To my old headmaster...

"At times I am grateful to the education system not for teaching me what it taught me but in keeping me busy with it to prevent me from possibly going on a self-destructive path."
I have never been a fan of formal education because in my opinion you don't really learn a lot in the schools beyond getting literate. A lot of time I felt that the schools and studies should not be given as much importance as they gets and the kids should be let free a little more. The burden of books is weighing them down> the bags should be lightened and they should be allowed and encourage to explore things that may be more meaningful to them.

Inspite of this I belief, when it comes to kids dear to me like my nephew, I feel that they should study and get decent enough grades. I can't understand why this bias exists but it does. May be it is because I am not liberated enough or may be because of the unhealthy spirit of competition the current school system generates. I want Bharat to get good enough grades if only to have more confidence in himself.

It is not limited to my nephew, when I think about my past, I sometimes feel almost grateful that I went through the entire thing myself. This thought comes to me when I see what other kids of my age, some of whom I used to play with, have done with their lives (Neither they nor me is a kid anymore but we did started out as kids with similar opportunities and similar limitations maybe because of our social status).

One guy (I won't write the names of any one here) got into bad company, he started drinking and quit school. I don't know what he used to do for a living but a few months ago he died leaving behind a wife and a few months old kid. No points in guessing he died of alcohol. That guy started out just like me. He used to play cricket with my friends and me but he went down a completely different path. Actually not talking to him after growing up is another interesting thing. After our paths changed, we failed to identify with each other and so the long conversation changed to short ones, then to hellos before we almost stopped acknowledging each other.

He was an extreme example and not all of them have ended this way but they are not too better either. All the kids who quit education early are either struggling to make both ends meets or are living on the money of their parents. A lot of them are alcoholic and I don't know what else they do.

So although I may feel there was not much of a value-add in school education but just the fact that it enabled me to eventually go and seek education that is useful to me, makes up for all the time spent in school. Seen from a different perspective, it was sort of a preventive facility. It occupied me enough, kept me busy for most of my time that I didn't stray and got into destructive things even before I have to chance to understand life and had an opportunity to do something constructive and positive in my life.