On the flight, this evening, I was glancing through the newspapers and when I read the expression “Mothering Impossible Dreams” by a columnist in detailing a profile, I was quite impressed with the expression and without any shame I decided to borrow the same expression, lest it would take ages for me to coin an appropriate expression to convey what I really felt our educational institutions should be doing.
Alchemy, an ambitious pursuit of the human mind was almost a journey mothering an impossible dream. Never did the seekers of gold got their dreams realized, but their journey was quite exciting, and on the road to this impossible goal, they did discover many a gem relating to various facets of life.. So was the pursuit for Elixir De Life.. the human mind and its scientific discoveries are yet to conquer the death, but they have been able to identify many products which could help in protecting and preserving health. The journey for an impossible dream was a reward in itself .
History is evidence to the fact that the human dreams which were initially impossible, turned into reality, thanks to the penetrative analytical and critical thinking competencies of the human mind. All that is needed, is to conceive the dream and comprehend, articulate and give it a design – and let it germinate in a focused direction exploring all the avenues and options available for its healthy growth - building in its embryo, the spirit of adventure, enterprise and meaning.
The future ecosystem of education will have to nurture and nurse these processes as the speed of emergence of new knowledge and skills will be mind boggling; and the schools would have to necessity restructure the existing curricular concretes letting the walls of the classroom open and breathe certain fresh air – enabling students to seek newer vistas and values of knowledge and skills, through multi-disciplinary learning and using the synesthetic features of the human brain. The power and value of knowledge and skills will speak volumes of its relevance and lifetime.
Concepts initially nebulous will have to take their own time to seek space, position and meaning for themselves in the existing knowledge structures and infuse their own genes for cross-cultural thinking to emerge either as satellite structures of the existing eco-systems or shape and develop as newer bodies of knowledge in the universe of knowledge. Dreams which could not find shores of reality, will get themselves marginalized and will organize their own burials.
This exercise indeed calls for a bold initiative on the part of educational institutions so that they can let the new generation move from fights and flights for survival to an exciting living process in their intellectual universe. Social and global accreditation of the dream structures and pilots, will determine their success and the learners would thus reorient themselves to seek real-time validations of their knowledge capsules and workstations.
A careful analysis of the existing structures clearly indicate that the system is haunted by “Learned Helplessness” syndrome – a protective, self-defending and monotonous delivery model that inhibits experimentation as it would challenge the safe homes of the intelligentsia who may not be comfortable to be questioned, and who would not like their comfort zones to be disturbed or dismantled. The scenario needs to change and it will.
Mothering Impossible dreams, possibly, is an idea that educators involved in policy articulation and decisions need to debate and decipher, as that would be the defining pedestal and destination on which the future generations would be competing or collaborating!
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