Dear school leavers, don’t believe all the stories that will be told to you about the world you face | The Indian Express

Dear school leavers, don’t believe all the stories that will be told to you about the world you face | The Indian Express

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta |Updated: May 10, 2019 9:19:25 am

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is vice-chancellor of Ashoka University. He was earlier president, Centre Policy Research, New Delhi, one of India's top think tanks. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU.  He has written extensively on intellectual history, political theory, law,  India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize

Dear school leavers, don’t believe all the stories that will be told to you about the world you face

It is hard to imagine education as a free and equal space, unless broader society lifts the threat of oblivion from the heads of those who do not achieve by its lights.

The freedom we urge upon our students runs into a world of necessity and constraint; and the promise that education will be the pathway to equality exposes them to a new kind of inequality. (Express Photo by Sahil Walia/Representational)

We often think of education as the means through which social problems and contradictions might be mitigated, if not resolved. But often the reverse is also true: The larger social structures constrict educational possibilities and the way in which we imagine the relationship between education and life. As another generation of school leavers enters college or the job market, we will console them with familiar platitudes. Do not place undue emphasis on marks. We need a greater supply of institutions of higher education so that competitive pressures for admissions decreases. Choose an educational pathway that you like, rather than conform to social pressure, and so on.