Page 26 - XITE Magazine 2020.cdr

Annual Magazine Is education merely a matter Sanskriti Gupta

of passing examinations???
B. Com 1st Year

What is a common thing between students, teachers, professors, technocrats, bureaucrats and all other
professional is ..... Some would say it is skills, some would say knowledge; some would say it is amalgamation
of all these qualities, but I would name this alloy-“Education”. Education in today's world has become the
measure of a person's success. But, how do we really measure “Education”? Is it something that helps us to
pass our exams and bag hefty paying jobs or it is something more than that.......?

Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, when asked how his education had helped him and what meaning it carried in his life,
remarked, “Education is not only the enlightenment of mind and brain. My friend, it's the enlightenment of
our whole mind and soul.”None of them have defined it better and I could have agreed less. So now the
question arises, are what we getting in schools, colleges and coaching centres the “real” education”? Let's
imagine a scenario, a child is first sent to nursery, then school and coaching centres, college and then finally
one day he is recognised as a citizen of the country. Now he has to stand on his feet and earn his own living.
How does he do so? He takes his certificates, mark sheets and resume, to the so called organisation where
they make him wear a suit and a tie and make him their “puppet”. If one has seen the film “Tamasha”, then it
very aptly projects this routine of a man's life. This is the scenario of the life of a person in a growing and
developing country like India.

Each year, we are given sets of examinations to prove whether we have educated ourselves sufficiently and if
we can score above the cut-off marks, which would promote us to the next level of 'education'. Here I would
like to make it clear, that I am not entirely against this examination system, but it is indeed funny as to how it
only takes one red mark to decide our fate.
Education for us students has become nothing more than burning the midnight oil and pouring out all we
learnt the previous night into our answer sheets. Mrs. Sharma's son is an engineer from IIT. But does that
make him an educated person? We have limited only our education to what is written in our textbooks and we
rarely apply our education in the real world. People like Steve Jobs, Nikola Tesla, Bill Gates and others ,
might have failed in a few tests in their schools and colleges, but they have succeeded in life's examination.
And being educated for the examination of life is what matters the most.

Textbooks do teach us moral lessons, but it is our own conscience that directs us to help those who have
starved for the last few days.

As a parting note, I would like to say that in this debate I stand entirely 'for' the motion “Education is not
merely passing examinations”. It is indeed true that passing some of these exams will give us our dream jobs
in life, but it does not define us. We are defined by what we do and how we touch people's life. Even Steve Jobs
touched millions of lives with 'apple', but it was his personality that stood out. We must educate ourselves to
become better humans and that would be true education. However, it rather strange that I have spent the last
one and a half hours on this argument and may not have touched anyone's life yet. Does that make me
educated? I don't know........!!

24 Volume-VIII, 2020