Engr. S. A. Mansoor
Education leads to expanding our area of knowledge and perception about things and events around us. It should help us to develop a logical and rational thinking; encourage inculcating an inquiring and broad minded attitude and judgment in all our social and work related interactions. Education leads to enlightenment and learning to live rationally.
Thus the community makes progress and finally gets connected to the global community, despite racial, religious and other visible differences.
Does our education system encourage in developing such an open, rational and mental development? I am afraid not. Our teacher-led system is mostly a unidirectional flow of words and ideas that discourage questions and inquisitive inquiries from the students. This could be a norm only limited to primary levels of literacy and language and number recognition process. Thereafter, education has to be led through a two way traffic that exchanges thoughts and ideas and develops knowledge based on direct interactions between the teacher and the taught.
Child be encouraged to question
Our home and school life needs to be complimentary and a growing child should be encouraged to interact with others. In our society, this is more or less limited to the mother, who mostly interacts with the child. The child is discouraged to interact with fathers and other elders in the household. This needs to be changed and a two way interactions should be established by all household elders and siblings encouraging the child to sort of look, listen and learn.
Readers can try and recall his/her childhood. In this writers case, his maternal uncle, an engineer, was in effect, his popular guide on all matters like cameras, watches, pens spectacles, light bulbs and fans, to name a few. The end result was that yours truly was determined from early childhood to become an engineer and did it despite all objections from many well meaning elders who were against it. My engineer uncle gave me hands on experiences with cameras, radios and electric fans and this writer knew how an electromagnet works while no more than around ten years old.
All round development can best encourage the children by letting them become ‘boy scouts’ or ‘girl-guides’ in their school days. The ‘scout master’ or the ‘guide teacher’ facilitates individual beliefs and capabilities and creating awareness on matters related to normal living experiences including giving first aid, for example. I feel that today this interesting school level movement is dying out and not much is seen or heard about their activities.
Unfortunately, this seems to have been taken over by the present ‘political youth groups’ which has become the scheming politicians’ tools for politically related ‘civil unrest’ and other similar negative activities that has become the political norm in the country today. Young children are encouraged to throw stones, damaging cars and other vehicles to enforce political parties ‘strikes and shutdowns. School teachers even force the young students to line up along the roads to greet a visiting minister or an MP for their own benefit. This is simply criminal way of abusing the young children.
Moral and religious duty
Psychologically, physically and mentally disadvantaged children tend to remain generally aloof and more mother-centric than others. Possibly, early on, they realize their deficiency and more devastatingly in case of mental disabilities. This is a highly specialized area, and this writer has no knowledge on the matter about the whole gamut of disadvantaged children. This needs more attention by the government and the authorities concerned. To address this would require more resources, in terms of funds, human resources, and materials than what is available now. But this is not the focus of this write up.
Finally, as a Muslim, I would like to quote just three lines from the ‘Holy Quran’. In Sura ‘Iqra or Al-Alaq’ it is stated: “Iqta Bismi Rubbukallazi Khalaq” then follows “Allazi Allama Bil Qalam” and next comes “Allamal Insana malam Yalum”. Translated by me to the best of my limited knowledge in Arabic; it sates: “Read in the name of thy Lord who created”: then comes: “He who taught the use of pen”: and finally “Taught mankind that which he knew not”. For the Muslims, therefore education is not only a moral but a religious duty, enshrined in our faith. I am sure no one can dispute with the wisdom of the above lines quoted from the ‘Holy Quran’. Acquiring knowledge and education, is not only rational, but a religious duty to which we are morally bound.
The writer is an 80 year old engineer who writes on variety of social issue.
Source: Weekly Holiday
