Many a subjects were of no use to me and there were many a things I loved doing but was considered ‘time wastage’ by our School and society equally. In February we used to have the annual sports day. Well, as much as I could understand, the ‘games’ classes were supposed to be the practice sessions climaxing to the Annual Sports event. But in those games classes all we did was play football (we could have rather renamed Games class to Football class) and Annual Sports events had all the Olympics menu!
Anyways, point is that the education system has been made in a such a way that if you have any other interest other than Maths and Science you are bound to be made look like a loser. In reality every individual is not meant to a scientist or a mathematician and frankly speaking it takes no brains to understand that these subjects are not the only thing that can take you higher. Sports, Music, singing, dancing, travelling, paining, awesome memory skills, illusion skills, variety of business skills, good speaking skills, socializing skills and many many other things that you were not allowed to talk about, pursue further can/ could have done wonders to your life. Seriously, was everyone of us really born to be a 9 to 10 worker? Call it a blue collar job or whatever, you are doomed to get a salary and be employed, just because you studied maths and science in school. Oh come on.
Similarly, how was it that Arts, Dance, Singing were never given such an importance? Not only the education system, the Indian society is also much to be blamed. Every home wants their kids to be engineer or doctor. Even heard parents thinking or honing their child’s skills and allowing him to pursue her/his dream to be a gymnast/ journalist/ mountaineer/ Illusionist or thousand other things possible in the world apart from ‘engineering’ or making her/him a ‘Doctor’?
Sachin Tendulkar could have been a lousy engineer if his parents would have pushed him to. Saina and Sania would have remained a regular girl next door. You look out and you will see many such examples. YOU could have been someone else, I could have been doing something else, something more meaningful much earlier in life. Who knows! I spend most of the time listening to music. Office, car, mobile everywhere, I could have been in the music industry doing something. Who knows!
Only cricket remains such a sport where every Indian is a born cricketer and has played it for quite sometime (or are still playing) and wants to be in the Indian Cricket team. Odds are pretty high in this sport and more than the calibre I guess the luck starts mattering from a particular level.
Take a scene at the just concluded Olympic Games. We were satisfied with the number of Medals we earned? Were we? Guess not. All of us wanted our athletes to get as many Medals as possible but at home do we aspire our kids to play the sports so that one day she/he could do her/his country proud? How could we win Medals in Olympics when at home we tell force our kids to study Maths and Science with full sincerity and play in ‘free’ time? How about keeping it the other way round?
‘Being Intelligent’ and ‘being smart’ are two different things. I would rather have kids who are smart at random things and has the knack of thinking out of the box than being a ‘rattu tota’ who scores 100% in exams because she/he could reproduce all that he/she mugged up in the entire year.
Even though formal education is very important in nurturing a child’s growth. I feel that allowing the person to think beyond only ‘maths and science’ is even more important. Ensuring the person comes out confident of this rat race isn’t the goal? Would that have been achieved with only ‘Geometry’ and ‘hence proved’ theories? The ultimate goal for a person in life is to prove something to him/her that he/she is capable of doing and is doing, has aspirations and puts his heart into achieving it, earns good enough to have a neat standard of living for self and family, travels wherever his thought or his wallet takes, does not succumb to 9 to 6 jobs! Lives life like a free bird with enough respect in what she/he does.
Inspirations from: Ken Robinson, Taare Zameen Par, Sachin Tendulkar, Saina Nehwal, Saniya Mirza, Unmukt Chand and many others.