A small thread on worldwide obsession with IVY, IIT colleges and awards such as Nobel Prize.
First of all, getting formal education and ability to make educated choices are not the same thing. They are often conflated but educated people make uneducated choices. However they are often given free pass or rather given platform to amplify their voice.
Formal education is one parameter to assess your potential. It is not the only one as it is made it out to be. Having a degree of IVY or IIT indicates that you are competitive and bright in certain things but that doesn't make one best choice for every task.
For example, performance at a job which requires high level of empathy or ability to make meaningful connections with people, often has no correlation with your education credentials. But I have seen this mistake being made often...
That people are given jobs solely based on their education credentials, only for them to do a terrible job and make mess of the things. Similarly, some jobs require street smartness, such as dealing with government. Again education doesn't have much role here in ensuring success.
Even for the jobs which require subject knowledge, education is one aspect. Experience, general awareness are equally important. People are often parachuted to top based on their education credentials and advise from experienced folks is ignored, only for things to turn ugly.
However even if you are an expert with impeccable performance and prestigious education record, doesn't mean you can't have ignorant or dangerous opinions in other fields in which they are not expert. A senior doctor from AIIMS can have very terrible opinion on taxation policy.
And a Nobel Prize winning economist can have a dangerously harmful opinion on vaccinations. However, people are given free pass for their terrible opinions basis their expertise in other fields and this can be disastrous.
Last but not the least, one must be aware of their privileges and biases before ridiculing those whom society doesn't deem as worthy as themselves. For examples, some people have not been to reputed colleges because they had never heard of them or couldn't afford the tution.
Nobel prizes are notoriously Euro, North America Centric. One can see list of winners in literature and know that even being Nobel prize winner doesn't make you best in the field.
I grew up in a small village in Rajasthan. I studied in a run down state government school. Most of classmates came from very poor lower caste, tribal families. I am where I am today mainly because of my privileges. There was some effort from my side sure but mostly it was luck.
My father was a school principal with college education hence he could home tutor me, provide with facilities such as power back up at our home, study table, latest books. He knew about good colleges and sent me away to Kota when I grew up.
Most of my classmates, some of whom were academically brilliant couldn't reach their full potential either because they lived in house without electricity, didn't have parents who could teach them, faced discrimination or because they had alcoholic parent.
I am pretty certain, if my classmates had grew up in same family environment with my privileges, they would have achieved things same as others. People often show examples of one or two kids who come from impoverished background but achieved great success..
To label others from same background as lazy or undeserving. Fact is, success of those two kids brings them at level par with those with privileges and for that they had to work much much harder than those with privileges. To achieve normal, they had to work exceptional.
For others from same background, normal effort keeps them where they are. Those from privileged background don't have to do anything exceptional to achieve better quality of life. Their privilege and access to resource ensures it for them.
A just society ensures that majority falls under that category. Most societies don't have that as of now.
Hence those of us who come from privileged background or have stellar education background should remain humble and not get carried away in our arrogance. *End of Rant*
Hence those of us who come from privileged background or have stellar education background should remain humble and not get carried away in our arrogance. *End of Rant*
@threadreaderapp unroll.
