Education 3H model

People didn’t know how to do that anymore, brew some proper coffee. Just like that skill of baking bread or even drilling a hole in the wall are lost to many. While I understand that there is a case to be made out for simplifying life and making it comfortable, the loss of basic skills is lamentable. It is important to reflect on this problem, rather than pass it off as a generation gap. The present generation is probably one which will never experience the fear of ever getting lost thanks to the availability of digital data.  

Things we take for granted like the availability of power, pure drinking water and clean fuel for cooking in the Metro cities and the Western world are absent for 13 –15 % of the population. Even among the rest the distribution is very unequal. This really leads to problems of disease, malnutrition and infections and epidemics. So, we live in two worlds the world of scarcity and the world of plenty. Both have their set of problems which lead to different problems.  

The world of scarcity and adversity makes people hard working resilient and gives them the incentive to acquire unique skills for survival. A hard life creates strong innovative people who earn by the sweat of their brow, using physical skills. Such persons who have grown up in times of scarcity are not rendered helpless even in bad times and can fend for themselves in adversity. They have strong immunity and body constitution that can fight disease. Contrast this with the new generation who lack nothing in physical comfort and do not know of any scarcity. Just deny them Wi-Fi data, power and water for a few hours till the cell phone batteries or power back up die out, and they are panic stricken. This is because they literally do not know how to light a candle, nor remember any number to call in an emergency. Without data they cannot find their way to safety. The world of plenty is responsible for the spread of non-communicable diseases on account of a sedentary lifestyle. The epidemic of obesity and degenerative diseases dulls the mind and leads to laziness and lethargy.  

As for myself my prescription to the world is to follow the middle path of the Buddha and this cannot happen overnight. It can only happen through radical educational reform. It is in this context that education which gives importance to learning, creativity and skills is needed. This in modern times is known as the Head, Heart and Hands curriculum. It can also be a combination of Jnana (Knowledge), Bhakti (Devotion) and Karma (Work). Nai Taleem is the name of Gandhi's style of education. The education inherited today was from a British system designed to create clerks for the ruling elite, create brown sahibs instead of white skinned ones. 

On doing a google search I realized that the original idea of this rounded education came from Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss social reformer and educator also known as the Father of Modern Education. He lived in the 17th and 18th Century and believed in democratization of education to create responsible citizens who could act with skill, feel and create with their heart and think sensibly with their head.  

So, the story began with brewing coffee right to make the perfect blend but ends with creating the perfect human being by blending qualities of head, heart and hands. In the book called Man called Ove, I think I saw a perfect example of this kind of person who in the end showed what a highly skilled man with a big heart and a huge amount common sense could achieve in adversity which seemed to drive him to suicide.  Rediscover the past and combine it with the present and you will create the ideal citizen of tomorrow.