Numerous times I have thought about this first sentence of my first blog.....I think its going to come up in the way it has to!!!

Its about a passion of mine.....'Education' ----my dreams about that and my aspirations ( see I told you before :), just the way it has to )

Well...I am making myself clear again....its not abt literacy ( just to indicate, you can easily (rather pls) ingore my spelling errors and grammatical blunders :P !!!)

Let me start with what I think about education, its purpose and its worth.

Education.....makes a person realize his worth for himself and in turn to others. That brings me to explain what does 'worth' mean. Worth, a self realization. Realization of his talents, responsibilities, his likings, his goals in life and more importantly 'love' rooted deep within. As Malcolm Forbes says 'Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one'.

Education is what makes you learn to create your own path.....to get through obstacles....to be independent and free.....to sway in your own flow....how to be one with the nature.......in other words how to be a river :), not just some rotten dead leaf which flows with the rush of another roaring stream, where your direction, force, freedom, in turn independence and whole of existence will be defined by that stream. But I see....we are so scared of independence ...and feel so secured with this constrained life.....Why would one wish for such a constrained life? Why should sprouting lives wither away into a rotten dead end? Why dont we ever come out of this cocoon of security?

I think the reason for us to get into these traps of expectations and.......hmmm...seriosuly just realised...its only expectations that drag us away from the true education we are supposed to get. Expectations of our parents...of the society.....expectations to succeed......expectations of others and the list continues. I think anything which we think drags us away, can easily be put under some or the other form of expectation !!

Why do we care so much about it ? about these expectations anyway.......probably because of fear......deep rooted fear of losing identity!! Sigh!! what an irony.....loosing ones true identity in the fear of loosing it!!

As I have your attention now, let me get to 'why this blog?'. I am here to put in my ideas, my dreams about education and also in search of like minded people who can put in ideas, who can criticize any objectives or theory or an understanding and who are in search of equally passionate persons to work with.

Now education has been mostly confused with literacy. There was a NGO which came to my office asking for funds telling that they will be providing ICSC syllabus for the under privileged kids!!! First of all it made no sense to me why do they intend to do that.....all subjects in English for the kids who can barely understand it....secondly why are they so much concentrating on the syllabus while all that is important is how they are imparting it. Most of the NGOs are concentrating on the improvisation of education by trying to improve the vocabs, reading and writing capacities and pumping more information into the heads of the kids. Is that really what we should care about?

Hundreds of years ago, when India was at the peak of richness, not every one was literate but we were the richest.....culturally, ethically and economically. We lost that certain something in the ruins of the history. Brithish knew it. To conquer India in the truest sense, they changed our education system to a completely, destroying all the ways we used then. All they needed were the clerks who could work for them. They just needed machines who can follow blindly. Thats where we lost our richness, and to a greater extent are still following the same way of education, but now creating bigger machines for bigger MNCs, which have conquered us economically and hence to an extent politically.

My dreams with education is to create an environment in which a soul would bloom. Giving an opportunity to identify ones own talent, ones potential, which thereby would educate them to figure out the path for themselves. The beginning should be implemented in the following steps.
1. Giving exposure to all forms of arts and subjects to enable them to understand their true passion.
2. Create an environment which enables them for the ethical, moral and social responsibilities for the nature and the people around. Thereby teaching them the art of enjoying nature and life.
3. Create opportunities for those talents so that they can earn their livelihood and dont do some arbitrary stuff just for the sake of money and loose the essence of life.
4. Sustain an environment where these flowers wont whither away with the fear of loosing themselves.

Having said all this....I never meant to imply that my education was bad.....I might not have paid full attention in my english class :) ....but thats the point.....education is not about words...its about what they convey. Education is not about remembering the name of a flower but to be 'able' see it...to be 'able' to feel it and to be 'able' to enjoy it :). Its about Ability !

Here ends by first blog. It was quite a nice experience to put-up ideas here but its purpose will only be served if I get to know your views about it. Lets discuss what you think about it. Its not about thoughts, we are done with thoughts, its about coming together and evaluating if we are on a brighter path to tomorrow and if not atleast taking the first step on it.... :)

PS:In my next blogs I will be writing about few of the basic models and projects to start of with this dream.