No Real Freedom till the Mind is Truly Free

The subversive elements in mainstream education adopted by India even after freedom.

As India celebrated its 75^th independence day, there's some things that must be discussed and brought out into the open about the freedom we have in our minds, our mental makeup and our thinking. There are many things that program us from childhood including our environment but a big part of programming happens via what is called education today.

This education was imposed on Indians by the British with the sole objective to impose mental control on us. While we've gotten rid of the British masters, sadly the mental models for us haven't changed and we are still programmed to think in a western framework which is essentially binary.

Sidebar: The slogan used for the diamond jubilee of freedom is a hotch potch of languages. Instead of proudly calling it “Svatantratā ka amṛt mahotsav”, it unnecessarily mixes Hindi and Urdu. Nothing against any language, but when one speaks English flawlessly, one should be able to do the same in any of the native languages too, and feel proud of being able to do so. Instead, this native pride has been transferred to the ability to speak in a foreign tongue which is ironic and sad at the same time.

Even today, after 75 years, we value the colonizers language far more than our own indigenous languages like Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Awadhi, Bhojpuri and so many others or even our own civilizational language Sanskrit which connects all corners of India.

This is actually by design and was a part of the indoctrination process as explained rather well in this documentary.

Did you know that even today you cannot argue a case in the Supreme Court of India in any other language but English. Almost all the higher educational institutions in the sciences and technology are in the English medium which is the language of the colonizer.

Ironically, a lot of this science was stolen from India and then repurposed and given back, often incorrectly (more on that another time).

At the same time, there's this undue value to what is termed education today and is imparted in schools and colleges with certificates and degrees being the final outcomes. 

What is Education?

You could probably call education in its modern form as the passing down of knowledge to enable someone to become productive, employable and/or entrepreneurial. If you agree with that statement, then all knowledge whether tribal, traditional or modern should be considered both valuable and worth passing on.

However, today's education system reduces all indigenous knowledge to be worthless, even if they praise them in books. It's the actions that actually count and the RTE act is an example of a death blow to such indigenous knowledge systems that have always depend on a transfer outside of classrooms.

Instead of actually picking up a valuable skill that could have generated employment or entrepreneurship for a child, it forces them to learn meaningless things that have no positive impact on their employability.

What's even worse is that everyone has to conform to a single unified curricula designed by people who have no experience earning a living except teaching limited knowledge from a limited set of books.

The method of learning is top/down and unnecessarily puts the schools and educators on a pedestal. It even makes the hilarious statement of equating them to ancient educators like Vyāsa to whom Guru Pūrṇimā is dedicated while not even doing them the courtesy of picking even one aspect from the ‘cradle of education’.

What's even worse is that it lifts the status of non-indigenous languages for the child and even imposes artificial mental barriers to their thinking. Most children educated in schools today from indigenous backgrounds are programmed to look down at their traditions instead of being proud of them.

The exact same template that was applied to the Indian people by the British colonizers is being applied to the indigenous and tribal people of India by their own people unfortunately in the name of upliftment. In effect, their traditional livelihoods are being delegitimized.

Even people in cities are programmed to look down at themselves as a society and look up at the west as a source of knowledge by incorrectly painting them as the originators of science and modern outlook and thinking.

In fact, in the civilizing mission document (which all Indians should actually read), Macaulay has said the following, "I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. — But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia . . ."

And, statements like this were used to impose the framework of the current education system in India which I believe is extremely unscientific. Not only has this enabled our colonized and slave mentality to continue, but the system has actually worsened even from its original form when unscrupulous groups with questionable agendas were given control of it.

The entire imposition was based on a foundation of lies about indigenous traditions, Sanskrit, caste systems and other such tropes which even today is unfortunately milked by politicians.

To understand why this has mentally colonized us, we need to go back to its foundations because the current education system doesn't just affect us, it affects most of the world as well. Countries that were colonized have been the worst affected and even today there's a humongous design flaw which makes us look up to the west at least from an educational perspective.

History Of Modern Education (Prussia)

Modern schooling in its current form actually took its roots in Prussia which can loosely be called old Germany. In 1806, in the battle of Jena, Napoleon's amateur soldiers defeated the well trained Prussian soldiers. This was mainly due to Napoleon being a very smart war strategist but the Prussians decided they needed to do something about it and blamed their loss on the soldiers lacking the required discipline. 

In reaction to the loss, via the address to the German nation, philosopher Fichte created one of the most influential documents in modern history which led to compulsory schooling in the west.

According to him, children would no longer be trusted to parents. They would have to be disciplined through a new form of universal conditioning.

It had very clear objectives.

1. Obedient soldiers to the army

2. Obedient workers for mines, factories and farms

3. Well subordinated civil servants trained in their function

4. Well subordinated clerks for industry

5. Citizens who thought alike on most issues

6. National uniformity in thought, work and deed

Individual choice was severely suppressed by Prussian psychological training procedures they had in the past used on animal husbandry, equestrian training, and some also from past military experience. 

The children now schooled were very easy to control on pretty much every issue. The Prussian soldiers were already pretty good without school, but after this they were unstoppable and even ended up defeating Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo.

But, the sad part is that this very same education gave so much control to the state that it resulted in the Nationalist Socialist (NaZi) party who meted out unspeakable horrors on fellow human beings without giving it a second thought.

The implementation of Prussian education was done starting in 1835 in India, and this is pretty much what we have today with the same design which includes age segregation, common curricula, linear thinking, meaningless evaluations and most importantly an authoritative framework which requires the student to look up to the teacher and the institutional hierarchy.

Indian parents like us who have been brainwashed by this very same education keep sending our kids to these same institutions call schools, colleges and universities and even pay for their brainwashing instead of finding where their interests and talents are and nurturing them.

Interestingly, there are hardly any successful people of note, who consider their education within these institutions as responsible for their success. In fact, here’s a list of a few prominent people who decided to forego this type of education at some point in their life and turned out fine.

Ted Turner (expelled from university) - Founder of CNN

Soichiro Honda (school dropout) - Founder of Honda Motor Company

Jan Klum (college dropout) - Founder of WhatsApp

Frederick Henry Royce (No higher education) - Founder of Rolls Royce

Amadeo Peter Giannini (school dropout) - Founder of Bank of America

George Eastman (school dropout) - Founder of Kodak

Mark Zuckerberg (college dropout) - Founder of Facebook

Wright Brothers (school dropouts) - Inventors of the aeroplane.

Thomas Edison (mostly home schooled) - Inventor of light bulb and more

Lee Byung-chul (college dropout) - Founder of Samsung

Richard Branson (school dropout) - Founder of Virgin Records, Virgin Atlantic,  Virgin Mobile, Writer of many books.

Ray Kroc (school dropout) - Founder of McDonalds

Steven Spielberg - Became famous as a director before getting a college degree

Bill Gates (college dropout) - Founder of Microsoft.

Steve Jobs (college dropout - cofounder of Apple

Milton Hershey (Only studied till 4th) - Hershey Chocolate Company

Scott Fitzgerald (Failed college) - Regarded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century

Michael Faraday (Only 2 years of formal education) - Famous scientist

Walt Disney (school dropout) - Disney

Ingvar Kamprad (no higher education) - Founder of Ikea.

Abraham Lincoln (Less than half a year of formal schooling, self taught) - Lawyer, President

Albert Einstein (school dropout) - Scientist

Henry Ford (school dropout) - Ford Motor Company

Jack Cohen (Elementary education) - Founder of Tesco

Nikola Tesla - inventor

Frank Lloyd Wright (no college degree) - One of the greatest architects in the world. More than 1000 building designs.

Marcus Loew (elementary school dropout) - Founder of MGM, Pioneer of motion picture industry.

Charles Dickens (school dropout) - World renowned writer

David Ogilvy (kicked out of college) - Advertising legend

Ansel Adams (school dropout) - Legendary photographer

Muhammad Ali (no higher education)

Subhash Chandra (school dropout) - former chairman of Zee Media

Dhirubhai Ambani (school dropout)

So, what did we actually replace with this modern construct is the question. What were its values? What was the pedagogical nature? What can we use from there even today? More on that next.