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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. magiceyeFebruary 7, 2023 at 8:08 AM

    Sad state of affairs.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathFebruary 7, 2023 at 11:45 AM

    Sad, but true...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yamini MacLeanFebruary 7, 2023 at 4:19 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 7, 2023 at 8:20 PM

      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
  4. AnonymousFebruary 7, 2023 at 9:31 PM

    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. Tomichan MatheikalFebruary 8, 2023 at 6:19 AM

      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

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