Does Education Teach Us to Think or Simply to Become Good at Following Rules?

Somewhere between the first lesson and the final examination, a child learns two things: One is written in the textbook, the other is written in the silence that follows a question the teacher does not have time to answer. 

Every child comes to the school with a thirst of  asking “why?” They’ll randomly ask Why is the sky blue? Why do some people have so much while others sleep on the street? Why must I believe what you tell me simply because you are an adult?

In the beginning, these questions are met with encouragement. We praise the child’s spirit; we smile at his stubbornness. We call that child imaginative and tell ourselves that this is the way learning is meant to happen.

Then school begins to teach the child how things are done. There is only one answer, one method, one syllabus to be completed and one mark to be achieved. These curious souls begin to understand that some questions are more welcome than others, that some are too inconvenient to ask and that some, if asked at all, must be asked only to oneself.

The system gradually trains these souls to be obedient to what they are told and suppress their questioning power. And perhaps that’s where things start to shift. Think of it for once, Are we teaching children to think? Or are we teaching them to perform in a manner appropriate to a world whose principles they are rarely encouraged to interrogate?

Obedience is Not Knowledge

Think of it once, when you were a child, memorising something felt so difficult until you understood something. But eventually, route learning taught all to mug up and vomit it all out in the exam. 

Someone’s marks can tell how much one has studied but it cannot tell whether they understand it truly. This is why examinations need structure because it is really challenging for teachers to assess every student in conversation. There is worth in objectivity and uniformity of testing. But the moment we equate convenience with excellence, we start to confuse ourselves about what education truly demands.

We have become spectacularly good at measuring achievement, but are rarely better at measuring the qualities that make achievement possible. That is not an observation lost on India’s policymakers. The National Education Policy 2020 promises exactly that: a shift away from rote learning towards understanding, discussion and critical thought. The problems begin when such high-minded goals are applied in contexts where the syllabus barely permits discussion, the examination is strictly objective and the pressure to deliver results is relentless.

Moreover, a policy can call upon students to adopt a critical attitude to what they are told. But if the rewards for critical thought continue to go to those who repeat what they are told most confidently, whose lesson is truly being internalised?

Obedience Has Its Own Curriculum

Schools do not simply teach their students through their syllabus. They teach them through the habits they encourage. A student learns to accept disagreement or to dismiss it. They learn to detect mistakes in their own thinking or ignore them. They learn to tolerate uncertainty in their teachers or to disguise it. They learn these things by observing whether arguments are permitted, whether errors are permitted and whether doubts are permitted.

This is an unofficial curriculum, not written in any prospectus. It teaches a child that democracy is desirable but classroom hierarchy is permanent. It teaches him that equality is an ideal but wealth is a fact. It teaches him to believe in free thought but to obey the people who possess it. The contradictions are not always apparent, but they shape a child in ways that education is meant to overcome.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. Every society must have rules, and schools are no different. The problem arises when we teach children what to think by encouraging them to think only in ways that yield results. 

See, obedience is important but so is criticism and questioning. Democracy requires people who can criticise power while remaining committed to democracy. Science requires people who can question prevailing ideas while remaining committed to evidence. Society requires people who can distinguish between what is right simply because it is established, and what is right simply because it is new.

These are not skills that come suddenly in late adolescence. They must be cultivated, and they must be encouraged, long before a student reaches the threshold of adulthood.

The Freedom To Think Is Also A Freedom Of Privilege 

There is a deeper irony at the heart of this discussion. We speak as though independent thinking is a quality each student must acquire, but we must also ask ourselves whether all students are permitted to acquire it.

Some are more likely to develop independent thinking at school than others. The child with an affluent family may be encouraged to explore her capacity for independent thought. The child from a working-class background may know she does not have the luxury of questioning her options. Some may be rewarded for thinking for themselves; others are penalised for failing to conform. Teachers may encourage independent thinking, but they may also feel they are being unreasonable when they do.

The issue cannot be resolved only by appealing to individual teachers to adopt a more independent-minded outlook. Intellectual independence requires resources, time, encouragement and space. It requires access to books, supportive classrooms, competent teachers, an education system that does not reward conformity and the confidence to admit when a teacher is wrong. If we cannot grant these things to every student, we should not be surprised if critical thought turns out to be a privilege.

The child who must achieve a satisfactory score to graduate needs the freedom to fail as much as the child who will receive a scholarship based on her marks. Perhaps more.

What Would A Classroom Look Like If Thinking Mattered More Than Compliance?

It would not be a classroom without discipline, syllabus or examinations. It would be a classroom in which these things serve thinking rather than the other way around. Learning would extend beyond the ability to recite the correct answers. It would require students to defend their answers, to justify them, to understand what evidence supports them and what assumptions must be made to arrive at them.

A history class would ask students to consider whose voices are absent from the historical record. A science class would ask students to design experiments that could challenge accepted theories. An economics class would ask students to examine who stands to benefit from a given law and who is likely to suffer from it. Most importantly, a teacher would be able to say, “I do not know. Let us find out together.” This would do nothing to undermine her authority; it would simply show that she understands what education really requires.

Assessment would need to change as well, to ensure that there is room not only for correct answers but for reasoning, interpretation and articulation. There will always be facts to memorise, but knowing a fact is not the same thing as knowing how to apply it. 

The purpose is not to raise a generation that disagrees with everything. Reflexive opposition is no more independent than reflexive obedience. The purpose is to raise a whole generation that can think, check a claim, recognise their own limitations, listen to another person’s argument and reach a judgement they can explain.

Students Who Rarely Have Questions are a Problem

A classroom may reward critical thought, but it must also encourage critical listening. Students must not only learn to challenge existing ideas; they must learn to listen to alternative ideas and understand them well enough to respond.

The most important ability we can give a student is not simply the ability to identify mistakes in others, but the ability to identify mistakes in himself. The capacity to change one’s mind in light of evidence is an intellectual virtue.

That, in turn, is something we can teach only by recognising that education must be more than a performance. A school has succeeded only when its students can follow an argument, and an educator has done his job only when his students can detect an argument that is not following. We should want our students to learn from their teachers, but we must also demand that they look beyond their teachers.

Education is For Refining Not Categorizing 

Education must prepare students for a world that demands critical thinking and critical listening. It must prepare them to choose their careers wisely, but also to challenge their employers. It must prepare them to vote responsibly but also to hold their elected officials accountable. It must prepare them to be decent human beings who understand that their own mistakes, prejudices and impulses are not inherently virtuous.

The deepest value of education is not that it enables people to live within society. It is that it helps people understand society well enough to improve it. The most important lesson of any school, then, is that the world is not perfect; it can be changed, and it must be changed. It can begin with questioning the most basic aspects of our lives, from choosing a career to accepting an unacceptable social order.

And perhaps the real measure of a teacher’s success is not how faithfully a student repeats their words or obeys their instructions, but what the student eventually becomes capable of thinking beyond them.