“School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is,” said Ivan Illich in his book, Deschooling Society . He went on to accuse the teaching-learning system of confusing “process and substance”. “Once these [process and substance] become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results… The pupil is thereby ‘schooled’ to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is ‘schooled’ to accept service in place of value.” Half a century after Illich wrote those words, the academic situation has only worsened. It is producing robots with specialised expertise but without certain desirable values. This has happened largely because we live in a global system that has given undue importance to wealth and wealth creation. Wealth is the ultimate determiner of success in the globalised world.
Cerebrate and Celebrate