Why should education be commercialised? Is it a necessity? Or has it become a commodity?
A custom–aka-fashion has become the quantisation of education today which was “once upon a time” (as narrated in stories) was as serene, a precious boon in one’s life!
Rooting to my memory way back in 1994, a 4 year gal, amidst the spicy vapours of my mother’s kitchen, I relive my momma flaunting her father aka my grandfather’s degree of masters in English to her party of women, let alone what she had acquired! I deigned then, I wondered a bit later, I ponder a lot now! Master’s degree of my thatha (grandpa-as he’s fondly called) acquired decades ago stands so powerful, even the PhD of my uncle in the same science of words beholds a fall! (No offense meant though)!
Aghast I am! Worrying about the scene that faced an “alarming transience” to only reach the dirty pit of selfish and haughty money cravers, using education as “an ace in their pack of 52 cards”!
Beholding the society as an eighteen year old engineering student, I worry about my brother’s attitude in the very near future of his where he would imagine finding himself safe and secure in the illusively bounty hands of his dad who would by any means get him a seat, no way, but money, if not merit! But alas! Perish would the mind of a thirteen year old boy in the compromise!
Accepting the exceptions of a few prestigious institutions, education after grade 12 has sadly and sobbingly become a highly demanding and a costly affair! Pity! To not keep it blunt, highly demanding by the institutions who demand ransom and highly demanding and an embarrassing to the parents who have to carry research in satisfying them! But are they succumbed to do it? No! Perhaps they are catapulted to do it.
Can’t merit be the only guiding criteria? How can money ever play with, like the dice that rocks and rolls in a snake and ladder game? Can money seize control over the merit of a student beseeching seat with all due eligibilities, over a student whose born into an affluent situation to flaunt the same? Money can dictate several kilos of rice, litres of petrol, landlord’s properties and possessions or any accessory for that matter, but not the knowledge that educations pairs with.
Let’s not drive the precious bowl of education into the vicious hands of money. Let’s all realise that education is way far costlier than it is weighed for, perhaps it has no scale! A 10 lakh capitation fee cannot be used to mortgage education that can be permanently swivelled by one’s own will and power , of not money, but an uncorrupted effort towards the latter.
In a hope that, the scene leaps a transience, only to better, at least by the time I attend the convocation for my PhD, I depart with the following wish
“Long triumph the purity and soul of education!
Let it not kindle and maroon with the maladies of society”!
