Skip to main content

Education without knowledge


I watched the Malayalam movie Teacher last night. It is about a young lady teacher of physical education who is raped by a group of senior students after a sports meet. The students are the state champions and the teacher’s team manages to secure the Runners-up trophy. The teacher knows that the champions’ team consists of overaged players and that is illegal. But she does not make an issue of it. The students rape her nevertheless after drugging her. Sheer selfishness, insensitivity and lack of any morality drive the students to the deed. The movie shows how the teacher brings the boys to her kind of justice since the courts of justice of this country won’t be of any help. The movie is nothing more than a revenge story with the small difference that a young and sensitive woman throws all her might against a group of younger and more strapping men. What set me reflecting is not the revenge theme but the portrayal of the young students. Have the students become as insensitive and immoral as the movie shows? I think quite many of them have.

I have noticed an alarming lack of sensitivity and moral sense among the young students these days. Furthermore, there is a lack of intellectual interests. In fact, intellectual faculties and knowledge are mocked by them. They haven’t even heard about Shakespeare or Socrates or Picaso. Since I usually mention writers in my class, when I recently mentioned Beethoven and asked whether they had heard the name, the answer was, “Yes, a writer.”

The Chairperson of Kerala’s State Youth Commission, Chintha Jerome, has been in news for quite some time now for the hilarious blunders in her PhD thesis. This morning’s Mangalam newspaper cites the example of a Malayalam professor who approached a young poet seeking the meaning of one of his most famous poems. It turned out that the professor had never read the Malayalam classics. “They were not in the syllabus” was his explanation.

The latest issue of Mathrubhumi weekly (one of the most respected periodicals in Malayalam) has the following illustration on its last page. It speaks for itself. 


Comments

  1. Hari OM
    I am so far removed from the young and education of same now that I cannot properly share the observation. That said, I have noticed a decline in 'proper' grammatical usage by journalists and in other places where one might expect better - so this may be a reflection of the sort of decline you lament here. And there does, regrettably, appear to be a retrograde societal stance regarding proper conduct. Online influencers inciting young men (mostly but not all!) to heinous behaviours... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The situation is rather bad, Yam. Many factors have contributed to the making of it. In short, we may say that it is a general degradation - in politics, religion, social institutions...

      Delete
  2. I agree. Not only lack of morality, sensitivity, disrespect towards elders and timeless values but also a dismal focus on making money and as quickly as possible in whichever way. They do not have any interest in gaining in depth knowledge about anything. But these are also so called professionals. Don't know whether this is failure of our education system or lack of parental upbringing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Both, I think. The system(s) have degenerated terribly. Parental upbringing is part of that system. Parents are victims of the system too. How do you expect people to be moral in a system where justice is denied, truth is compromised, gods are manipulated...?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Coming-of-Age Poems

Lubna Shibu Book Review Title: Into the Wandering Multiverse Author: Lubna Shibu Publisher: Book Leaf , 2024 Pages: 23 Poetry serves as a profound medium for self-reflection. It offers a canvas where emotions, thoughts, and experiences are distilled into words. Writing poetry is a dive into the depths of one’s consciousness, exploring facets of the poet’s identity and feelings that are often left unspoken. Poets are introverts by nature, I think. Poetry is their way of encountering other people. I was reading Lubna Shibu’s debut anthology of poems while I had a substitution period in a section of grade eleven today at school. One student asked me if she could have a look at the book as I was moving around ensuring discipline while the students were engaged in their regular academic tasks. I gave her the book telling her that the author was a former student in this very classroom just a few years back. I watched the student reading a few poems with some amusement. Then I ask...

How to preach nonviolence

Like most government institutions in India, the Archaeological Survey of India [ASI] has also become a gigantic joke. The national surveyors of India’s famed antiquity go around finding all sorts of Hindu relics in Muslim mosques. Like a Shiv Ling [Lord Shiva’s penis] which may in reality be a rotting piece of a Mughal fountain. One of the recent discoveries of Modi’s national surveyors is that Sambhal in UP is the birthplace of Kalki, the tenth incarnation of God Vishnu. I haven’t understood yet whether Kalki was born in Sambhal at some time in India’s great antique history or Kalki is going to be born in Sambhal at some time in the imminent future. What I know is that Kalki is the final incarnation of Vishnu that is going to put an end to the present wicked Kali Yuga led by people like Modi Inc. Kalki will begin the next era, Satya Yuga, the Era of Truth. So he is yet to be born. But a year back, in Feb to be precise, Modi laid the foundation stone of a temple dedicated to Kalk...

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

The Triumph of Godse

Book Discussion Nathuram Godse killed Mahatma Gandhi in order to save Hindus from emasculation. Gandhi was making Hindu men effeminate, incapable of retaliation. Revenge and violence are required of brave men, according to Godse. Gandhi stripped the Hindu men of their bravery and transmuted them into “sheep and goats,” Godse wrote in an article titled ‘Non-resisting tendency accomplished easily by animals.’ Gandhi had to die in order to salvage the manliness of the Hindu men. This argument that formed the foundation of Godse’s self-defence after Gandhi’s assassination was later modified by Narendra Modi et al as: “ Hindu khatre mein hai ,” Hindus are in danger. So Godse has reincarnated now.   Godse’s hatred of non-Hindus has now become the driving force of Hindutva in India. It arose primarily because of the hurt that Godse’s love for his religious community was hurt. His Hindu sentiments were hurt, in other words. Gandhi, Godse, and the minority question is the theme of the...