Education should teach to think
In 1999, in a brief week of learning Bengali before going to Haluaghat to teach English (for I had only come for a year, hadn't I?) I checked the Bengali for expressions I needed, like “Think for yourself!†but, when I used it, in front of Class 7, their blank expressions told me this was a concept unknown to them. This need for THINKING was echoed in William Westgate's article concerning English-medium education - and also, indirectly, in Md Nurul Huda's article on 'Towards an apathetic electorate' in which he feared that the state was 'dwarfing its citizens to make them docile instruments' - the very opposite of what education should do! Oxford's motto - 'Dominus illuminatio mea' - 'The Lord is my light' - indicates that education should be a light turned on in the mind and heart, an Arab's (and everyone else's) spring, the realisation that 'I am worth it' - and can have an opinion worth expressing - thoughtfully and fearlessly. We see signs of this happening everywhere, in the teeth of the pressures for it not to happen. The disadvantaged - including women - refusing to feel powerless; people asking, “Why?†“Why not?†and “I do not agree†and “I love you BUT…†- and people working for less than they deserve, because they have a calling to do something important. It is the very spirit of hope and liberation…Of course, the uncontrolled idiots, the pathetically greedy and the brain-washed are all around - along with victims who, even if the light has come on for them also, await their liberation.
Education should involve learning how to think, inspiration to give the little we can - and the recommendation to offer it up to be blessed by God and so be increased a hundredfold.
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