I believed in the future. The 90s movie, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, was a big part of my childhood. I still remember how I believed in the movie, and was consumed by Sarah Connor’s fear of the machines taking over the world.
It was not until at least a couple of years after watching the movie, in the mid-90s, that I came to realise that it was only a powerful, beautifully-crafted script and movie. The horror was different from anything that had scared me earlier in life, and so it was the obscurity of the fear itself that consumed me wholly. Nevertheless, that particular fear abated, and reality sunk in my imagination.
It is almost two decades after that very time in my life when Robert Patrick haunted my daydreams -- and as I sit witness now to something quite intriguing yet depressing, that visceral fear from yesteryears resurfaces. In fact, the account of my witness did not take place over a moment or a night -- it has been a gradual realisation.
And in a few years of observations of connected and isolated incidents, it finally dawned on me: Even as a child I was right: The machines will take over the world sooner than later, just not as dramatically as in the apocalyptic Terminator 2. Nevertheless, it is a daunting reality that we stand witness to.
As I sit witness to the archaic and flawed education system that only inspires children to memorise study materials in order to excel in class, as I sit witness to school bags gaining tons in weight, and as I sit witness to children shuffling and wobbling between textbooks and margin lines, I begin to firmly believe in the future when machines will take over. It is quite obvious. The inevitable reality that we are shaping now is a result of the long process of robotics engineering that has been in motion for years, or maybe decades.
It has always been the rigidity of a school curriculum that triggered the age-old debate among educationists and experts: If what we are teaching children about the practical world benefits them more than the damage, it encroaches on the scope of their respective creativity. However, now the point where we stand in terms of the school system and examinations in Bangladesh proves such a debate to be fatuous.
We are, in fact, engineering robots.
Children are exhausted under the heavy weight of the school curriculum, which seems to require too much of them in every subject. School hours do not mean much, except time confined between ding-dings and space confined within designated rooms with particular numbers dictating the level of memorised texts a student has accomplished.
There isn’t much room for anything else anyway, as teachers realise the meaninglessness of overcrowded classrooms and their underpaid profession, they often deduce the most sensible solution to such an impossible problem is to tell students to come after hours for help when the “after hours help” usually means only monetary benefit for the teacher, and an even more exhausted soul for the student.
Some teachers are only looking out for their own interest, and urge to indulge in lucrative means of income. Few mean well and give in their best effort to teach and inspire students, and even fewer do the impossible -- overcome all kinds of bureaucratic havoc, improvise the set academic curriculum, and pen something ingenious that not only enables them to teach but also inspire students.
These are the exceptional cases -- the diamonds in the rough. And that is what these teachers, few in number but commendable characters, are trying to accomplish -- that extra polish to help students outshine the rest of the world. Wait, isn’t that the mere purpose of the education system?
I apologise. I digressed.
We are, in fact, engineering robots.
Exceptions cannot redeem the creativity pool that has been quenched by the existing education system. The hours that have been taken out of a child’s life can never be redeemed -- hours taken for the mere purpose of “educating,” which only transpires to be a process of either spoon-feeding innumerable facts and information to an already stuffed child, or asking the child to be more intelligent simply by understanding the jumble of words and numbers printed on the textbooks.
Yes, child. You must understand -- understand the languages, mathematics, history, geography, religion, science, computer studies, and some other important thing. Never question, only understand.
We are, in fact, engineering robots.
Sometimes, the child may hesitate, become confused, stressed even for having to unload school bags only to pack up “coaching” bags. And the child may question. It is only then the ever-so-“educated” and concerned parents and teachers step in and resort to “educating” by asking the child to understand (since spoon-feeding did not work out). Only in a stricter tone and posture to insinuate an even stricter discipline that exhausts the child and finally consumes his or her will to question.
Then, the child is told again to simply understand. Read it again, it will come to you, they say. When, in fact, the authority only wants the child to manage somehow under any circumstance to bite the study materials and chew as fast as possible. Gobble up, swallow whole, chug it in by whatever means, the student must learn all the chapters and sub-sections of every subject handed to him or her.
Choking is a common side effect, but then there are means to clear the stomach and start again. When time is of the essence, the child is encouraged to avoid the chewing step all together and just swallow and retain the information till the final ding-ding of a bell marks the end of the exam.
We are, in fact, engineering robots.
Force-feeding children to learn too much under a short time, because it is the modern age where the Internet makes everything easier to “look up” and learn, is one of those arguments that can make even Sarah Palin pause (for a while).The argument that better standards of living and better facilities make it feasible for children to adapt to the competitive world at large, and excel in such an education system, baffles many. There isn’t much that can be said to justify the uncontested academic pressure exerted on children with multiple examinations such as Primary School Certificate (after successful completion of five years of schooling) and Junior School Certificate (after successful completion of eight years of schooling). Let alone the widespread practice of sending children to “coaching centres” after school hours only to spend almost as much time there as they do in school and “learn.” What are they really learning?
We are, in fact, engineering robots.
Creativity is a thing of the past. Comprehensive evaluation is an alien concept. Everyone wants to be on the fast-track, and everyone includes teachers, parents, relatives, education authorities, school administration: Basically everyone except the children.
When did education become just competition? Grades and scores were never the only objective. Can we seek redemption? Can we unscrew the metal that had been put in children to help them memorise periodic tables, and names of countries and presidents? Can we allow them to explore creativity? Write stories or paint their imagination on a white canvas?
Can we reverse the education methods? Can we teach in class that a grade is not what defines our lives, but it is the knowledge, the stories, moral lessons that we sustain and can recall after 10 years of school life? Can we stop force-feeding? Can we at least allow them to chew slowly with time? Can we allow them to choose subjects and careers?
I apologise, I seem to have digressed again. All that may sound idealistic. So for now, to tackle the problem at hand, to tackle robotics engineering -- the making of machines that lack creativity, compassion, ethics, can we do the bare minimum to stop self-destruction? Teach to inspire children rather than exhaust them with deadlines, syllabuses, and exams. Teach to inspire children to do great things and not become great machines.
For the lack of better phrasing, can we hope that we are not too late, and that we did not in fact already engineer Robert Patricks and Arnold Schwarzeneggers?
