A DEGRADED SUPER VOCATION and the DESPOILING of a PEOPLE

FOLLOWING the HERD and the SLY DIABOLISM

A PARENT’s RIGHT versus the CLAIMS of SLAVERS

FEAR of a QUALITY POPULATION; VALUE of INFORMATION

LOADING VALUE into USELESS EDUCATION

BEST QUALITY ELEMENTARY CLASS STUDENTS

BUSINESS ENTERPRISE by CHILDREN

ABOLISHING a CHILD’s RIGHT to WORK and ENTERPRISE

The DEDICATION of the WORKING KIDS

A DEGRADED SUPER VOCATION and the DESPOILING of a PEOPLE

Now, let us take the case of a Real Estate Broker/ Agent. It is a self employment seen in many parts of the nation as low grade and fit for the un-educated. However, in such places as Bombay etc. wherein social evaluation at that level is not quite effective, all levels of persons practise this profession. For the earnings are quite high. In the other areas, not only the higher level society sees it as low grade, but the very practisers of this trade also mention it as low grade. In a way, it is a clever ploy to dissuade the higher level society from entering into this profession, which does not really require heavy financial inputs. However, as a profession, it is quite a tough one, and given the general standards of dishonesty in the social culture, it is tougher proposition to extract a payment from persons who have been served well.

Now, how does one improve the status of such professions? Well, does our compulsory education bring in any quality enhancement to such professions, or does it impair them with low quality indicant word status? The truth is that our Compulsory Education System does a great crime by reducing most of the jobs done by the natives here to abysmal levels by assigning lower indicant words to them.

To illustrate this point, let me say: A doctor’s son is studying in the school. There is a carpenter’s son also there. When referring to their fathers, the teachers invariably would use different indicant words for them: the doctor would be Unn, Avar, Adheham etc. in the various Indian languages. The carpenter could be: Uss, Ayaal, Avan etc. This is what the compulsory education is doing to the people and their means of livelihood here. Doesn’t the drafter’s of the Right to Compulsory Education deserve to be beaten into a pulp?

FOLLOWING the HERD and the SLY DIABOLISM

Now we come back to the theme of compulsory education. When a person enters into this system, then it is only logical that he or she has to go forward till its very end, to the PG levels. Dropping out in the middle is a retrograde step and the person has literally fallen on the way.

Now, the question here is about compulsory education that declares that the child should be taught a lot of things in their minute and mediocre qualities. Look at the list of businesses with which I had dealing with. In which all among them, is there the need for calculus, trigonometry, logarithm, polynomials, metrics, algebra, geometry, analytical chemistry, moles, molar, Avogadro number, Gas Laws, Spirogyra, Scientific Nomenclature, Cary Fosters’ Bridge, Ideal Machine, Polarity, Atomic Number, Wavelength, Doppler effect and such things. Well, the truth is that there is not even a single connection. However, if the modern educated persons were to be told that a particular man does not know about these things, he is seen as an ignorant man. So, the persons who are engaged in the above-mentioned trades should be forced to learn it, even if the time spent on these extraneous things could turn out to be detrimental to their business concentration. What a diabolical idea!

However as in the case of my daughter, wherein I taught her Higher Mathematics just for letting her know that there are high intellectual possibilities in these things, it can be considered. However, the fact of the matter is that I did teach her Chess at age three and computer usage at four, including Adobe PageMaker and Adobe Photoshop. If I had possessed a computer before that time, I would possibly have taught her at age one itself. For, I took her for swimming at age eight months.

A PARENT’s RIGHT versus the CLAIMS of SLAVERS

Now, take the case of a Vegetable Wholesale Trader, who wants to teach his son the secret intricacies of his trade. For, in his trade even a phone number of an outside-state trader with whom he has connection is a trade secret worth its value in gold. If he were to give the charge of this establishment to another man (his assistant), the chance of such information leaking out or even being used by that man himself is great. However, he can’t bring his young son into the trade, for the Compulsory Education Act states that the child should be given to care of teachers. They have the right over his son, and through his son, over him also.

Now, who are these teachers? Well, in all probability, they would be persons who do not know much about anything that has been listed above as business, trade or skill information. Their only qualification would be their textbook knowledge and marks, both of which really have no value in real life, other than what has been loaded on to them through artificial means. However, if they can teach the child good-quality English, it is a great teaching. However, in a nation like India, majority of the teachers not only do not know English, but also actively campaign against teaching English to students.

FEAR of a QUALITY POPULATION; VALUE of INFORMATION

The antipathy to teaching English is basically connected to the fear that the children would really become good and superior quality. In a nation with feudal language communication, the seeing of the lower positioned persons improving in standards and quality, and popping up as real equals, is a real torment.

Now one needs to think about the quality and usefulness of knowledge that is being imparted in schools and colleges. These are information that the teachers have no qualms about teaching. They have no tension when the child learns what they teach. However, look at all the trades that I have listed out. It is my very powerful understanding that persons who are knowledgeable in these trades, activities, skills, techniques, technologies etc. take a huge amount of strain to see that they do not educate others about its intricacies and understandings. In fact, they take pain to give wrong information. The information they possess is valuable, and they wouldn’t give it to other easily.

What is this comparison meant to mean? Well, it can mean that the general idea is that knowledge, information, understandings, exposures and experiences given by schools and colleges are simply keeping a child away from real valuable themes.

LOADING VALUE into USELESS EDUCATION

Now, we need to go into their exclusivities and peculiar rights. One of the methods maintained to garner value for formal education is that many government professions are kept apart for formally qualified persons. Even such silly jobs like a government clerk are kept apart for formally educated people. However, the quality of the persons who become government clerks is of the abysmal levels, given that most of them are quite bad in English.

BEST QUALITY ELEMENTARY CLASS STUDENTS

Now, before concluding this writing, I need to mention that I am not speaking against formal education, but against the compulsory part of it. A carpenter has the right to teach his child his knowledge, skills, information, understandings and awareness. The government has the duty to give the child an opportunity to learn good English. The word ‘good’ has to be stressed. English teaching should not be given to present-day schoolteachers. Moreover, elementary class teachers should be of the best calibre, good in English, well-read in English classics, well informed in English fairytales, and well-versed in English nursery rhymes and folksongs. And not the menial servant class people who currently teach in the nursery classes.

BUSINESS ENTERPRISE by CHILDREN

There is this thing also to be mentioned about children going in for business and other enterprises. When I was a small child living in north Malabar, I was witness to a very exquisite social happening. The place was full of Muslim (Mappillah) families. Almost everyone, Hindus as well as Muslims, and also the Christians in that area were quite uneducated. However, it would be quite untrue to state that they were idiotic or stupid. They functioned quite intelligently.

Mappila Muslims had a slightly different language dialect, in which the full hardcore feudalism of Malayalam was less. The Muslim boys of age around 5 and 7 and beyond would be seen going around the streets and small village townships, selling groundnuts. Some would even be seen selling fish and such other things. It was not that the children were send by their families to earn the money. It was purely business enterprise by the children. They would buy groundnut from afar, and sell it in small quantities for 5 and 10 paisa. Surely there would be heady profits.

I would like to mention in passing that when I was in my third or fourth class, I did study such things as Prime numbers, HCF, LCF etc. Quite frankly speaking, the Muslim boys who went in for a heady experience of retail selling were not aware of such concepts. However, they could do their business arithmetic much faster than my own academically trained mind.

Moreover, when I would mix with them, even with my academic brilliance, they did not show any feeling of inferiority complex. It was I who was the odd one out. This point I am stressing to inform that the feeling of being an odd one, is more connected to not being part of the general crowd, and not necessarily being not formally educated.

In my own household, all these business activities of Muslim kids were seen as the low-class family system of the Muslims. Yet, later by the time I had graduated, with practically nothing in my mind other than dry academic items, these kids had all graduated into powerful businessmen, with a lot of ‘higher educated’ persons working under them as their staff.

ABOLISHING a CHILD’s RIGHT to WORK and ENTERPRISE

Here the theme does stray the theme of the Act abolishing child labour. A blanket ban on Child labour, coupled with Compulsory Education does infringe on an individual’s certain innate rights. A child has the right to labour, and to engage himself or herself in decent labour. The right of the government to step in comes only if the child is being exploited or being abused or misused. However, the fact is that the government should necessarily step in, when anyone, not just a child, is being exploited.

The DEDICATION of the WORKING KIDS

Here I need to input one of my observations with regard to working children. I have had the opportunity to see young boys working in automobile workshops. They were quite disciplined, focused and eager for improving their knowledge and skills. They had no time for drugs and such other themes, other than for the fact that they did not know English. Due to this deficiency, there was a great substandard-ness and colloquialism in their subject matter of conversation. If English was known to them, I am sure that their level of intellectualism would have improved tremendously. However, it would be quite a nonsense that they were idiotic and stupid and intellectually behind a student who spends his time in a government school.

As to the work culture, it is true that they come under the control and thraldom of some seniors in the workshop. However, this is true in the case of students in schools also. Once I did have a chance for a close observation of students in a government schools. The teachers were literally treating their wards as their servants and other serving persons. They profusely used words like ‘Nee’, ‘Eda’, ‘Edi’ etc. all of which were more or less words that one uses to one’s servants over whom one has unlimited powers.

These kids later grow up to become good quality motor vehicle technicians. However, their lack of English knowledge haunts them till the end of their lives.