are we really living our lives ?

March 3 : Seems to me like the judgement day that we all fear. So much depends on 5 days that they emanate a feeling of divinity. Stress finally seems to be getting to me. All of my days are spent fighting myself over whether i should do what i like or do what is apparently important for me. This uptight mind forces me to raise questions that i otherwise would not. This state of affairs forces me to think if its really worth it all. Frankly, i think that this whole idea of education is ridiculous in India. I mean what are we gainin by getting educated in a system that is more dependent on our learning skills than our intelligence or IQ ? Anyone can get through this schooling system by remembering some text. But is he learning anything ? Human tendency to condense every knowledge into books is the culprit here. Sure, books help the survival of knowledge, but a lot of things, almost everything, is better learned by experience. After all what is the use of knowledge if you don't know where to apply it. A student who is stupid enough to think about what he is doing comes out of school disillusioned and paranoid. It seems that the best way to be able to earn a living here is to follow the system blindly. 'Choosing' your career is virtually non-existent in this country, as is 'following your dreams'. The rule is simple : if you want to live a calm life, just live by the rules of the society, if you try to follow your own path you will be ridiculed, accused of insanity and even blamed for having a bad effect on the children who look up to you. But are'nt you showing them the right path ? Should'nt experimentation be the right path ? Should'nt you decide what is good for you and what is not ? Should'nt we explore our possibilities and improvise on what we had thought out for ourselves ? Should'nt we learn from our mistakes and make a life out of our experience rather than live a life deemed perfect based on somebody else's experiences, dreams, mistakes and overall lives ? Politicians mark literacy as mark of human progress. But that is what it really is 'literacy'. It is not a mark of education. Ask half of these literate people any basic question about a topic they must have studied at school, not even half would remember what that topic was about. Of the ones who would remember would remember it vaguely, and half of those who would remember to your satisfaction would be teachers. So can you call these people educated ? I certainly won't . And i think that this problem is not limited to only India, it is the same in every country. What we need is a system that teaches by application. We want that the people should learn something every moment we live and put whatever we have learnt into use. Sure we would know more about what we do, but even in what we do we would understand what we are doing instead of just following some algorithm on what and how a thing should be done. For us the chance to learn this way has gone but let us not keep our children from really educating themselves.. . . . .