Did My School Prepare Me for My Society?

Whenever I hear a student or any graduate asking this question, I always think that the right question they should or ought to ask themselves in place of this is ‘Did I allow my school to prepare me for society?’

School is described as an organized environment for the purpose of adding values to the lives of members of a society through teaching and learning. What society does through schools is educating, that is, making known to the people of the society something that is previously unknown to them. So, knowing the unknown is what we call ‘knowledge’, and that is the essence of going to school – to possess knowledge, skills, minds and virtues which one needs to survive in the society, (and which hitherto going to school is completely unknown to them). If you say, ‘did your school prepare you for society?’ my question for you is, ‘everything you know today, do they come to you by chance, without ever going to school, without any contribution from your schoolmates? Your teachers?’ if your answer is NO, then it means your school has performed or is performing its duty of making know to you; the problem might probably lies with you.

Whatever is credited to your brain are those things that you know – your knowledge; whether you like it or not, society rates you based on your knowledge, and your chances of getting job or you creating jobs yourself is based and determined by that knowledge of yours. This is because all about school is society! Whatever you have come to discover about your society from school, whether good or bad, are all knowledge. Knowledge can be the discovery of a problem and it can also be the discovery of a solution to a particular problem. But whether problem or solution, all is called knowledge – and both are still parts of the same society and both can become money for you.

Schools are not there to help us discover only solutions to problem, they are also meant to help us discover problems as there might have been. There must be problem before solution. Your participation in learning age – whether through formal or informal means – is to know and discover something about something; what you want to know and discover something about is in the society. Society is the inspiration behind all its schools; it is the foundation for all of them and the reality of their existence and the reason for their establishment.

Society doesn’t establish school without having reason for it. The need must be for it. Society needs people for some specialized services for its people’s sake; it needs those that will be managing its technological services; it needs people who will be protecting the lives and properties of its people and its territory; it needs people that will be helping it managing the financial issues – the cash flow, so that there won’t be inflation or the other; it needs those who will be teaching its people how to access instruction and information, and the help of those who can stand between its people and the spiritual entities. And for these people to be qualified to handle such services, there must be a means of training them – and that training centres are schools of all kinds. That is the essence of establishing schools – training people to serve people for a benefit. And to ensure that the people to be trained are well equipped before their training period (learning age) elapsed, society arranges and organizes the last step of the period (university and other higher institutions) to look just as the society itself – that’s why there are different kinds of religious bodies, organizations and associations within higher institutions with lots of chances and time for students to participate in some activities, such as doing student-based businesses, rendering volunteering services, watching educational movies, having time for group discussions, etc.

Then let me answer the question with Malcolm London’s statement in his 2013 Tedtalk which he gave while he was still an undergraduate. He said, “I hear education systems are failing, but I believe they’re succeeding at what they’re built to do – to train you, to keep you on track… ”

The truth, dear, is that your school is succeeding in its purpose of establishment. I don’t believe there is any school that is failing in that aspect. If you have been seeing graduates out there who say their schools fail to prepare them for society ask them these questions as I’m asking you, now, ‘How do you study while school?’ ‘Do you study both theoretically and technically?’ ‘How often do you put into practice on your own, aside assignment, all that you are being taught in classroom?’ ‘Are you only exploring the library or exploring the whole school in totality?’ ‘In your exploration of the school, do you explore it consciously or unconsciously, with aim of learning or with aim of flexing?’ ‘What can you confidently say you have allowed the school to change in you?’ etc.

The reason for these questions is that while schools prepare for students both academically and practically, most students (larger percent) only prepare for schools academically. Only few prepare for schools in both studies and these are the students society celebrates in truth.

I don’t know how you’ve been going through your school or how you did while still there, but I do know that exploration of classrooms, library and lesson-notes only can give you as much as course or discipline knowledge, while it’s only your self-teaching and school totality exploration that can give you elements of education such as outspokenness, confidence, inner strength, ability to decision, taking risks, knowledgeability, creativity or ability to improvised, etc which society needs. If your discipline knowledge gives you job; elements of education help you stay and grow in the job.

The only reason society allows the features of real society in higher institutions is to give you the elements of education. It is their exhibitions that will tell society and its people that you have really been to school because those elements will activate your knowledge, lift it up, direct it, sharpen it, position it, protect it, expand it, sustain it, advertise it and most importantly make you happy that you have acquired such discipline knowledge.

One of the reasons most graduates consider their course or discipline knowledge irrelevant and not useful in their society is because they lack those elements of education which can help them position it to the right place. As a matter of fact, these elements of education are what make a difference between two personalities of the same academic qualifications, and they are what most employers want to be sure of first in their prospective employees before considering their academic standard.

The Tyranny of Experts (Part II) – Experts and Civil Society

Experts are valuable, necessary contributors to our diverse and specialized society. But they cannot and should not be used to constitute or replace civil society. Indeed, the idea that anyone can claim to be a civil society expert is troubling. Civil society needs to be composed of a broad and diverse array of people throughout our societies. The internet offers us an opportunity to radically expand civil society, to debate all of the ideas and ideologies that shape the world, and to publish our speech around the world. We cannot abandon this field to experts, particularly not the much vaunted experts of civil society.

What is an expert? Experts and expertise are usually recognized through degrees earned, publications, experience and notoriety. There are good reasons for each of these things. But each of them can also be troubling. If degrees and titles make experts, then we need to carefully, critically examine the curriculum, the quality, and the ideological biases of our degree offering institutions. If publications make experts, we need to be aware of the obscurity or audience of journals and the public and private funding sources for research. Experience is very valuable; but there are plenty of rich political donors who have become consular officials without a shred of expertise. Notoriety is the most troublesome of the signs and symbols of expertise.

Famous experts are often assumed to be better experts – false. Famous people and celebrities often mistake themselves for experts and think we ought to care what their expert pronouncements are – really false! In addition, experts tend to congregate together and pat each other on the backs by awarding one another fellowships, grants, distinctions and prizes. The Ivy League is the country club of expertise. The longer you hang around, the more your expertise will be burnished, brightened and expanded by all of your expert pals who slap you on the back. Finally, success begets success. People who gain degrees, earn awards, grants and fellowships will earn more of them. If you have not broken into this club by the first year of graduate school, you are unlikely to join it later.

Civil Society Experts

A wide array of civil society experts are called in to analyze, explain and advocate prominent policy issues. From the scientist and the statistician, to the economist and the literature professor, to the historian and the constitutional lawyer, to the retired general and the retired ambassador; there is no shortage of experts to tell us how to think and act and vote in this complicated world of ours. Now we even have technocrats – those elite experts who blend modern technological training with state power to produce utopia in developing nations like China and Chile, well, eventually maybe. Then there are the experts who are not experts. Politicians and rich people, reporters and pollsters get tired of having to ask the experts or hire the experts or hunt around for someone with an advanced degree to advocate their position. So they step up to the mike themselves and are transformed into pundits. But in the end, none of these civil society experts provide us with civil society, or solutions to the problems we must work together to solve.

In the last generation we have seen the rise of a new expert – the technocrat. This is the ultimate melding of expertise with power. Now instead of simply elevating the powerful to power, we elevate (powerful) experts to power. Hey, I love meritocracy. But let us not confuse engineering, business or science degrees with the ability to lead nations and states. Scientists, engineers and CEOs are no better or worse than anyone else at voting with principle, debating important issues, or leading communities.

Perhaps most prominent among civil society experts are scientists and statisticians. Statistics is an important tool for making valid conclusions based on small data sets. But statistics is also undoubtedly the most commonly misused tool for lying in politics, the media and civil society. Next, scientists are specialized professionals who master specific tools and methods for investigating specific, narrow questions. They arrive at provisional, evidence-based answers to those questions. They do not claim to discern truth, morality, wisdom or sound public policy. If you hear a scientist claiming any of these latter findings, then you are listening to a person, who happens to hold a PhD, who also holds an opinion that may or may not be informed, effective, wise or true. Scientists and scientific research are also very expensive, and so they are paid by someone or other. The sources of funding do not determine scientific results, but they can reflect policy analysis and advocacy.

Social scientists form a lower tier of civil society experts. These can include – Political scientists: who analyze politics and may try to tell you how to vote. Economists: who analyze the economy and may try to predict the future (with predictable results). Sociologists: who may or may not perform experiments on small groups of people, then tell you what is wrong with your society and what to do about it. Historians: who analyze the past then complain that you do not know about your past and that everything you think you know about the past is wrong. Anthropologists: who used to study remote cultures and now study ritual in any culture and will tell you how your culture is oppressing some other culture. And so forth. In related fields, literary and cultural critics abound in English, foreign language, and comparative literature departments. Scholars of literature and the arts consider themselves the primary experts on culture, mediators of high culture, and interpreters of all discourse, rhetoric and cultural expression. As a historian myself, I love social scientists and scholars of the humanities. They are often passionately devoted to civil society. But that does not make them experts on civil society.

Lawyers, constitutional lawyers, and law school professors form another common array of civil society experts. These people are trained to think critically, to read and write carefully, and to debate with acumen and rhetorical skill. Lawyers are legal experts, and so if you have legal problems, they come highly recommended. But in other circumstances the society of lawyers tends to make communication incomprehensible, extremely expensive, combative, and fraught with hidden landmines (read any small print lately?). The central problem with trusting a lawyer-expert is that you can find a lawyer who will argue any position. They may believe passionately in it, or they may simply believe in the virtue of arguing for their client. In short, lawyers are useful people to pay to support your position; but that does not make them civil society experts.

Finally, former government officials and diplomats are ubiquitous civil society experts. Former domestic or foreign policy advisors-now pundits, former generals and military officers-now private contractors or military advisors, former ambassadors-now think tank fellows, former congressmen-now lobbyists, former spies-now novelists, former bureaucrats-now whistleblowers. These people may or may not have done effective service for their governments in the past. They may indeed have garnered very useful experience. But you may be sure that these particular civil society experts certainly cultivated well placed friends, political favors, and public notoriety. Listen to such experts with care.

Experts who aren’t

There are a variety of people who by virtue of their professions or positions voice their opinions and ideas with great authority – as if they should be listen to, believed and followed. Many of these experts are not experts at all.

First, politicians – Politicians are experts of campaigns and fund raising. They may be statesmen or stateswomen; they may be wise or principled; they may be experienced or expert in some field; but they are not necessarily any of these things. Generally, politicians (as politicians) are not experts. Elected government officials deserve respect on two levels. First, they have succeeded at communicating their ideas, marshalling personal and monetary support, and managing a campaign in order to attract democratic votes. This is a real achievement; but it does not make them a civil society expert. Second, successful politicians eventually accrue a great deal of experience in the halls of government. This is a mixed blessing in that these politicians have opportunities to contribute toward functioning governance and to help solve societal problems; but they just as frequently take those opportunities to perform bad governance, to fail to solve societal problems, and occasionally to become part of the problem. Few politicians are experts.

Rich people and celebrities – wealth, power and notoriety do not grant expertise. Celebrities are almost never experts and should not speak any louder than anyone else. Rich people are able to buy and broadcast louder speech, but it does not make them experts. (And then there is the stray expert who somehow gains celebrity. Expert-cum-celebrities sometimes deserve their notoriety. Some of them have gained celebrity through a lifetime of achievement crowned with high awards – Nobel Prizes, medals, honors, etc. These people mark an exception to the celebrity rule, but their celebrity is usually fleeting. How many Nobel Prize winners for the sciences can you name?)

Reporters and pundits – the press has become increasingly openly ideological. As the media has opened its ideological content, journalists, columnists, news analysts and pundits of all kinds have proliferated and expressed their opinions in ever increasing volume. Reporters and pundits are often widely informed by virtue of their interviews and reportage; they are also often very good rhetoriticians. Personally, I believe that open, honest, ideological expression by the press is much better than veiled or even unconscious bias contained in misleading headlines or buried ledes. But being published in print or being broadcast on cable does not make anyone an expert.

Pollsters – the ultimate non-experts. These are people who are paid to ask a representative sample of regular people what they think, then to use statistics and their analytical powers to discern what everyone thinks. Well, polls can be interesting; they might even in some cases be beneficial to policy makers or civil society. But how any of this makes pollsters experts is beyond me. Nevertheless, pollsters have become increasingly common media experts who provide journalists and pundits with a window into the mind of the common woman on the street. Where is the expert here? Wizard of Oz, we see you behind your curtain!

Finally, there is the all too common spectacle of the expert parading in public who establishes their credibility by lambasting their field of expertise – the expert insider critic or expert whistleblower. Have you seen the accredited psychologist who attacks the field of therapy or psychoanalysis right before lathering their audiences with a thick layer of relationship advice? What of the conservative scholar (tenured) who bravely eviscerates academia from within? Or the anti-medicine MD? How about the government civil servant whose civil rights (and political views) were so trampled that he had to give hundreds of media interviews to show how reactionary the government is? We could multiply examples. These experts are remarkable because they attack the root of their expertise, while all the time utilizing the same expertise to convince us we ought to trust and listen to them. Most remarkably, the slickest exploiters of the expert-insider-critic shtick actually manage to make us trust them more than other experts, even as they savage the root of their expertise.

Your Civil Society

One of the major critiques of new media on the Internet is that it accumulates much noise and little substance – too much riff raff and too few experts. Wouldn’t it be better to gather quietly at the feet of wise experts, rather than sift through all of the shouting, competing voices in new media echo chambers? Oh, I have heard elderly reporters wax lyrical as they recalled the days when everyone listened to Cronkite and read the New York Times, because back then we knew that was the way it was. This common, elite meme argues that we actually need fewer media

Cinema – The True Reflector Of Society

They are indeed optimists, who know that cinemas are the true reflectors of society. From origin, cinemas act as the mirrors & simulate incidents that happen in society. Cinemas give not only recreation, entertainment but also create awareness, education and enthrall millions of people across the nation about the hidden aspects of the society & social prospect.

“A cinema stands for humanism, tolerance, for reason, for progress, for adventures of ideas and for the search of communal truth and reflects social aspects.” The earliest film of the world presented on screen named “La sortie des quvriers de l’usine Lumiere” is a true reflector of a factual story that happened in Paris which was directed by Lumiere Bros. The cinema in the world has remained a myth, inspite of the fact of reflecting the society, a stage came to film makers overcome the barrier by taking the trouble to match cinema stories close to society. “Cinemas in a community are like windows which look out on broader, richer & deeper things of life.”

As all oriental societies, the Indian society too has been nourished on societal facts from mythology. Extracts from mythology closely related to happenings of society provide enough opportunities for the audience to exercise their originality, imagination & fantasy.

Great pioneer personalities such as Jamshadji Madan also took certain historical facts of society while making cinemas which had already audience. “World War II” a great movie with excellent momentum started to emerge as genre particularly on the subjects culture, heritage of the society of that times. Every community of the world has got its own peculiar social traditions, which denotes psychological makeup, social concepts and made of social behavior which are captured and explored by cinemas through out world. Many cinemas use past great political personalities for raising their momentum. “Alluri Sita Rama Raju” a film by super star Krishna was made to release in more than 100 countries with different languages gives a conducive personality who sacrificed his life in achieving independence reflects Indian societal scene. Relevance of many great scholastic people’s thoughts today is coming true through the world of cinema that reflects ancient & modern societal facts. “Cinema must alternate between revolution and consolidation; it is the function of society to supply this dynamic element.” The cinema such as “Titanic” which has its record in wreckage of ship is also a social & accidental phenomena. World’s least expensive film named “The shattered illusion” is also a natural phenomena of the society that includes spectacular scenes of ship being overwhelmed by a storm that took place near Victorial islands practically. Bollywood cinema such as “Mangal Pandae”, Ameerkhan as hero reflects the social, cultural, spiritual, communal aspects of Hindu mythology before Indian Independence.

The sole reason behind the success of “Gadar” and “Lagaan” was the element of patriotism. People of society supported Ameerkhan and Sunny Deol in their patriotic roles and showered encomium on both the movies. The degree of integration of inner coherence and strength is closely bonded with cinemas. Coherence in a cinema refers to unity of theme. Cinema is one of the significant factor, that generates, promotes and visualizes smoother national feeling, is based on national societal endurance. Cinemas can accelerate the economy, the increase of efficiency and promotion of welfare in modern society. A socio-culture, whether diverse or homogeneous, is a product of many interrelated facts, which can be reflected using cinema. “A cinema cannot progress if it merely imitates entertainment; what builds a success is creative, inventive and vital activity of society.” Tollywood movies such as “Annamayya” reflects the life history of great telugu prolific writer named Annamayya who is disciple of “Lord Venkateswara”, latest movie “Sri Ramadasu” also mirrors the true social and cultural aspects of “Kancharla Gopanna” popularly known as “Bhakta Ramadasu.” Many films in Tollywood are extracted from the real stories that happened in society. The best quote, saying “Padamati Sandhya Ragam” a telugu film which takes place in America, gives a true & actual societal, cultural, economical aspects of Hindu people. Another recent film “Premistha” is based on true and real love story gives a lucid view of two lovers that prevails in the society. These films include the natural social aspects such as student’s behavior in colleges, enjoyment by students in colleges.

In Tollywood, that too in latest trendz we cannot expect a cinema without college environment, here also cinema reflects the societal aspects. The respect that the Indians show towards customs traditions and culture are truly reflected in many cinemas traditions & culture are truly reflected in many cinemas such as “Dheerga Sumangalibava.” Generally when one comes across the telugu cinemas they first reminicise the sentiments, attachments that truly exist and practiced in society. The cinema “Mayuri” a true reflection of a great dancer of Indian society who loses her leg in an accident, using an artificial jaipur leg she strives to excel in the field of dance and finally reaches her destination – reflects Indian communal confidence. “Thought is greater than armies, thoughts are more powerful than fighting men, their beginnings are feeble but their effect is mighty. These thoughts are shaped & sculptured through cinemas to reach the thoughts & expectations of onlookers.” The tremendous and fundamental fact of cinemas is essential integration, actors’ performance. Social unity throughout the ages. A cinema is one which earnestly desires to spread knowledge & wisdom.

Youth of India are the heirs apparent of this vast and diverse nation who are guided & educated through cinema. Individual’s interests and qualities in social functions are reflected through the cinema. We must praise those cinemas which are treading the right paths. As the media scenario in India has undergone spectacular changes since independence, it resulted in highly effective & efficient creation of cinemas. Cinemas act as leisure in the electronic era. Happiness is an inner state of cinema, beauty of a cinema comes from grace and simplicity.

Great reformers, pioneers painfully realized the deep rooted social problems, evils of Indian society and made them to disappear through cinema education to certain extent. Cinemas acts as the shield of Achilles in protecting the individual and societal interests. The social values, the cultural aspects of true and spiritual India are exposed through the success stories of “Monsoon Wedding” and “Gandhi” are highlighted and emphasized in many movies. Global avenues have been opened to explore society through cinema. “The aim of cinematic progress should be a marriage between ancient Indian thoughts and modern scientific endeavor based on observation in search of societal truth.”

One of the leading characteristics of the cinema of the new era is the abundance of its output. The modern age has witnessed a phenomenal rise in cinemas as they are very near to the society. The main motive behind the creation of a movie is to enable the society to societal facts. Movies with highly technology oriented sci-fi movies also depict the future society. Films such as “Extraterrestrials”, “Independence Day” from spiel berg gives mesmerism futuristic society before audience. The latest technological developments, mechanical and electronic devise are also reflected and used in creation of creative films such as “Die Another Day”, “Mission Impossible II” and “The Stealth” etc., Even though most of the movies released have fallen like nine pins at the box office cinema directors dare to create movies that closely relates to society.

The changes in the world from inner and outer limits, society to spirituality, from wearing to tearing, from the dazzling kingdom of nature to microscopic galaxy of science, from rich to poor, from belly dancing to bell ringing, what not every thing most extraordinary