A good measure of kindness

Isn’t education all about students growing into concerned citizens?

It’s somewhat hackneyed to comment on the approach of the year’s end, but I’ll do it anyway. This is my last column for the year, and that’s enough reason to remark upon it, don’t you think? It is also the 51st instalment of the Backpacker’s Guide and the rucksack continues to surprise me with its contents. One of the pleasures of writing a column is getting to hear from readers, and these responses and comments feed into new ideas to write about.

In response to the last fortnight’s column, many people wrote in with examples of how they had been able to either stand up for certain ideals or intervene in the system and force positive change. However, these brave people seem to be the exception rather than the norm, and I’m sure many of us have been in situations where we have stood by feeling helpless and unable to do anything.

While some of this has to do with how we are socialised — in the home and among our peers — a good chunk of it might also have to do with how we are educated. Even a cursory look at the adjectives that are used to sell educational institutions of every hue will reveal a dominance of words that relate to the idea of competence. Schools and colleges build skills, provide knowledge, make young people market ready, create leaders and achievers, people who can stay ahead of the race.

We’re all so busy running the race that we forget why and what we are going to do when we reach the finish line, or what we become in the process.

It’s not very fashionable these days to talk about human values. I’m not getting into a morality lecture here but it strikes me that in all this selling of education as competence-building, we lose sight of that other major task of education—of humanity-building. Our time in school and college is supposed to open our minds to the rest of the world, to make us realize and appreciate the connectedness of things, so that when we become part of the working world, we understand the consequences of what we do and how it affects other people.

To some extent, we become inured to all the talk about being considerate and kind because it is couched in a self-righteous language that makes us want to rebel. The other problem is that kindness is often mistaken for weakness. We wish to be seen as strong and confident, sure about our actions.

Kindness makes us pause and shift our focus from ourselves to those around us. It can demand discomfort. It can mean we put ourselves and our professional development on hold at least temporarily while we re-chart our decisions.

Of course, all kind acts do not demand that we give up something. But we often set aside kindness because we are afraid that it might take something from us, that we might lose out in the race if we pay too much attention to such things.

In fact, most parents focus almost entirely on academic achievement during the school and college going years, and show little or no interest in whether the young person is also growing to be a caring community member or concerned citizen. We all assume that this aspect of personality evolves naturally — but does it, really?

Our years in school and college are certainly about building skills and knowledge. But they're also about growing into balanced, healthy individuals who can contribute intellectually, physically and psychologically to the world we live in. An over emphasis on mental development does an injustice to the other aspects of life. We do have the mandatory “socially useful productive work” or outreach programmes designed to build empathy, but these too end up being about marks and grades rather than anything else. Students who do find these enriching are the exception. This is partly why there is a flourishing extra-curricular business in teaching life-skills and building emotional intelligence — our schooling effectively removes these aspects from our personalities.

It's a sad commentary on the world we live in that we need to “teach” and “learn” something that ought to be taken for granted. Yes, technical competence is extremely important, and I am in no way suggesting that we downplay that. But it has no meaning if it is not accompanied by a good measure of kindness. This is something that is worth keeping in the face of a system designed to rob us of it!