Ya vidya sa vimuktaye

Another year, another season of results, another season of depressions, another season of suicides. It has become routine for newspapers to publish the suicide statistics after the publication of results every year. It has become another one of those accepted annual events. We don't see anything abnormal with school kids ending their lives because they failed to live upto certain set standards. The maximum reaction such events elicit is pity, a twitch. The sorrow is all that of the parents of the children, just like any other case of death.
Pity is fine.. we are a humane society!! But have we addressed the problem? Are we planning to address it at all? There seems to be no indication towards that end. Education today, is but a rat race. ' Ya vidya sa vimukatye' : True education is that which liberates. The current trend seems to have taken this up so well, it 'liberates' the kids once for all.
A victim of this rat race myself, I cannot stand the mere thought that more and more kids go through the same gruelling experience year after year. What do our educationists try to achieve with this system? What kind of education is it, that makes innocent kids suicidal, makes life worth just the marks scored, sees nothing more in the individual that the student is, brings depression down to lower and lower age levels and succeeds in just making the kids hate and fear their subjects?
So, do I have the perfect solution? Well, I don't. But there are a lot of individual efforts that try to break the trend and come up with something better. Unfortunately, such efforts dont become popular. They remain restricted to either the elite or the downtrodden; in the former, it is because they can afford it, later because those kids would get into just any school that would take them in. Though such efforts should be appreciated for the mere attempt, it is important that they reach a greater section of the population. There should be a voluntary support for such efforts from the society.
One of my earlier posts was on such a school, Centre for Learning (see post: 'Learning Redefined'). But sadly, this school and a lot more of the kind do not have sufficient funds to take it to more people. As a rule, this school doesn't collect any fee from the poor students. I only hope that such schools become recognized for their good efforts and they get adequate resources to carry forward their services.

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