How dare you question ? Wern't you schooled ?

[caption id="attachment_271" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Questions must be integral part of schools and learning"][/caption]

I believe that world could be a better place and a lot of our problems could simply be avoided if :-

1.) We had the ability to ask important and fundamental questions.

and,

2.) We saw a possibility of being able to discover the answers to these questions that we find important.

Sounds too simplistic to be a world changing plan ? Perhaps !  But quite often the answers to most complex questions lie in simplicity.

Imagine if each one of us was asking following questions at some point in our life –

1.) Why are we here ? What is our role in the universe ?

2.) What is the significance of life ?

3.) What are various other ways to live life, apart from one that we are told to ?

4.) Do we have any responsibility and if yes then what is our responsibility as Human beings towards other human being, towards other living beings ?

5.) How much wealth or success is really enough ?

6.) What we doing with our lives ?

7.) Why are we the way we are ?

This list can go on. The questions by themselves are unimportant. It is the questioning the fundamentals that matters.

Many of us might dismiss most of above questions as “spiritual, religious” or “Metaphysical” while others might consider them “existential and essential”. This is immaterial. What really matters is that we all “ask” some fundamental questions, some important questions. Not with undertone of “philosophy” or “profoundness” but with sincere longing of discovery for one’s own self, with conviction to understand our world and life better.

Unfortunately, we have stopped questioning systems, beliefs, procedures. We have stopped “questioning” itself. We are too full of answers, pseudo answers while we are empty of real questions.

To question requires thinking, examining. Questioning requires keeping aside our beliefs and looking at things fresh. Questioning activates intelligence. Intelligence supports questioning.

Why have we stopped questioning , asking fundamental questions ? Of many reasons, our current education system stands strongest. Our schools discourage questioning right from childhood. A child by her very nature quite inquisitive but we do all we can to suppress all her questions, especially the important ones. Our text books holds the questions to be asked and the answers to be memorized. A slight deviation and you can be in trouble.

We need to bury the old system that suppresses thinking and questioning and hence makes us unintelligent and create a newer movement where questions are encouraged. Schools should be grounds of asking burning, uncomfortable questions. Teachers should question together, support discoveries. A true schools should be a meeting place of rebels, who dare to ask, question, investigate and commit to find the answers.