By Ruchira Samaddar
I was told,
Since I was young,
That education is about grades.
You sit down
In the dark corner of your room;
Scattered books splashed across your table,
Additional reference books and notes,
Criss-crossing to form a labyrinth
Of everything you are supposed to know.
Knowledge – that you are to impart in yourself,
By perpetual cramming.
Mugging up.
Beating into the last neuron of your brain,
Until you can recite every line of it, on your own.
In your sleep.
Until it oozes out of you everywhere;
In your exam halls, test scores,
Grades, ranks, institutions,
Interviews, promotions and more.
When you walk down the street,
The world should know.
One look, and they should know
That you have acquired knowledge;
That you have spent your days and burnt your midnight oil in the hallowed halls of academia,
That you have crammed in every word and aced every test – just like they had asked you to.
One look, and they should know
That you have sold your soul.
Just like they had asked you to.
That’s why the respect. The money. The recognition.
Our systems are so good,
At killing the imagination and wonder
That comes to us so naturally,
When we are born.
They teach us what to know –
What will give us a job, and buy us a house.
They do not teach us why to know.
Or how to know
More, if we want to.
They don’t tell us it’s okay to want to know more.
They don’t propel our imagination.
They don’t teach us how to fly.
They don’t tell us that the thirst for knowledge has little to do with worldly ties.
I spent my whole life getting myself ‘educated’;
And I have come to realize,
That perhaps Education was never about how much I knew –
How much I could cram or whether my test scores were good.
Perhaps Education was about me.
Here’s what they didn’t tell me;
Navigating this lifelong journey
Often alone,
And coming out in the end
Would empower me with a quiet confidence,
That henceforth, when I move through this world,
I shall move with grace.
Come what may,
I shall know that I am worthy of every last one of my dreams and hopes;
Because I have survived and thrived,
Through the treacherous journey before.
Perhaps Education is simply a twisted way back home.
Before we step out into the world – and blossom!