Are these sustainable times?
The flaw in our present education system and other pertinent issues
“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague…” – Agent Smith, Matrix – I, the movie.
These lines might make you wonder whether this article is a critique on the matrix trilogy or a position on the present times we live in. Indeed, the lines above, though from a work of fiction, on hindsight make me feel, if sometimes, in some ways we have lived like a virus, dependent and destructive. It is for this reason, the present article is being penned – with a deep sense of concern over the issues that are ticking away under us like a time bomb – issues that if not addressed today, can very well wipe us of the face of the earth. Clichéd? The decision is left with the reader. One request though before we proceed. For the next twenty odd minutes (yes, this is a short article!), cleanse your mind of all established thoughts. Read the whole article and then – either forget the whole thing as a mistake or to take a deep breath and decide on what each on of us needs to do from here on.
The first thing to start with, logically, is to determine the purpose for deliberation. Why this need suddenly, to wonder why we as a race are suddenly being termed such a pain in the neck? It all started with a little article that I recently read in a local daily. The article said that human beings are a situation now where they have exceeded their ecological footprint by as much as 40%. So what is ecological footprint? In simple terms, it is the piece of land that is required to replenish all the resources that a human being consumes over a (average) life time. What does that connote? Well, it means that we are now at a stage where we as a race are consuming resources at a rate that is faster than that which mother Earth needs to replenish them – roughly 40% faster! The time will soon come where we will be left short with essential resources such as potable water, land to live on and cultivate crops, food to eat, ores, hydrocarbon fuels, and pretty much everything else.
Jump-cut to our present education system. Recall your days in school- good or bad! More importantly, remember the education or at least the essence of it that you received at school. You were taught that as a responsible ‘individuals’, it is your duty to excel in academics. That way, you would be able to get a good job, a good house, money, a nice car, a good life. School, as the first and preliminary center for learning, also taught you all the ways that you can do the above. It taught you the sciences of life, minerals, and machines. It taught you mathematics to quantify our actions and thoughts and it taught you social sciences to help you understand that you must live in a society a responsible and contributing ‘individual’. What is the common link in all of this? Lo and behold- at every stage you are programmed a little bit more as a ‘unit’. A robot, if you will, thinking and working as a unit to excel, in order to fulfill your duty towards life. At home, it is no different. You are told to excel in whatever you do (especially academics), simply because you then have a better chance of living a life better than other. Good old ‘survival of the fittest’ paradigm at work. The better you are, the better your chances of a better life and lesser the probability of being ‘one of the many’.
Now link the two. In your daily life, how much time do you spend on worrying about issues such as depletion of natural resources, extinction of wildlife, loss of forest cover, pollution (of all kinds), and the like. Be honest now. Yes, you read about these in the papers; hear activists speaking on these topics, some with conviction, others with little or none and maybe for a while, over coffee or lunch even discuss these issues with friends and colleagues. But what thereafter? You forget and move on with life. You say “who has the time for this”, or “too busy to think over such matters”, and that’s that. Indeed, that is what we ‘normally’ do. Ever wonder why? We have been taught to think like that. Ta-da! See the link now? Our education system itself, since school, through college and then university has programmed us to think only for ourselves, excel as a ‘unit’ – do whatever necessary to survive first. And we do just that. Think of a day in your life – from the time you wake up in the morning, take a bath, eat breakfast, drive to work, work, and drive back home, have dinner, watch TV and then finally go to sleep. Things may seem so natural. Yet, while executing each of these activities, we wonder not whether our deeds are irreparably hurting our planet, our resources, and our lives. The basic question of sustainability remains unanswered at every stage.
The fact of the matter is that the present education in most schools and colleges are inherently flawed. Kids are not taught at a fundamental level to think about sustainability. They are not taught the essentials that would enable them to think about the survival of this race over the next thousand years (let alone five or even ten thousand years). The effect of all this is we are part of a huge movement towards consumerism where we are just blindly consuming, without wondering how long that consumption will last, given the present rate of natural resources. Further, most education systems are dishing out half baked truths to the students. Colleges teaching the fundamentals of Economics fro instance would lay down the merits of a societal system when the consumer consumes for just for his own good but also with the larger good of the society to the extent that someone somewhere is manufacturing, packing, transporting and finally selling the goods that you are buying for consumption. While this true to some extent, the prevailing conditions in which this is done may not be the best. The student may realize the merit of a consumer movement, but fail to realize that at a grass-root level, someone might have lost his land; ecological degradation may have been set into motion, and so on. There is a need therefore for ‘complete education’.
Even the institutions of higher learning such as the Business schools are not entirely at not-at-fault. I myself am a product of a premier institute of learning in the country. I was taught at length the merits of the capitalist / free market system over the socialist and communist system. Mathematics and statistics were used to prove the same. The result – I came out of Business school with all sorts of glorious ideas about capitalism, consumerism and the power they wielded to change society for the good. What I realized only now is that there is another face to the coin that needed to be looked at. Consumption is only a downstream phenomenon. What happens at previous levels of the value chain are - manufacturing and servicing of the product. Both of these may pose a certain load on the ecology that we cannot afford to ignore. Many year ago, rampant hunting of the dodo bird for food led to their extinction. Today many rare species of fauna face the same fate including whales. We look back the perpetrators with resentment and frustration and make a quite solemn pledge not to repeat the same mistakes. Are we not being hypocrites here? I believe we are about to reach the point of no return in our times. If we don’t act now and takes steps to educate ‘ourselves’ about the situation we are facing, it would be, I fear, too late far too soon.
What then is the way out? Or at all is there a way? I believe there is. The time is nigh that we stop looking the other way, giving excuses that we are too busy with our day to day lives to think of such issues and so on, and face the situation. I shall lay down a three point solution – First, the primary education system needs to be changed radically and children in school should be taught environmental / ecological sciences from the very early stages. This will inculcate a sense of interest in the child that he or she shall never be able to forget completely. Parents too should play a wholesome role in this growth and development stage by engaging them in discussions related to the environment and encouraging their wards to participate in events related to such issues so that the child sees merit in the idea. Second, intermediate and higher education institutions need to thoroughly re-examine their curriculum and revise it to include those facets of technological advancement and human growth and progress that have been neglected thus far, so that society as a whole grows at a pace that is sustainable and inclusive, in that social disparities are reduced. I believe when societal disparities are reduced, the pettiness in the minds of people will get washed away and people will get the time to think of bigger issues. Till that time we are stuck up the ‘quagmire’ of our lives whether we like it or not. Third, we need media to play a more proactive role in highlighting the importance of a more inclusive growth. Media in recent times has been reduced to serving the petty interests of political parties by playing the role of their mouth piece. When they are not doing this, media is busy with infighting to beat the competition by winning TRP. This needs to change. Media needs to win back the accolade of being the fourth estate. It needs to understand what an important role it plays in shaping opinions and perceptions. It also needs to realize the critical role it plays in education. It has and will always remain an integral part of the education system. Remember all those times when our parents would tell us to get in the habit of reading the morning papers and watching once in a while, the evening news on the television?
-Last but definitely not the least – the youth needs to take up responsibility of shaping the immanent future. This article is therefore not just a reminder but a clarion call to all those like minded friends and brothers to take cognizance of the facts and come out their comfort zones to act now. What we need is a movement to drive home the point that we are a point in our times when things are about to take a turn for the good or worse based on our actions in the present. Individualism today will ensure economic growth but not a sustainable one. Many of us disturbed by the things happening around us – irreparable damage to the ecology – including the extinction of plant and animal species, loss of arable land, melting away of the glaciers, and so on. How often have we felt that these non issues get too much coverage and air time? How rarely have we tried to do a root cause analysis to understand and uncover that all these issues are actually related and spouting from the same issue of concept of individualistic growth rather than a collective societal one.
