Demise of Knowledge

Every one of us has faced the wrath of endless examination nights, endless courses and never-ending syllabi. Scribbling my notes on my project a thought swept past me and while deciphering some real complex equations of probability, I realized that despite all my efforts and diligence to know the subject and to understand it, I know nothing of this vast universe of knowledge!

We discuss the pros and cons of the education system, but we fail to realize that the education system was not devised by fools but rather it is us who perceive it wrong.

Even if it is a primitive way of teaching, as many might think, it has its advantages and disadvantages. But my point here is not to discuss what or how should our education look like, rather I am here to tell you what we, students in general, think education is all about.

I don’t want to sight names but anyone from my college will agree to the fact that there are people who deserve better and are better in many ways than the rest; are left behind not because of their knowledge but their inability to score.

It might just look like an excuse coming from of a six-pointer and I leave this decision for the reader to make.

However, if you are still reading, the pertinent question that you should be asking is, is the score really that significant?

Unfortunately, the answer is YES.

It is not wrong. It might sound like I am somehow against the idea, but that’s not true. Everyone wants to be successful and these grades and marks are one way to distinguish yourself from the crowd.

The more pertinent question is “At what cost”?

We spend hours learning what we are taught, we put in a herculean effort just to make sure that during the exam we do not forget what we read. Is this what education is all about? I think the very essence of knowledge is know-how. Knowledge itself is “KNOW” so why not try knowing what is happening around us or in fact what is happening inside those lines and pages that we read for the examination?

We, including me, never spend enough time unraveling what is written in the subject but rather when the time comes we prefer to mug it up and then vomit it out in exam.

But then again what should we do and who is to blame? The answer is it’s us.

We spend hours repeating the same old story before every exam yet we never choose to change..why? because of the same reason that everyone does Grades!!

Why don’t we choose a better way even though it is long and takes a long time to cover up .? Simply because we don’t want to spend our energy which can be done simply by memorizing things. Even that is ok. Everyone follows the path of their own but the menace strikes again when the whole world has the criteria of judgment based on the villain GRADES.

People who follow the difficult path, the path of knowledge, are often left behind in this race as their journey takes very turbulent path. Knowing a subject is very time-consuming and can be difficult to manage, but who cares, it’s the MAGGUS who going to win in the end because the ones who want to make a difference are left behind.

We see that these people who had nothing to do with knowing how an algorithm works write the entire program they had memorized and one who tried hard to understand the algorithm tries his best to build the program in a scanty amount of time ends up face-down on the ground and the winner thrives and succeeds, killing the very thing he started studying for KNOWLEDGE!!!

PS: 17th March - 2024: The original text was written by teenage me, which only he can understand. I have tried my best to clean up the spelling, grammar and some continuity, however, it is a very old article written in an era where there were no IMs, and every character had a cost.

The original article can be found here.