Oh, Get Over Yourself!

I've been sitting on this for so long, I can't even find the words to begin. Maybe narrating this as a story will help?

Moving back from the US to India had been one heck of a shift, in many aspects. For me, the most noticeable (and most complained about, I'll freely admit) shift happened with the education systems of both countries. I've tried putting that shift into words many times, but I never seemed to find any. There's a fundamental strictness in Indian schools that there isn't in American ones. In two years, I'd just about had it. I had a glorious nine-minute rant about what I'd discovered.

Creativity and individualism seemed to have no place in my school. I realized that I was the teachers' beloved because I was "responsible." But my sense of responsibility only stemmed from my ability to make mistakes and learn from them. But how was I supposed to fare if I wasn't even allowed to make mistakes?

Education is an interplay of many things. There's a lot of young energy in our country, and a lot of them only study to get a stable job. Then there's the fact that teachers seem to view students as blankness that needs to be filled – with no room for protests. Students are not allowed to think for themselves. In a bid for top scores, we have ideologies shoved down our throats, with little to no time to process what's happening, and even lesser time to personalize those ideologies.

Rigorous course material, the bid to cover it all in ten months, class sizes of over twenty, and the sheer expectation of the highest scores. This is the scene in which the student cannot make any one subject their own.

I've always been weirded out by myself when I talk about my love for science or astrophysics as if the fields were people. But that's only because I consider these subjects my subjects. My zone, my love, something I've personalized. And I imagine that every student must have this – this zone, or a subject they can call their own. The thing is, under the thumb of the school system, even their own subject can become detestable. The cause for that, I believe, is the frustration that comes from not being able to personalize that subject. Loving a subject, to me, is like loving a person. There has to be a two-way street, room for discussion. Does the student get that from school? For how long will teachers hide behind the standard "you're too young to be discussing this" trope?

That was the main object of my rant. Someone also pointed out to me that there's another motive behind this – establishing a sense of security that comes with superiority.

Which brings me to: Oh, get over yourself!

The things people do to feel secure in themselves! The rich oppress the poor, MNCs exploit laborers, teachers rule classes with iron fists. It's a long fall from the top, I get it. But if humanity is to succeed as a species, shouldn't we forgo iron fists completely? What kind of "social animals" will we be otherwise?

Wouldn't the world be better balanced of everyone did what they loved, or simply did something out of the goodness of their hearts? Why is that so hard?

Original date of starting: January 7, 2019
Original date of ending: January 8, 2019

Dedicated to a classmate who understood my struggle at a deeper lever than any of my other peers.