..and I was different.
"He is weird," said my seniors, tone redolent with mockery. And nicknames began. I have now lost count of the names. There are many, and it reached my home. My single mother was worried about who I was going to be. Though...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I was a man taking a refuge in a stranger's room; a girl who I thought was 17 years old. I had escaped the enemy's soldiers, but was still unsure of my future. I was, then, a boy in the body of a forty three old man, Captain Bluntschilli, trying to understand his agony, his pain and trying to mimic it. We were enacting G.B. Shaw's Arms and The Men. Some in the audience were bored, some were watching us and the others were reading the play not paying attention at all. While the people on the stage had a mixed array of feeling from embarrassment to sheer joy, the play was on. But, Ms. Sonam Angmo, our English Teacher, stopped us just after ten minutes.
Ms. Angmo wanted to discuss gender and the female presence in the novel. In a class where only a few were habitual of diving into the vast scope and exploration of the novel and its themes, Ms. Angmo's words were rebellious. She didn't hold back. There is no way I can speak for her intentions, however, I know that she knew it was her chance to make us aware of the foreign, the "other", the things and people who we have forgotten.
It was Ms. Angmo's little triumph in a place where people didn't even know that she was attacking society's patriarchal notions that has subjugated men and women, people of color, people of other gender identities. Her short, yet powerful speech on the day she explained gender and the importance of gender neutral zones made her comparable to several feminist icons.
She holds an M.Phil and is an alumnus of the Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. Obviously, it is the reflection of her tolerance that has been the result of education she has acquired. Tolerance is contagious. What she taught and spoke definitely would make a foreseeable effect on the people who listened to her, but it made an immediate and considerable impact on me. I am a feminist now, and also an avid believer of the rights of certain marginalized people. This made me realize the real meaning of education. The best thing that education can do for students and the youth is make them tolerant. To tolerate and accept what we feel is foreign isn't easy, but it is education that makes us understand and accept them. It is the power of education that helps in broadening of minds and stop people from bullying and harassing other. To go beyond the societal conventions is what education teaches us.
The aim is to certainly not limit it to only marks and grades, and see beyond it. To cobble together materials from the internet and merely copy pasting it to write papers is what people has restricted it in the present spectrum of the system in many parts of the country.
The system focuses primarily on the scoring rather than the course. The course is so feebly designed that it leaves almost no room for creativity, so hastily knit that it rushes the student to only mug up and spit it up in the final assessments. The hush prevents the students to explore literature which pushes them to depend solely on the books that are combined for a short term benefit to only exchange it for the books for the next semester. Merely having a degree isn't education, but the application of concepts, to actually dispense what we have accumulated: to serve others, to question, to support or criticize, to act is what comprises education.
But the course of education hasn't stayed same at all. The commercialization of education has snatched from it its real essence and power, because our notions of what success is have changed. Is success the ability to pass the test at the end of the class? The race to 'be the best' has started an unhealthy competition that only considers a minute part of education.
Subsequently, such is the state of affairs of education that the present system has made the youth totally unemployable, not to talk about the moral degradation and a visible apathy towards everything: parents, nation and society. If the system had stayed true to the real significance of education, it would do wonders for its seekers. Consider a system that strives for its students to not only meet the grade requirements but also helps them to realize and meet his/her personal goals. I know the road is tough, but the destination- not too far.
