The focus of the discussion seemed to be on how exam oriented education is and that takes its tole on a sensitive subject like environment. Real experiences being invaluable in disseminating any meaningful environmental awareness. Now here I am wondering back to my school days where by class nine pretty much half my class was on full fledged IIT or Medical preparation, all set to don the professional jacket and go out into the world and join in the shining growth we glimmer in these days! As David Orr puts it, the sustainability of a person's life style is inversely proportional to their educational qualifications! Adding an environmental education syllabus to the whole shebang is nothing but a mild placebo at best. Not without its evils though as an engineer with a vague environmental consciousness is probably far better at disguising the impacts of development than his merrily oblivious brother.
Another thing which seemed strange to me is how lopsided the understanding of the word environment is. People just don't figure, nor do adapted environments like urban scapes. Its all wild life and forests, rivers and wetlands. If social disparity, human habitat and development is not seen as part of the environment in this day and age i fear we are cuddling up in an imaginary world.
Not to be defeatist, i feel that education really needs a revamp. The relevance of the schooling system and higher education should be thrashed around a bit . . . linguistic skills, basic mathematics and the like form an essential skill set with which you could say call someone literate. Why that requires a 12 year education beats me. I may be ignoring the need for an educated elite for the time being but that really has enough going for it anyway! A 3 year syllabus without the exams and competition, aimed at simply imparting literacy and basic education should really be made out. Now that it seems we might actually have a census of everyone in the country, Mr Sibal should make sure that all the kids have the opportunity to avail of this stripped down syllabus. Further education should like most first world countries be divided into academic and professional. Why are our masons not trained? Or our mechanics? Its sad to see great mechanics languishing in their old age when they could be teaching or researching . . . In not the disparity in pay scale directly linked to the undervaluation of manual professions . . . should this not be the goal? Rather than continually train armies of engineers who then need environmental education to rein them in from their inherently consumerist progress driven education! The last thing which I feel is really important is the localisation of education. Being an architect, it is probably in my field more than any other (apart from agriculture) that I see the disconnect with local knowledge having the most dire impacts. The concrete boom fuelled by the large corporates and government policy gives us a world we aspire towards. Now I can't take away the dream of a comfortable home free from the worry of the rain carrying away your roof or snakes hiding in the corners, but I know that a solution to local problems exists in every situation, maybe it is concrete maybe it isn't! Empowering the local knowledge base and integrating it with the present is the way forward. Strikingly, all the engineers I met in arunachal come from a rich tradition in bamboo craft, house building, the works . . but in one short generation with the aid of education they have lost all interest in the craft. It is all but alien to them. So instead of a promising tribal youth who has studied engineering working on innovative ways to take the bamboo craft further, he is simple alienated from it all together.
Sometimes the mind really needs a purge . . . cheerios for bearing :)
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