What went wrong?

 

A day ago, a question from one of my very close family members urged me into digging deeper into our education system. Therefore, this writeup is more of an attempt at unknotting my mind and hence, a product of multiple ideas combined together, quite randomly.

“What difference is it'' she said “that you feel between your experience at school and at the Academy (where I study Dars-e-Nizami)?”

My thoughts at this moment began to take a turn. Apparently, the experiences do not vary much, however, intrinsically they are a thousand miles apart. Notwithstanding the great time I had at school and a few things that I suppose were the gains, the experience was, nevertheless,not worth all the time. My memories remind me of nothing but long hours of unworthy travelling. And truly, every time I see a school-going kid, I secretly want to ask him how much has the school helped you become a better person? 

I should say that education for me has changed considerably, specially after the PTCC course. It is no longer a game of memorizing subject after subject, which in most cases is not even intellectually satisfying, set aside, life-changing.If ‘educating the youth ‘means training them to become competitors, I don't think we should buy that anymore. 

In a recent video that I saw of Sir Salman Asif Siddiqui, he clarified that, for the first time,we are in an era where learning and betterment have become two separate things because previously betterment was a necessary outcome of learning, so it was, in the least, causal if not synonymous.

Hence, all along the way, what went wrong?

I really don't meet the criteria of a person who constantly holds herself accountable as much as she should, but upon reflecting, I have learned that plenty of our bad traits could have been noticed and attempted to be fixed earlier. Why is it that the schools didn't help us enough when the claim is to “develop responsible citizens for future” 

I feel that the most important result of education should be to make a person self-accountable. If it fails, it is to be doubted. A good chunk of our lives, and a greater one of akhirah suffer if the idea of keeping an eye on one’s own self is compromised.

“Does the future not include akhirah?” Mufti Akmal Madni sahab would rather ask.

Sometimes, it boldly occurs to me that we have been played with, and taken advantage of. Our current education systems are a deception and, for the past and present, capitalism thrives not at the cost of our money, time, mental or physical health-which we are likely to assume- but at the literal cost of our akhirah.

While writing this, I am also reminded of Aldous Huxley’s quote “The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping” 

The reason that we cannot outright blame schools is how much we love this prison, the extent to which we want a name of such institutions attached to our identities, how much they have achieved a mutually- consented dictatorship and how much we make ourselves believe that they help develop the ‘self’ 

Sadly, this bears on our shoulders too.

I fail to understand how development follows when ‘self’ is a non-targeted territory. I struggle to find any memories of my school life where I had striven to find out about the self, let alone mine. How unnoticed and unsearched we leave ourselves  in our supposedly ‘student life’ haunts me when I look back at the last 20 years.

I believe a major problem could have been avoided if we questioned what claims meant rather than just deciding if we want to trust them or not. For example, what does a school-admission sign board mean when it says “ we work on a child's creativity”. Ask them: how they have forged creativity and how they plan on selling it. Maybe, creativity in their paradigm would mean something as shallow as finding new ways of earning money.

Also, growing up, we all heard ‘change is always better’.How much of those changes meant the change we intend for ourselves in an attempt to save others from our bad influence and not just external changes like schools and furniture? In my time at the academy, and thereafter the PTCC course, I learned that self-accountability calls for healthy changes to be made not in our surroundings but in ourselves. It calls for us to realize all the ways in which we are wrong and then begin to find ways for ameliorations.

Keeping an eye on ourselves is not equivalent to obeying authority. Instead, knowing when to obey authority and when not to obey is the result of keeping an eye on ourselves. Somebody who obeys all commands and all authorities  may not necessarily be under the best tarbiyah program. Pretending this myth to be true, the current education system has  made us obey every undeserved authority through ingraining in us the fear of everything but Allah

Change in this regard is still needed since it remained unaddressed in the fragile years. Years that could have made us completely different than who we are, helped us say sorry a lot earlier, preached us the purpose of life, and taught us to mend the broken have been used in solidifying bad habits,causing addictions, fostering competitions, advertising junk food and causing a loss which is nearly irreversible.

This week only,one of these Ramadan transmissions' suggestions popped up on my youtube. It was a discussion of scholars on self-accountability. I wondered how an esteemed panel, instead of having to deal with the issues of muslims around the world, has to deal with people of their own country to change the lens. I take it with a pinch of guilt that we need proper television shows and dedicated hours, not to educate how we should keep an eye on ourselves, but to educate why we should keep an eye on ourselves. Not doubting the importance of this topic in any sense, I am confused as to what all those individuals learn when governments of the world take pride in having the highest literacy rates.

What went wrong can be avoided in future if we begin to question ourselves today “ what are we doing wrong?”

May Allah help us keep a greater eye on ourselves. Ameen.