The world is one of juxtaposition, of contrast, more often than not erroneously dealing in absolutes. Black and white, Yin and Yang, so on and so forth. Skyscrapers soar above, piercing into the clouds of human imagination, at the same time staring down on the tin sheets of poverty and illiteracy. We live our lives polarized, sifting through the negative and the positive, aligning ourselves with whatever gives us the bias of superiority. I possess no right to stand on the moral high ground and make judgements about the way we lead our journeys, yet I write what I write, to question how we reach the start of this voyage called life, called adulthood.
What does it mean to be educated? What is this word, paraded around circles in the context of competence and skill? We’re told from a tender age that education is the path to success and opportunistic glory (in a capitalistic world at least), and that receiving education of the ‘highest quality’ should have paramount importance in one’s life. I would be remiss to not point out that the system is inherently, for lack of a better word, rigged, against the ones without privilege. We begin to notice a gradient in the knowledge and ideas imparted, as the numbers in the bank fluctuate. This gradient is one of indoctrination. The structures that hold society in place become more and more rigid as we descend down the rungs of the social classes, with indoctrination being the only form of a ‘right’ education. Preaching hard work, obedience and lack of ambition are all cornerstones of the modern education for the destitute. Falsities are sold in the form of mediocre comfort, with the idea that the world isn’t big enough for every single dream being the root of the problem. But alas, humans are strange creatures. We believe whatever we are conditioned to believe.
So, where is the dichotomy you say? If you’re reading this, chances are you are already part of it. Accessibility to similar articles would mean free access to the new age ideas of true liberty, fourth wave feminism or socialist democracies. It would translate to a privileged perspective of thinking, which already puts us, the average ‘enlightened’ and educated individual at a stark and contrasting advantage to the under privileged. For us, the right to education act made no difference, for we had our futures planned till the sun dawned upon our silver curls. The very idea of not completing school was unfathomable. This luxury translates to a higher and more progressive outlook while our education was being imparted, whereas the very compulsion to study acted as an incentive to make cost free schooling an efficient way to ‘empower’ the impoverished youth to take up similar menial jobs requiring basic reading and writing skills. Not to demean any task or work, considering every job is a contribution to the functioning of every cog of the country, but a waste of talent is detrimental to further national innovation, and forms an endless loop of fringe capitalism, where the rich get richer by crippling the social mobility of the poor.
Cultures and traditions define a nation or a people. But rigidity in these customs leads to segregation, discrimination and formations of class structures. While elimination of a class structure in a capitalist democracy is virtually impossible, bridging the gap between those in power and the disenfranchised should be of utmost importance. This little piece of literature could have stressed on multiple sensitive issues such as race conflicts, complex caste systems or rigid and barbaric traditions, yet I chose to elaborate on education as a tool. Mostly because education is simply passing down knowledge forward to the next generation. Bringing sensitive social issues in its fray corrupts the basic concept of knowledge and its proverbial power. It can be used to break down social barriers, but when you structure the very essence of knowledge into a stiff and unyielding ladder, created purely to marginalize, you create an irreversible ripple through the generations, hard to defeat.