Education System - Are we completely lost Globally?

Modern education system of our time is producing educated people but with least knowledge of use. Students strive to learn a lot of subjects of which they excel in only limited and also only limited people are able to do. Putting an effort of almost 16 years to finish university and ending up as master of none is a real pity. Education system of past was concentrating on useful knowledge gain through student teacher interaction and without restriction of school boundary. It produced great people in every part of globe but our modern system failed to do so and we can count on fingers the number of people who left an impact during last 2 centuries.

Almost all great achievers of their times received minimum formal education or a combination of formal and informal education. Formal education as defined by current situation is simply a diploma generating mechanism. This formal system can be traced back only to 500 hundred years. West mainly developed it. Its a famous story that when British planned to take India, their Consultant told them that education system of India was producing people with useful knowledge and skills and this must be changed. Therefore they introduced disciplined education system where students were memorizing the logarithms that were of least practical use for them. This disciplined system is also mentioned in a great book ‘Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and The Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives’ By Jeff Schmidtas. He wrote, ‘For understanding the professional, the concept of ideology will emerge as much more useful than that of skill.’ In short skill is missing from our disciplined minds!’

What exactly was the system and reasoning which produced greatest minds of their times? There were two major reasons behind the success of that system. First one was undisciplined education system. The system was not forcing one to become some one but it was facilitating him/her to become what he/she intended to become. It was a flow of knowledge from teacher rather than the books. Second reason was concentration on a single subject rather than trying to learn many.

Undisciplined education system implies that there was no boundary for place or content. One needed not to go to college or university to get the knowledge. It could have been achieved at any place. The greatest scholar of his time Avicenna   learned astrology from a grocer who happened to be an Indian with its knowledge. In old times we frequently heard that great journeys were made by students to reach some master of its time and gain knowledge from him/her. As a result of such journeys the student was not attending classes from the master but in fact was spending time with this great master. During that time he/she was able to learn the habit of education. Ibn Khaldun considers this habit of education more important than education itself. Famous British Historian Arnold J. Toynbee considers Ibn Khaldun, the founder of philosophy of Economics, some branches of Psychology and Study of Civilization as creator of the greatest valued work. This habit was neither achieved through spending a semester with the teacher nor with 40 minutes lecture a day. It was almost 24 hours in touch scenario. It is known that Avicenna was able to takeover his teachers by age of 14, this was the main reason! It also implies that content was not strictly dictated. Students were able to choose subject of their choice. We know it can be of great value as also mentioned by Hazret Steve Jobs in his lecture at Stanford in 2005.

In Islamic school of thought teacher has always been important. It is said that great Caliph and companion of Prophet Mohammad, Hazret Ali stated, ‘who ever taught me even a single word is my teacher’. Teacher student relationship has always been key to success. A student used to be proud of his famous teacher and vice versa. When a student was able to supersede his/her teacher, the teacher was more than happy. A teacher used to have thousands of students of a certain subject. Bahudin Zakeriya, a great scholar based in Multan is said to have more than 20,000 students attending his lectures on religious matters at same time. Today a similar approach is used using World Wide Web by ‘coursera’ a web site providing free online courses from leading University teachers from Stanford, Princeton, John Hopkins and many others.

The second reason was that minds were concentrating on a single subject. Modern science is telling us that human brain can learn almost anything it wants. A child can learn several languages before age of 5 and many other things. In fact it is the half-truth and half-truth is always more dangerous than a complete lie. Yes our brains can learn almost every thing, but not in the way modern formal and disciplined education system is promoting. Looking back at giants one can see whether it were Greek, Pagan, Roman, Muslim or Modern Age scientists, they worked on a particular issue for a very long time. This long-term interaction with a specific subject did not stop them from becoming master of other subjects also. Almost all great achievers were good at Philosophy and Logic, which are quite contradictory subjects. Therefore being an expert in one field does not hinder success in any other.

From Muslim achievers till 12th century one can see that most of them were equally good in many fields. It took only 2 years of Avicenna at age of 16 to become the Royal Physician. His statements about healthy body and combating with diabetes are same as used by modern age doctors. He is also considered as father of clinical treatment and diabetic diagnosis. (Ref: wikipedia, Avicenna) He acquired basics of all this in 2 years. Similarly he wrote few hundred treatises on Mathematics also. There are numerous such cases. Similarly Al Jazari, the father of Robotics spent his whole life working on mechanic systems. He was also inventor of world’s first automatic water extracting system and drink machines (Ref: History Channel, Al Jazari). Similar has been cases with Galileo, he was unfortunately enrolled in modern medical college but when he discovered his interest in mathematics, he shifted to it and later worked in that field, and this happened because he accidentally attended a geometry class! We all know that Darwin spent a good part of his life studying evolution although he was intended to become a doctor but ended up as a naturalist. Sir Isaac Newton worked extensively on selected fields. However unfortunately the gravitation theory proposed by him was exact copy of the theory explained by Ibn Khaldun in his famous book Muqadimmah (1378).

One can easily see that modern formal education starts with a bit of this and a bit of that approach. A student may end up spending 16 years of education to become Jack of All but Master of None. When we see the successful athletes or sports men we clearly see that most of them have concentrated on a single skill and succeeded. A similar approach is required while educating the children. Quoting Ibn Khaldun, the greatest evaluator of civilizations, one can see that he wrote in Muqadimmah’s part on education system that a child should start learning music, then astronomy, logic, philosophy etc. for 2-3 years each and religious education should not start before age of 7. Considering this suggestion of 2-3 years, one can see that great mathematician Omer Khayaam spent 3 years learning math, Avicenna spent 2 years to become a physician.

For a comparison reason let us calculate the time required to gain a good base of a certain subject as per modern education system. If a student in formal modern system studies on average 2 hours a day a certain subject making it 10 hours a week (of 5 days) or 40 hours a month. For any 1-year education system it is almost 10 months making it 400 hours. If continued for 16 years, it makes 6400 hours. Now taking another student who studies a certain specific subject in accordance with his aptitude and age for 8 hours a day will need 800 days to finish same material which is simply not too more than 2 years. Somewhere back in history some one was clever enough to play with the education system making it wasteful for students.

Lastly, let us see what Noam Chomsky who is considered as father of modern linguistic and most important intellectual of our century says about education system. ‘According to Chomsky there is an instrumental approach to education. It is characterized as mindless, meaningless drills and exercise given "in preparation for multiple choice exams". Chomsky suggests that society simply reduces education to the requirement of the market. Students are trained to be compliant workers (Ref: The Educational Theory of Noam Chomsky, 2011 New Foundations). Very last information about this great master of our time, Chomsky's primary education was undertaken at Oak Lane Country DaySchool, an independent institution that focused on allowing its pupils to pursue their own interests in a non-competitive atmosphere!