What schooling has done ...

A wise and skilled (and usually poor) community is advised to put its children into a school. They start at the lowest rung of that ladder, with rocks tied to their feet. Their elders are not skilled in this, their inherited wisdom is in another field. Slowly, very slowly, they adapt to an alien knowledge system ... And when among them a clerk or a nurse emerges, it is seen as success - by them and my us, so deep is that indoctrination.

The indoctrination of the low value of their knowledge, and of the superiority of OUR knowledge.

When I was young and went to the village to work it was with these vague fears and misgivings about schooling.

A long while later my fears have proved real. Children of a wise community, deeply versed in animal care and agriculture ... struggle to learn English, and to get a degree which will place them at the lowest echelons of work.

The saddest thing is that they have themselves denied their own wisdom.

Even as I goad my children to study, do well in 10th ...

... I stay painfully aware. That modern schooling is dismantling rural economy, abd wiping our inherited knowlege systems at a pace nothing else can. As every farmers daughter and weavers son spend their learning years away from the land and the loom. Which they learn to look down on as well.

... and also dismantling the self worth of wise and ancient communities. Who see a building called a school come into their village. Which seeks to 'educate' them. Emphasising their 'ignorence' and 'backwardness'.

AdouSltgtrhusStd t9pons,fs oh2d01hrgSe6d  · 

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When did literacy and reading and writing become a more valid skill than farming and weaving ?

We claim it is, we school our children into inanity and a false superiority at being better read, and we proceed to school the farmer's child into a sense of inferiority.

If only we did not go schooling communities which should school us .

Into sustainability, into simplicity, into community living, into unthinking sharing, into gods.

Every village.

 

#AllWeNeed #RuralLivlihoods

If my children could all get good nourishment, if their parents all had rural livlihoods, I would seek no more.

They do not need schools. They are having a far more rounded education with crops and cattle and sustainable skills, and elders in a community passing down wisdom and knowlege.

They learn nurturing from older children, and all the adults in the community. They learn by nurturing smaller children. They learn that life move in co-operation and camaraderie, not in competition, and self promotion.  

They can educate the world, were the world open to listening. They can teach the world how to save itself from certian apocalypse today.

(another conversation)

... This degree-ization is an epidemic. In AP from those in their 20s downwards every youth will be degreed currently, or when they finish school. And then they wipe hotel tables. Total loss of direction in this land.

Here the village children get de-skilled totally. And unemployable. Here the village children get de-skilled totally. And unemployable.

And yet ...

• Sonali Rao

  A schooling that contributes little to a person's ability to be employable or skilled.. ?

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  Aparna Krishnan

  Till we restructure another world, till we and our children have the courage to deny schooling and the identity and privilege it has given us it is irresponsible to deny this one straw to the peoples. 

  Sonali Rao

  I have been merciless in calling out modern schooling. But I stand by the right of people to equitable schooling. Till we craft the other world.

Ending schools is a way of ending all privilege.

Automatially the yardstick of reading and writing which is all that we privileged have, gets demolished.

Schooling, and also the so called alternative schooling, invalidates all those learnings and skills that cannot be fitted into a school.

That includes farming, weaving, pottery, thatching.

Schooling means invalidation of every traditional skill. Every traditional community and wisdom.

Schooling everyone is simply our trick to make sure our superiority is established. In the minds of all.

Schooling for All is our final card.

tnSpgJoonunfe sdoar12,eif cc20mdl1ri7  · 

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Many of the privileged actually seem to believe that if the poor 'work hard' they can compete with them. And enter the same elite portals of learning.

Saddened. That the privileged, who are in charge of the policies that drive this land, live in such ignorance of the blinding realities of poverty. Realities of malnourishment, debts, overwork,hopelessness.

20Shyamala Sanyal, Priya Ramanathan and 18 others

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• Rupa Bajwa

  They also seem completely oblivious to the harsh realities of child labour (even bonded labour even these days).

  

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• Paranthaman Sriramulu

  The can come out of poverty slowly if work hard and discipline. It takes 3-4 generations.

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• Paranthaman Sriramulu

  Discipline means not drinking liquor

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• Paranthaman Sriramulu

  Millions have come out by this way.

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  • Rupa Bajwa

    And millions have failed to, despite discipline and hard work. The playing fields are not equal. (And the rich drink liquor too).

    

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  Aparna Krishnan

  Try adopting their background. Live their life for just one year - malnourished, waiting fore work every morning. After one year I will wait for your comments. Thanks.

SeffepttemSpobthcer nmts2sorf,cofS 2g0Slg1eed8  · 

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We schooled a generation.

Deskilled them in all rural learnings. Learnings learnt on the land, through growing years. With older wiser members of the community.

Taught them the inferiority of rural living. Every teacher and parent told them, "If you don't study, you will have to graze goats."

Today in the face of joblessness. In the face of unemployability. In the absence of the jobs they were taught to desire.

We advise them to graze goats. Many goats. We tell them that there is best return there.

And rue that they don't listen. Anymore.

To our wisdom.

SlSunetpSctemSbperonit u1o2s,tt i2co0t1s7heredt  · 

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Every other knowlege has been invalidated except what exists with the school walls.

The farmer introduces himself as 'only a farmer'. The thatchers son cannot thatch. The potter's son cannot make pots. They can be 10th pass watchmen or clerks.

That hegemonic control was the idea of schooling. When the Left and the Right and the Centre validated. Which Mainstream and activists validated. As they celebrated 'Schooling for All'

Sasi of a million skills, Eashwaramma's grandson, has been bullied back into school by all of us ... others worlds have ceased to exist. A phyrric victory.

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• Paranthaman Sriramulu

  Plumbers, Carpenters are so much in demand. Wish my father put me in plumbing school than engineer.

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  • Suraj Kumar

    That is the caste system within industrial society. But the tragedy is that we now run to protect the tap and plumbing than the lakes and rivers. But to make taps and steel and PVC pipes rivers must be dammed and polluted.