Ends of rainbows

There seems to be an ambivalence of attitudes towards the arrival and ongoing presence of IT in India and how it has woven its way into various mindsets of education; but actually it might be an ambivalence that is much older than this most recent technological wave we are calling IT.

At one end of the rainbow, IT has been accepted with open arms and enthusiastic fascination as great thing for a country that seeks to build a solid base of experts in a field that has taken the planet by storm as it wraps its digitized magic in wondrous interlacings of creativity, innovation and evolutionary commercialization.  A whole multi-layered matrix of schools, trainings, academies, institutions and universities compete within the highly competitive playing field of education, moving hundreds of thousands of students through the intricacies of instilling a solid basis of core skills in preparation for their emergence into this vibrant space.  Cities like Bangalore, with its “invisible downtown” somewhere around MG Road and Brigade, have completely redefined themselves as “the place to be” for tapping into the dream-stream flow of IT innovation.

At the other end of the rainbow is what you might say is that distant end (there always seems to be a distant end): the end that is a bit more vague, maybe a little out of focus, hazy, misty, effecting a sense of not so much settling upon horizons as much as a shrouding of an understanding of what might be a horizon, that seems to find solace in resting within a state of emitting some essence of not quite being where it seems it might be. 

This end of the rainbow is imbued with a feeling that IT has somehow confused the way people – students, parents, teachers, administrators, and on and on and on – see, embrace and evolve the role of education. 

Being a person who has so many times caught myself tending towards those vaguenesses of misty rainbow shrouded horizons, I find my attention here also being drawn towards listening to the ways people have been describing what seems to be a quite nascent feeling – that IT has somehow muddled and confused education to the point of disregarding elements like social implications and realities of self. 

For instance, when defining career paths.  A former colleague of mine summed this up quite nicely when he said that “IT has brought about a very solid attitude of ‘education as an investment’ that has led so many parents, and their children, to view education within a mindset of a need to stay focused on the path to success.”  I’ve been told that there is huge competition for students to attain best grades for best universities, starting all the way from preschool.  One person told me that some schools for children do not have playgrounds because they are so “academically focused” that playgrounds are seen as “distractions to learning”.  Many of the for-profit schools are working within the dynamic of passing students through the well-tended landscapes laid-out with clear trajectories of potential towards success – what one person described as a “channelized vision of education”.  One person said that there is a danger of building high expectations without enough effort being put on framing academics with “the right picture of the reality” right from the beginning so that students don’t get disheartened when the reality shows up…

But there are many activities and initiatives that are seeking to bring perspective into the views of education , consideration of career choices, and reality checks on how things might be “out there” – and it was surprising and inspiring to me to hear that there is one initiative that came into existence well before all of the momentum of IT had even reached first gear in its shift from grinding mainframes to finely-wrought flows of data upon a landscape of seemingly endless potential.

VEDH (Vocational Education Direction and Harmony), a TED-like event for kids around the age of 14-15, is now in its 22^nd year of existence.  I was fortunate to be able to attend VEDH in Nashik on 2 December, and although most presentations were in Marathi, I was able to feel the energy and enthusiasm of the panelists and the students and had some great discussions with some of the organizers.  This year’s theme was “Impossible to Possible” and the presenters took up this theme with their own unique personalities as the moderator, Dr Anand Nadkarni brought out their best.   

My understanding of their attitudes and feelings of hope and strength was defined through the kindness of the the man seated next to me as he occasionally whispered various phrases in English:

You all have opportunities and awareness that you can take charge of your own future.

Spend time with yourself.

What you know and what you are passionate about may not always be represented by the system.

Turn your passion into your work and you will be fulfilled.

Every moment is a mix of so many things, but it is harmony.

Believe in yourself and others will believe in you.

It was an amazing experience to sit there and hear these whispers, to see these people on stage who have remained focused on dreams of taking awareness and understandings of their own self into a future defined not by “the channels” but by vision and fortitude - and then to turn and see 3000 students and parents hearing these words in their local language and think that those moments might be moments of inspiration that define some element of some of their futures.

Maybe the misty sort of rainbow-end isn’t so misty after all, but is there to be brought into a clear focus of the destination to make of it?