Breaking The Education Caste-System; Barriers To Contentment

Left & Right Brain. Logic vs Free Flow. Science vs Art. These compartments, though important in order to best serve a singular focus in their study & pursuit, have bled into the collective consciousness of our society in a manner where they have, for years together, across generations of students, become hard-points, non-negotiable boundaries based on which families, educators, institutions, students themselves included, measure their intellect and choose streams, subjects, careers!

The historic inheritance of this educational-food-chain is interesting though to invest time and space in regurgitating it here means to devote even more time to what’s happened, rather than what could now be done. It may have worked once upon a time, though now, it is an entirely different time.

Interesting, that on the one hand, an increasing number of large corporations and employers across the western world are displaying a clear preference for candidates who have ‘alternative’ undergraduate degrees – read arts in particular, as they are seen to be more creative, inventive; we in India, for the most part, are still stuck in this archaic and frankly irrelevant system of Science, then Commerce, then Humanities

You’re either a Dog person or a Cat person, so goes the cliche. Mostly true. Though to treat the Science-walas as a breed unto themselves, always to stay a safe distance away & parallel to the Art-walas, is plain naive. I have known any number of individuals who equally enjoy and are talented at, on the one hand Chess, and on the other, Sketching. Are they all geniuses? Certainly not if their slightly above average IQs were the yardstick!

Then of course there’s the little matter of history which I earlier referenced. To equate an India of today, and by that, her people, to a Colonial System, is absurd. We are well and truly in a digital era, one where even in my own rudimentary understanding, a human resource would stand to benefit the self and the organization if they were to be a combination of left & right brain faculties. 

Another narrative that feeds into the elevated pedestal given to the Science lot is Competitive Examinations. Granted, exams that determine Engineering, Medicine college admissions are amongst the toughest in the world. However, I can’t help but wonder if the brilliance ascribed to these candidates is not more a consequence of the sheer numbers of test-takers. And I’ll tell you why I have this sneaking suspicion. Because tests that the Humanities & Arts walas are required to take, the ones that get you into Law, into Mass Communication colleges; they are no less a test of one’s scholastic level than any others; the number of people vying for those spots being relatively significantly less, somehow seems to cast aspersions on their inherent intellectual merit (of the exam itself)

There is also the facet of potential careers that must be examined as yet another perpetuator of this narrative around the intellectual-divide between the aforementioned streams of study. The broad assumption is that careers generated by and post an education in the sciences are more lucrative. As someone who has inhabited the creative realm for a long time, was an active part of the media industry for over a decade, I can tell you from personal experience and observation that while there may exist a disparity between packages offered to engineers vs say individuals in creative roles in advertising and such; this gap not only turns into parity fairly quickly, it can often turn tides entirely in favor of the arts-related personnel. What tends to happen is this. Granted, the starting salary of someone joining advertising, pr, films is likely to be noticeably less than the counterpart in the sciences work-sphere; the sharp learning curve, the performance & meritorious expedient rise in the creative spaces tends to be immense. This is borne out by the fact that generally speaking one finds sectors such as advertising, digital media, content creation, to be largely and relatively younger sectors. It wouldn’t for example be uncommon to find a mid-30s person being the Creative Head with a VP rank at a creative agency, with a CTC that rivals and outdoes age-equivalents in other segments

In the grand scheme of things, the final analysis and judgment in the Indian context tends to rest with Family & Society. The overbearing interference and influence of family upon an individual’s most critical life decisions, while one could debate, serves the undecided and/or unfocused well; for scores of young people, places them on paths that, in cases, might even generate the desired livelihood – but whether they generate even an iota of happiness & contentment, is a question we ought to seriously ponder.

While I do see a perceptible change in newer/younger parents’ attitudes, in percentage terms, this group doesn’t even constitute a rounding percentage point. The current generation of learners and students is often criticized for being selfish, insular, self-centred. I for one believe that if, out of that focus on one’s own priorities, is birthed a degree of personal contentment hitherto not experienced, I am happy to be sidelined by my own daughter in service of her own happiness! -

by Kartik, Founder Driveway Devi