Of Cave and shadows.

Background: In one of the short work-breaks, we ended up discussing education today. Everybody started discussing - rather criticizing (some defending) the current system of education (internationally and locally). 

You know we have gotten the whole concept of "Education" wrong when you are in the middle of a discussion - criticizing the current educational system of Pakistan, and there is a very disgruntled student who is actively criticizing his university's Economics Professor - citing how the professor made the class undertake a project on Philosophy, and that too in Persian/English.

The very inability of the student to dig in and study the relationship before criticizing; coupled with the very confidence of presenting the example as a criticism against the current educational system says at length of how he, too, perhaps, has become the very victim of the same system. Blind and rigid to studying the subject beyond the realms of set paradigms.

By now, the same system has so beautifully and so silently captivated his thinking so well that even he does not know.

The biggest evidence of this system's failure is, that it makes you think that you know too well. It gives you the luxurious freedom of living an illusion where you think you are criticizing the system when you are, in actuality, speaking in favor of it.

For some odd reason, the above made me recall one of my favourite teacher's class of Philosophy, Logic & Ethics. The class where she narrated Plato's Allegory of the Cave. The compulsory credit course taught at a Business School, with apparently little to do with business. But perhaps, a lot to do with Life.

“How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?” - 
― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave