20110221

Trapped Child

The uprisings are going on in the Middle East - Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Morocco, Jordan - the people in this country will hopefully get what they desire and the unscrupulous leaders will meet their profitable extinction.

But now imagine being a child in one of these countries - current and future generations of children will be enslaved into learning and relearning new material - forever.

With the new found freedom there will be massive updates in the text books for these kids - listing below

1) History - (the worst and most effected)
- Now kids will have to learn and remember the names of all these leaders - Muammar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali etc etc.
- Also will have to remember the names of people in alliance to these leaders
- Besides there will be a whole list of martyrs, fellow citizens like Wael Ghonim and others to be remembered
- And if this is not enough - there will be a list of specific dates, events etc that they will have to cram up

2) Geography
- For now it is safe but if there is shuffling of boundaries or division of countries then that is a whole new load of before and after they have to remember

3) Civics or Social Science
- With the new wave will come a new form of government - Democracy, Social Republic or maybe Communist - so they will have to learn the structures of the government, role of each official, powers of the judiciary vs state etc etc.

4) Maths and Sciences
-Here I don't see a lot of changes - maybe I am missing something.

5) Religion and Philosophy
- Obvious changes in the way Islam or any other religion is currently interpreted and how it should be really interpreted in the new world.

6) Literature and Languages
- Here also there will be substantial changes
- New Poems and Prose depicting the whole era
- Maybe some foreign language added to the curriculam

Purists might argue that this is a good thing - that the children will learn something worthwhile.

But I argue that even in these so called educated countries of the world there are Bushes, Palins, Kalmadis, Berlusconis, Mubaraks and many other dim-wits -

Did they bunk school?
Or they really did not learn anything?
Or is school education and the ways of learning also need a complete upheaval?

I dread to be that "school going kid" again.

Here is a beautiful quote -

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. ~Rabindranath Tagore


But man ever so often discourages the Child............

Lastly a perfect Calvinism to all the educators of the world -

8 comments:

Compassion Unlimitted said...

The uprisings suddenly everywhere, is there a pattern to it .History ,geography ,name the subject ,everything getting included... Are the Book publishers behind all these mess..Ha Ha..

good one
TC
CU

ceedy said...

@CU

haha...its a possible conspiracy theory....imagine now besides all the textbooks - the regulars books on this issue that will come out and also all the innumerable movies.......maybe its a way to jumpstart some economies...lol

RiĆ  said...

Really....i wonder what will the kids learn....will it add any value to their lives!? Really dunno abt that one. Very well written. Liked the last one by Calvin.

UnderTheSameSky said...

excellent. as long as they're learning.

ceedy said...

@ria

Thanks...yeah everyday to me the current way of education doesnot make sense.....It needs achange

ceedy said...

@j

I am not sure if you got the gist of the post....

Satish Bolla said...

i agree with you brother. being in the center-point of one of these conflicts, i can understand how a child feels like. but the way u depicted it, is worth a li'l applause

ceedy said...

@satish

Me Bowing with grace