The Drawbacks (Chapter 3 of the book "The Hijack of Education")

 

The Drawbacks

“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”- Aristotle

Education should develop the powers of the three H's- Head, Heart and Hands, according to Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.

This chapter will be a bitter pill to swallow. We will have a closer look at the educational system and ourselves, in order to find solutions and get better. Let us investigate the drawbacks of the present educational system first.

The present educational system teaches us to be materialistic and ego-centric. It does not teach us to seek within, do our duty and excel in everything we do. We have forgotten to be content, or to find happiness in little things. We do not find peace in our relationships or our connection with nature. We are not improving with the advancement of our civilization, but getting worse as human beings. Modernity has destroyed our inner world. It has also made us selfish, greedy and irresponsible. Our educational system is responsible for this moral degeneration. It gives us knowledge and information, but it does not take care of our physical and mental well-being. Holistic or Integral education is supposed to ensure the well-being and growth of the entire individual. This includes the body, mind, skill, intelligence, heart and soul of the individual. However, contemporary education is not holistic or integral. It does not teach us to control and regulate our own minds. We observe the world around us, but we fail to observe our own minds, our own psychological tendencies. We do not even hear about introspection, self-analysis and self-improvement nowadays. Many people are unaware of these techniques, which are essential to sustaining our present state of civilization and progressing further. Practice of these techniques has been forgotten. Our education is incomplete without these techniques. 

Our future is also at risk because we are not getting more responsible with the material progress of our civilization. Science and technology is empowering us more and more. This calls for more responsibility, or else destruction and downfall of the civilization will follow. We need to improve psychologically and ethically to properly handle the power that comes with the advancement of science and technology. Education should bring about all-round development. Therefore, it should not only focus on character-building, earning capabilities and knowledge; but also make us healthy and robust, with strong and healthy minds. It should give us high ethical standards, increase our creative thinking and general intelligence (foregoing learning by rote) and improve our standards of social behaviour as well.

 The present educational system has defined success in materialistic terms. It correlates money with success. (This has happened because our educational system has lost track of the goal of our lives- and so have we, consequently.) Thus, it creates an environment of competition and isolation, instead of creating an ambience of collaboration and unity. This competitiveness goes on even further to create feelings of hostility, jealousy, suspicion and back-biting.

We are no longer taught to be competent and self-dependent, but to look for degrees and prestigious jobs. Jobs being scarce compared to the number of applicants, stiff competition is faced by the candidates. The scarcity of job acts as a feedback loop in the minds of the students and the guardians, driving them to become more and more self-centric, careeristic and competitive. This intensifies the evil spirit of competition. Studying more does not create more job opportunities for everyone. However, the applicants are in a mad rush. They are in an isolated, individualistic mode of mind. They have their own needs, their own future at stake, along with the financial security of their family members. They have no choice either, having been groomed by the educational system for so long. They, as well as the guardians of younger students, fail to see the overall picture or to find a solution that benefits all. These people only advise younger students to study harder in order to succeed. Consequently, the competition intensifies with increasing number of applicants for every post. The solution lies in teaching everyone how to earn, and not in increasing competitions. Unfortunately, our educational system does not teach technical, industrial, agricultural or business skills. It does not impart any kind of self-dependence skills or the attitude and mindset necessary for developing the skills. Training of various skills that can help students earn has become a commercial branch of education, separate from mainstream education. Education has become an industry, having lost its idealism and humanitarian goals.

Actually, the sense of Unity and Oneness is lost in the process of studying, competing and job hunt. As a matter of fact, our civilization can achieve much more through co-operation and collaboration, than it can achieve through competition and rivalry. Internal conflict wastes most of our energy. We should learn to use our energies constructively, and not destructively. This will help to create a civilization where everyone is happy, content and prosperous. However, competition, amoral behaviour, crime as well as scarcity and poverty are being nurtured and sustained by the Evil Handlers of our society. (The next chapter discusses how the five evil pyramids of wealth, income, information, control and intelligence keep us subjugated.) These people have also hijacked our educational system. They are misusing it to further their vested interests. Being criminal themselves, they do not want high moral standards in the general population because that would invite stiff resistance to their activities. Instead, they try to make us docile and obedient. They also look for accomplices from within us, to shepherd the rest of us and exploit us. Therefore, the educational system creates compliance and amoral behavior, instead of building value-based characters.

These elite people, who are the evil handlers of our society, are indoctrinating us and cheating us through a sabotaged economic system. We work for them unknowingly, and they steal a lot of our wealth through loopholes in the economic system. Thus, everyone in our society is being indirectly exploited by them. We are not taught to be self-dependent. These people have intentionally kept us poor, so that they can get cheap labour. We are human resources for them. They exploit us economically. The whole world can be fed and nourished easily, if the economic system is corrected.

Thus, education has become a tool for creating poverty and increasing crime. Poverty is increased by not providing the students with the right knowledge, the right mindset or earning skills.

Instead of providing high ideals to adolescent students, the educational system indulges in sensuality in the name of sex education. It is necessary to protect the purity of mind and preserve the spiritual health of the students, while imparting necessary information in a proper way. Moral education and respect of women is a thing of the past now. Yoga, meditation or other befitting spiritual practices should immediately be started/revived in schools. Music classes are a must for harmony of the mind. Drawing, painting and dance will also develop the personality of the students. They will learn to be creative and find peace within their minds. Self-defence techniques (useful in real-life situations, and not just martial arts training for competitions) are essential too. Gardening and farming not only connect us with nature, but also make us humble and down-to-earth, with a practical understanding of the basic processes of life. We begin to understand the importance of farmers and food production. Students should have practical experience in these sectors. This will co-ordinate their motor and sensory nerves, giving them work experience and confidence. Finland has already switched to project-based learning. Also, connection with nature will heal the body and soothe the minds of the students. Brain games that stimulate the powers of logical analysis and synthesis in students, should also become mandatory. However, these co-curricular activities must be such that they enhance spirituality, and not cause moral degeneration. These are double-edged tools, so the teachers, the management and the educationalists must be positively oriented (and free from the influence of the elites). However, these topics are only suggestions from our perspective. They may not be applicable to some schools and communities. It is important to understand the global problem and find out locally applicable solutions.

Separation from nature and even from fellow human beings has increased with our dependence on technology. Electronic devices such as TV, computer and mobile phones have reversed our emotional growth, reduced our attention span drastically and even damaged our physical health. The damage due to lack of physical activities is unequivocally accepted. However, the damage due to electromagnetic radiation is not accepted by corporate-funded science, even though the evidences are undeniable. Moreover, our social connections with near and dear ones are getting weaker.  Thus, our physiological, emotional, psychological and social health is being jeopardized by technology.

Mobile games are turning our children insensitive and violent. We are being led to an artificial, technological world of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) by means of cunning social engineering.

Technology provides us with ease of communication and work. It also places necessary information at our fingertips. However, it eats away at our physical and mental health. It provides comfort and entertainment at the cost of social relationships. Thus, our primary assets are withering away as we pursue secondary goals with the help of the electronic media, computer, mobile and internet. Moreover, our increasing dependence on the big tech and media companies makes us vulnerable to manipulation. Our future will lie in their hands if we do not change our course.

We all know that electromagnetic radiation from electronic devices harms us. Man is a part of nature. The electromagnetic radiation of the human body synchronizes with the natural radiation. But, any artificial radiation in excess harms the body and mind. (“The Invisible Rainbow” is a wonderful book on this topic. It is available as free pdf too.) However, the media has adopted this technology to become electronic media. The control of media is concentrated in the hands of a few corporations. Actually, the elites own or have substantial shares in mainstream media as well as big tech companies. Big agricultural companies and big pharmaceutical companies are no exception. So, both corporate-funded science and mainstream media remain silent on the issue of electromagnetic pollution, even as we remain mesmerized by them.

Our power over the remote control of the TV flatters our ego. We can apparently choose to watch from a plethora of channels. However, the entire news media is controlled by the economic power of the elites. They are behind the media barons who decide what to show us and what to hide. The media diverts our attention rather than providing us. The entertainment media too is part of this mind programming. The media has disrupted our social relationships and eroded our social values.

We have forgotten to live together as One species. Even our connection with nature has been cut off. This is the situation with the mainstream society. Exceptions are there, but those exceptional people do not thrive and prosper in our society. They are almost always exploited, and it is only their inner world, their contentment and joie de vivre (joy of living) that can keep them happy.

Unbridled greed and lust have tainted our value system and behaviour. Our moral values have practically been skewed. A bifurcation between ideal moral values and practical behaviour has resulted. Our educational system was supposed to instil moral values in the students, and also supposed to teach them to recognize and eradicate the vices from their minds. However, we now readily recognise the mistakes committed by others, and also criticize them sometimes. Others recognize our mistakes too, but no one ever recognizes their own mistakes or the mindset that led to their mistakes.

We can only impede others with this approach. However, we could also correct ourselves and help others learn by becoming examples ourselves. When we correct ourselves, our own stance, our own understanding and viewpoints become that much purer and free from bias. Love, affection and gentle care leads to correction and collaboration; impediments and criticism usually increase aloofness (and also fuel anger, hatred, jealousy and competition).

Poverty and necessity has made money the focus of our life. Costly healthcare system has made us insecure and self-centric. All of these are the doings of the elites, who own everything thanks to their economic power. They want to keep us divided and to keep our attention diverted. They have hijacked and misused our educational system, our economic system and even our healthcare system. There is a ploy to create trends, to seed and fan desired patterns in the minds of the general population through social engineering. News and entertainment media plays a major role here. They provide us the information and entertainment that is suited to the interests of the elites, while suppressing the flow of information in the opposite direction. News is often lop-sided, hyped or fabricated. Entertainment affects our sub-conscious mind, which in turn affects our conscious decisions. Social media platforms and big Tech is an accomplice to this subtle process of mind manipulation. Sadly, the educational system starts the process of indoctrination. It works along with other tools of the elites to bend our minds in the direction desired by them.

Compassion and love have been stifled in our heart. Instead, we are taught to be cold towards others and obey orders blindly, even when we know that we are unduly damaging the interests a third party, by doing so. We may be harming someone else (a third party who could be innocent and even unaware) by blindly following the orders, but we remain apathetic towards them. We shed off our responsibility, saying that we have no choice but to follow orders. Thus, our conscience is being maimed as we are being trained to accept the 'Nuremberg Defence' Mentality. (‘Nuremberg Defence’ is the infamous excuse by many defendants in the Nuremberg Trial. The defendants gave the excuse that they were only carrying out orders from the authorities above them; and thus they were not responsible for the Jewish Holocaust. This became known as the Nuremberg Defence.) This reminds us of the collateral damage caused in wars. It is the same mindset operating at an individual, micro level. (Greater evil has its origins rooted in lesser evil.) This has become the cost of our living. The educational system grooms this mindset in us right from our childhood days. It indoctrinates us to obey the higher authorities unquestioningly, with a stunted compassion. Therefore, more emphasis should be given on the unimpeded development of conscience in students. We should be taught that we are fully responsible for whatever we do, and this responsibility can never be transferred to higher authorities. Higher authorities should be held responsible for the command and forcing others to execute the command.

We have been indoctrinated to silence our conscience and accept the law, the society of indoctrinated people and the government, even though all of them (the judicial system, the government, as well as the society) commit many mistakes knowingly. We accept unconscionable decisions from them, even as they remain under the influence of the elite rulers of the society. The institutions and the professions that we have been taught to respect and believe, are now under the influence of these global elites. Those of us who remain exceptions to this and raise their voice conscientiously, face stiff opposition from the authorities and lag behind in the rat race, all their lives. Thus, killing off conscience from the mainstream society, we have turned it into a hotbed of vices and crimes.

Let us sum up and correlate a few points here- Education has the potential to help us live together with peace and prosperity, to create a better world. But, it now teaches compliance even with illegitimate decisions and orders. Our minds are trained in such a way that we have no concern for others. Apathy, and not empathy, has become a pre-requisite for success, which is defined in material terms. The educational system instils this apparent virtue of apathy in us from an early age. We see that everyone blames others for mistakes. No one acknowledges and takes the responsibility of their own mistakes in this ego-centric world. The ambience for such efforts is lacking too. People should try to understand their own mistakes and improve by themselves, psychologically and ethically. This has to be taught. Instead of fighting one another, we should try to fight the vices inside our own selves and forgive others. We must transcend our weaknesses to become a better and more evolved species as a whole. Only then, the world will get better. We need responsible people for a thriving civilization. This is why students must learn self-observation, self-analysis and self-correction techniques.