Educated and Literate

I still maintain that there is a distinct difference being literate and being educated. A slew of degrees lead to nothing it just makes one a “literate”. Education has to do with a lot of deeper meaning. The Indian education system is one lot of people take pride in, I for one don’t. Reason, one amongst the many being, it produces stalwarts as D.

All through my school days I have been through the situation explained in the Write Up and really speaking, its sad but true. History in a way is taught with such a mundane fashion that it somehow becomes a pain to study it. I loved history, a habit that my father inculcated in me. And my love for the subject had nothing to do with the marks received. I know am blessed with an elephantine memory but I never memorized history lessons. Never felt the need to; The main reason why I did not fare too well in the subject but loved it.

This love for the subject being equated with marks is the biggest bane of a school goer. Whenever you ask a kid about his /her favorite subject invariably comes the answer the subjects where you get the most marks. Marks!!!! Like money I never let any emphasis on them. They are important but not something that’s a make or break. As for a 3 hour stint in a sweaty room with a pen and reams of paper; well I guess every student deserves a better deal.

I know of schools where they force kids to buy “essay writing books” and force kids to reproduce the essays on the exam and the kid with the most available GBs in this head is the winner. Another example of “learning” – never ask questions, teacher’s word is sacrosanct, memorize the whole subject/text and spit it on those reams. Am glad my schooling till 10th grade never ever felt this way. Well memorization was rewarded but the independent mind to think and ask questions was encouraged – nobody came down with an iron fist to kill the curiosity of the toddler.

But post my Tenth I have a few. Couple of them I can recall from my high School days. The English teacher taught us her own version of Hamlet and a physics teacher who, after messing up a kinetics problem, claimed that the value of G could vary (????). But my lecturer in college took the cake. After failing to convince me that right shift operation is multiplication (well right shift is division and left shift is multiplication) she said
"I have completed my BE
I know more than you
Don't argue!"
Needless to say, I struggled in her papers all through the remainder of my course.


A lot depends on the upbringing of the child. My parents never ever compared me to any neighborhood kid, never ever forced me to study and let me do things I liked to do. So it was football and music all the way peppered with books. I started studying only when I developed a sheer interest in the topics at hand. I loved Physics , hated Maths and was never too interested in Chemistry. But my mark sheets always showed Maths on top followed by chemistry and then physics…

Another reason why I did not fare too well in College. Simple I did not cram lessons the way the bloke sitting next to me did. I never did that, never felt the need to. For me the takeaway from any subject should be more than just a mark sheet. Which is why I can still give some gyaaan on high school physics to someone even though I have not been actively in touch with the subject for 8 years.

I always wish I had the writing skills of my dad when it came to English and that of mom when it came to Bengali; but I being the proverbial black sheep never got any of them. Neither are my academic, extra-curricular “achievements” above average. But am grateful and thankful to my parents for being there, supporting me in whatever I little I did, however much it pleased/displeased them.