Weekend musings: Fear and Education

Over the years, I have begun to question the purpose of education. I used to think that education liberated a person, expanded ones weltanschauungs, gave the confidence to face the challenges of life and enabled one to lead a fulfilling life. I also thought that a good education taught one to learn the art of learning. I guess these were the ideas that attracted me to academics and lured me to quit my job in Europe and join one of the top institutes in the country. It has been almost thirteen in teaching, and I have learned a lot in these years. The primary lesson that I have learned is that our education system is not liberating the minds of youngsters. Rather than liberating, it is binding them in fears, and the biggest fear that our system is drilling into the young minds is the fear of failure.?

This fear of failure prevents one from experimenting, from trying unconventional ways of addressing an issue or solving a problem. As a result of this fear, a person learns helplessness. This helplessness reinforces the failure and we a vicious circle. When these people are put into R&D roles, such as PhD, they are, more often than not, lost, and the end result is mediocre work and that to with a lot of effort. The entire tenure reduces to fulfilling the minimum requirement of submitting the thesis, and the whole charm and beauty of solving a problem evaporates into thin air. It is seldom that cutting edge research gets done, and the overall outcome is mediocrity.?

In my opinion, fear-induced mental paralysis is not just confined to academia but is prevalent in the industry and governance as well and prevents us from striving for excellence. No wonder a country of 1.4 billion is import dependent and is unable to meet most of its technology needs. It can be argued that many other factors contribute to the status quo, but my argument is that mental paralysis is the major contributor.??

It is high time that we pay honest attention to how we educate the young and prepare them well for challenges that they will face in their life.