I am a connoisseur of life. I find it fascinating, absorbing and so so entertaining. Events and experiences around me seem to be part of the mysterious drama of life. There is a place for everything and a role for everyone. Naturally for me, even ordinary sights, people, events and encounters narrate a story of life. They make me reflective about the magic of life. Some of these experiences and reflections, I share them through my blogs.

Enter this world of mine, ENJOY! 

Expertise or Exposure?

Author Raja Krishnamoorthy / Kitty - Aug 22, 2013

Traditional thinking has always favored a simple pathway for making it “BIG” in life: Become a specialist in some area or an expert in some subject. If you can become a master in something and can be better than others, then you are safe. You have made it!

Sure; when you go deeper you gain expertise; you are safe…but you CAN also get entrenched! Like the ostrich with head buried in the sand, you can become blind to other aspects of life, especially the human aspect! If one is not careful, the exclusivity of mastery can be such an ego feeding, ego fuelling and ego-fulfilling trip!

Lets’ look at the records.

In the last 100+ years we have had evidence of super mastery and expertise in many areas: technology, computers, science, medicine, and electronics. …Many more. With all that expertise has the world become a happier, better place?

What has all the expertise done, with all the material, technological and scientific developments, other than making life (for many of us) more convenient to manage and providing gadgets that make it easier to deal with operational needs of life?

Has it helped human beings become better human beings, with all the “expertise and advancement”?

Do we live, as compared to the past, in a world of more loving, more sensitive, more collaborative, more giving, more sharing human beings? Or do we today experience more intolerance, mutual suspicion, aggression, fights, violence, and insensitivity as a human race?

Ask this question deep in your heart. Your heart knows the truth!

Can we, any more, afford the education system that creates intellectual superiority, technical excellence, and amazing materialistic advancement but leaves the human race more anxious, more conflicted, more suffering than ever before?

The role of education –till recently:
Till now, the “education system”, especially schools and colleges, worked with a set of beliefs and assumptions. The process of education was to respond to the ignorance, innocence and curiosity of the child and feed the child with data, information or knowledge as it grew up.

The teacher was the provider of that feed, or the facilitator of the feed. The examination systems would validate the efficiency of the feed by assessing the data /information/knowledge remembrance, retention, absorption and reproduction in an exam. If you reproduced well, you were good enough. If you did it outstandingly you were a brilliant child.

Is that the reality today? Are the beliefs of the past many decades, which still run our education system valid? Are the roles of teachers and education institutions to be DATA DELIVERERs to the students? Is that what society needs to-day?

No, certainly not. It has got to change.

…We need an education system that does not make us better in the “competitive rat race” but a wholesome one that makes all of us far more caring, compassionate and truly sensitive towards the human race!

Some more thoughts on this, in my next blog

With Love,
Rajaah

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