Agnostic's approach to Life and Education

As one journeys through life, one realizes that there are no final answers ! Even the most scientific answers are only partially true. What was considered objectively correct few decades back is no longer valid. For instance, what we knew about Matter or universe and believed to be true in times of Rutherford does not hold true today.

Life is perhaps, by its very nature unknowable in its wholeness. We can only find partial and temporary truths. Hence, the approach that might be best suited for life is that of "agnostic". Literally, "agnostic" means - one who does not know and believes that many things can't even be known,  although over time it has taken many other connotations.  But what we are referring here by agnosticism is an approach that realizes the limitation of knowledge and acknowledges the temporariness and partial nature of truths.

This is as true in case of "education" system as in case of anything else. Education, yet remains to be demystified. We still know very little about how human beings learn, how schooling affects us and society and how can one intervene in the learning process of human mind. There are millions of such unanswered questions but many of educationalist claim themselves as the "know all" and offer solutions to our problems in schooling system. While the fact is - all the wisdom combined, all the researches put together - we cannot even answer one simple question in education - "How do we learn ?"  Hence an agnostic approach in education is not only more realistic but can also be more effective.

We need to understand that we do not really understand the process of education and what actually goes on in the classrooms !

Once we have this as our foundation of our belief system, our approach to life and its problem will change. From the "all knowing experts",  we become "seekers of truth".

In agnostic approach, school must become ground of experiments, collective learning and a field of millions of questions. It must stop being a repository of ready made answers, its people pretending to know everything about children, about how and what to teach them.

The first implication of agnostic approach in education will be to question everything because we have mistaken half truths for facts. We must start from what should be the role of schools, what must be taught, how can it be taught, why it must be taught and so on.

The central question of agnostic approach is "What do we do, when we are not sure of what to do ? " 

Entire school will act more like a learning community. A place where all including students, teachers, parents are exploring. "Conversations"  form the blood of such a learning community.

Agnostic approach does not and cannot offer a pedagogy or a "to do" manual for schools. Neither it is a panacea for all our problems. It is just one step closer to reality. It takes away the burden from us and our schools of "knowing everything" when we really don't know much and provides an opportunity to have a closer look at issues and find more realistic solutions.

What makes us what we are ? - Schooling or Family ?

If you go to a new school/place and be with kids for couple of days and then meet their families or just know the personality traits of each one's parents. I am sure you can map the parents to their kids with a very high rate of accuracy.

Most of the kids are photocopies of their parents. Parents have maximum influence on the kid's thinking process, behavior and personality. This is sin on parts of parents, committed mostly unknowingly.

It seems to me that under most cases - schooling and education is almost insignificant in terms of defining who the child becomes. Schools might add certain skills or habbits but the major trends in the child's personality are dictated by family , primarily parents.

Perhaps, on the surface the child might look different but if we go deeper we will start finding strong influence of parents. This is irrespective of what school he/she went to, Summerhill free school or St. Mary's factory model school. This is also true of most of the adults especially till their mid age. When we begin to discover that schooling is more or less insignificant in shaping who we are, we need to really rethink our reality and purpose of education. What impacts today's children most are parents, media, internet.

I am reminded of a couple I met in Auroville, Pondicherry who said that the first thing we need to understand about our children is that "They are individuals themselves".

We assume kids to be like clay to be moulded to our wish instead of human beings with their own intristic nature. This fundamental shift needs to happen both in schools and at homes. Parents concerned with real education of their kid will take every possible care not to transfer their own baggage onto their kid. The baggages of beliefs, religion, opinions and habits.

Each child should be seen as an individual, as a seed who knows its destination, its true nature. Parents, home,schools and teachers can at best act like soil to provide certain favorable conditions like love, care, protection to assist the growth. They should not try to control the growth and take in their preferred directions. Only then we will have real individuals. Only then we can have a world that's not like ours where we have more or less 6 billion carbon copies. Only then we will have schools making human beings not labor for industry or researchers for army.