From 'Gurukuls' to Schools...and a student's life.

Gone are the days when parents used to send their children to the ‘gurukuls’ or teacher’s home where there used to be a ‘guru’, a teacher, under whose tutelage the students used to obtain all their life lessons. At the end completion of their education, their teachers used to ask for his fees (gurudakshina) from his protégé depending on their learning and capability. This system though made great warriors and priests, it had many flaws within its folds. They never sought to teach remove the barriers of social inequality like the Brahmins were not allowed to enter in the gurukuls meant for other castes and vice versa. Back then the women were not allowed to be educated beyond kitchen management and child bearing. The gurukuls had a blind eye towards it.

With the passing of the eras, the system of gurukuls has evolved. Now the modern schools have become more accepting and encouraging. Now a student is free to attend any school, not caring about his background, girls are being educated and are breaking the boundaries of kitchen to fight for their own identity.

Eventually even this system began to be flawed slowly. With the huge amount of commercialisation, even education has become an investment for the parents. Education has obtained the same impression of any other commodity. The more it costs, the better it is. Thereby this system has brought an economic division, and the school one goes in has become a ‘status symbol’.

The changing in the system has also made a great deal of change in the student’s life. Along with creating an economic sieve, a few schools have also made it just too unreasonably difficult to crack their admission tests. To get you admitted in one of those, there are a lot of coaching classes. Even for those seeking admission in kindergarten. They are supposed to know to do stuffs like sharpening your own pencil and know your ambition in life even before you join school. Adding to the fun, there are coaching classes or pre-schools to get you there. Hear money raining?

After losing his innocent days, in pursuit of a good school, he finally gets there, into one of those colleges. Right from then he is given a number of tutors for making him learn what he was supposed to learn back at obtained-with-difficulty school. The number of tutors increases with the number of subjects. One can easily find any secondary or high school student to return from school, drop their bags, grab a few bites and rush for their tuitions.

Even when the books and multiple teachers do not suffice, there are a lot of further books that teach you to ‘pass’ or score good in the examinations, and the fact that they are all potent bestsellers, clearly indicates that marks are everything rendering knowledge almost no importance. A child building a wind powered toy car is seen as nothing compared to the student who was able to write about utilization of wind energy, in a better way, in the exam.

After struggling through almost his entire childhood, one has to appear again for entrance exams of various colleges. For that again, yes there are, the coaching classes come into play. Shell out some more and be there. He gets into a college. Now the student-soon-to-be-a-man has been duly inculcated with the lust for marks and job.

Doing all the chores of education and passing through all the stages, he is finally settled. Being a product of a huge commercial investment, he now has the burden of proving his worth and sets the target of earning money and life in his mind and thus rejects a job in the school in the outskirts of the city.

Dalai Lama’s words on the most surprising thing about humanity..

“Man. Because he sacrifices his life in order to money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.