.

Ahem! Education gets you equipped for life, so that you can read, write, count and speak. Perhaps you would tend to disagree on speaking, because people speak anyway, with or without education. But we are talking about sensible, articulate speaking, quality sound bites, which shows clear thinking. No doubt, educated people have the gift of gab, although they may not mean what they say.

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Ask yourself what does education mean, all that hard work, classes, homework, research, and examinations, huffing and puffing, and anxieties of failing and passing. Why have you done it, going through so much hardship and sacrifice, poring over books and notes for hours after hours, the time you could spend in pursuit of leisure and pleasure?

You did it because you wanted to have education, learning skills, which would find you a job and a respectable place in the society. Was there any other reason why you did it? Perhaps to acquire knowledge, some would say. Perhaps for character formation, a fewer people would actually believe. What does it mean to have a Ph.D., or progressively lower degrees up to the other extreme?

I mean education must mean something like landholding did in the feudal days. More land was more wealth was more power. It was pretty direct, clear and reciprocal, because you could not hold power without land and you could not keep land without power. How does that work in education? How is the pen mightier than the sword?

We have many pen pushers amongst us, who can write what they are told. Now that telling happens in two ways: direct and indirect. The direct way is when the pen writes under someone's dictate like artifacts made to order. The indirect way is when that happens under someone's influence such as ideology, belief and reasoning.

In fact, the pen proved to be mustier than the sword. Education teaches you to be calculating, to understand the mathematics of life, to be cautious and careful, continuously scanning the horizon for loss and gain. It makes you a milksop, your mind fermented by inordinate ambition, making you weak in your strength, ignorant in learning. If you know how to read and write you have the skills to appreciate life and your senses can be always honed to absorb more.

Nobody believes in it like the Americans do. Close to 30 percent of high school freshmen fail to graduate. More than 25 percent of the high school graduates fail to return for their sophomore year in college. The dropout rate is twice as high in two-year institutions. More than half of the college students has serious learning problem. Surveys show that far too many newly hired employees lack the basics in reading, writing and math.

Hence, the Americans want to tweak their approach to education. So they are bringing added help -- tutoring, summer school, etc. to help those students, who might drop out of high school. They are planning to give post-graduation technical training to those who need an extra help to meet industry proficiency standards in technical fields. They are extrapolating education, fixing the means to fix the end.

Now that is an example only that people can be products of their education. In other words, what people learn has some kind of an influence on them, moulding their minds, attitudes, personalities and behaviours. What do you say? Do you feel that transformation inside you? Do you think education has got the best or the worst out of you?

Surely, education gives you proficiency that makes you more efficient. It teaches you to present yourself in a more rational manner, to sell yourself better, to sound more sophisticated, to become eloquent, erudite and elegant. How does it happen and what does it change?

Perhaps education is comparable to ironing that stretches wrinkled clothes, or landscaping that organises a scene. Perhaps education stretches the mind and organizes it better, thereby harnessing the energy, which isn't released unless intellect and emotions are in proper harmony. Is that true for you? Do you feel it?

There is a reason why these questions are relevant. Education doesn't give what it once promised, the enlightenment, the recognition, the aura, and the auspices of good life. You can still find a job if you go to school. You can read, write and count. You can fill out an application, sign a document and write a check. But how much education do you need for these? What do you do with the surplus knowledge, the excess skill, which doesn't have any practical use? The skill to write this column, for example? Knowledge of philosophy, history, archaeology, and language?

Let us face it, most of what you learn doesn't apply. But still you learn them because the idea of education is like whole milk from which none of the components has been removed. A person is supposed to go the whole hog with education, and that is why anyone with a higher degree is expected to know more. You need to see the whole picture, before you can focus on a part of it. It means education is more than proficiency, which prepares you for a job.

If you can read and write, here is my question to you. Do you see the whole picture? Do you realise that you are just a drop in the ocean, an itty-bitty cog in a giant machine? Do you realise that you are just a blip on a big screen, a dot in a sea of things? If you do, then, hell, let me ask you another question. Why are you so focused on yourself, so self-centered, worried only about your own future, career, house, family, and children?

The overriding purpose of education is to integrate individuals to society, not to segregate them in their respective silos. Embrace education and you learn to read, write, count and speak as means to an end. But in reality education is end to a means. You compete in reading, writing, counting and speaking to prove that you are better than others. It is no longer important who learns what. Education is more a showdown of who can teach whom.

As a result, when the minister steps out of an unauthorised car and the muscleman steps into a luxury one, the pen looks as good as the sword. One uses the pen, another uses the sword, and ultimately they use each other. If you are an educated person, don't teach, don't learn. Just show me how can I tell the difference between them.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.