Schooling and Success and Insecurty

All that schooling taught me.

1. After 12th when I did not get into IIT, it meant that I was worthless.

2. Afterwards when I got into IISc it meant I had some worth.

It took years and years of unlearning to regain balance.

- To understand that neither exam meant anything. And that in both I had given up my real sense of worth and self esteem to some narrow exam results.

- And that these exams, and everything else beginning from the ranks given in school, had only promoted competitiveness and jealousy in me. And fostered insecurity and arrogance, alternately.

- Understanding that co-operation is what has worth, and not competition meant unlearning everything school had fostered in me.

It took a village, illiterate, poor, assetless. Rooted in wisdom. A community knitted together into collectivity. To even make me see all this. In stark clarity.To understand that what matters are only higher values. Of empathy, of sensitivity, of courage to walk the thought.

The damages of schooling will take a long time to undo ...

Work in progress ...


Prashant Dwivedi So true and honest. It may take a lifetime to undo what schooling did to us. But the most commendable is the last phrase, work in progress. My salutations..



...

Every prize or award, and adulation, a child gets, if only we realised it, is one more brick removed from her free thinking ways and being.

That glittering tinsel will make her dance to its tune, and give up freer, wiser, happier possibilities in the attempt to secure the next piece of tinsel.

Happiest that child which never won, or seeked, a prize.

She may grow into a happy complete adult who cares little for name or fame or outside validation.


...

#Schooling

Schooling taught me to seek to be first in class !
Schooling taught me to rejoice in doing better than others !

Still undoing the damages that were wrought in those formative years ...