More than just textbooks

 The Nation

“Education is something no one can take from you,” a relative always advises. To most, this seems like another way of saying one must spend each day studying. One would picture a student under a lot of stress surrounded by thick books. However, is this all education is? Are the only lessons we learn taught to us in a classroom?

A child’s life consists of so many exams, it’s a surprise we survived it all. Entrance exams to school, monthly tests, term-end exams, year-end exams, scholarship exams, Ordinary Level and Advanced Level. You think it ends there, when you walk away from school for the last time as a student. And yet, there’s a whole lot in store for you. University exams, and courses followed in order to bag those promotions at your workplace. No longer is experience a qualification. All that matters are the As and Bs.

However, the As and Bs are useless if they are for all the wrong subjects. Sri Lankan parents suffer from Doctor-Engineer-Lawyer - DEL Syndrome. Their children are worthless if they don’t study to be a doctor, engineer or lawyer. “After all the sacrifices we made for you, you say you want to be an accountant? So grateful you are!” parents would tell their children. In a family where my cousins and brother are all in the ‘science’ field, I often feel left out when they discuss their futures. Often, people think the whole ‘writing business’ is a hobby or passing phase. Why? Because according to society, no girl, especially one who went to a ‘Colombo School’ should be seen in a place as lowly as a ‘newspaper office.’ And why is writing not good enough a career option?

Forget jobs and degrees. Look at a child’s school life. How many are allowed to take part in extra-curricular activities? Most parents look at sports as a time waster. “You have an exam in ten months, what are you doing running around a track?” Or they would want to know what job you can get by showing all those certificates and awards you won at sports events.

Sadly, today many don’t see any place outside a classroom as a place to learn. The field or pool or court won’t teach you anything, people assume. However, isn’t life our greatest teacher? Do we not learn when we lose to another? Do we not learn when we work as a team? Do we not learn giving up shouldn’t be an option?

Thus knowledge and education remain important. Yes, you do learn from text books. But you also learn from novels and memoirs and other types of literature. While the school syllabus will teach you History, Geography, Mathematics or Psychology, life will teach you about friendship, love, and acceptance. And one is not better than the other. Knowledge, no matter where it is gained, is important. You may think learning about your country’s history doesn’t matter, and yet, what we learn from those text books make us proud of our roots.

Thus, education or knowledge cannot be taken away from us. We can share it with people, but unless we forget, there isn’t a way we can know less than we did yesterday. And there is no place that fails to teach us anything.

However, the DEL Syndrome of many adults limits us. We decide to follow their own paths, and forget our dreams. We choose to forget the lessons learnt from non-academic activities, and thus we become robots who can recite verse after verse off a text book, but we can’t write verses of our own.