Schools in our country have remained as, in essence, “middle-class” institutions, in the worst meaning of the word. Middle and secondary schools, which belong to the state, and therefore, are supported through people’s taxes, through taxes which are also paid by the working class, cannot be attended by anyone other than the young sons and daughters of the bourgeoisie, who enjoy the economic independence necessary to be able to carry out their studies to the highest standard.

A child from the working class, even if he is intelligent and in possession of all the abilities needed to become a knowledgeable person, is forced to waste his talent on other pursuits, to become a rebel, or to educate himself; that is to say (apart from some notable exceptions), he is forced to become a half person, a man who has not been able to give all he could have, if he had been completed by and made stronger through the discipline that school offers. Knowledge is a privilege. Schooling is a privilege. And we don’t want it to be that way. All young people should be equal in terms of knowledge.

The State shouldn’t be paying for the schooling of those who are just plain mediocre, merely because they are children of the wealthy; equally it shouldn’t be excluding those who are intelligent and more than capable, just because they're the children of the proletariat. Middle and secondary schools should be for those who have shown themselves to be worthy. If it is in general interest that they exist, even if they're supported and ruled by the State, it is also in general interest that all those who are intelligent enough should have access to them, whatever their economic background. The sacrifice of the collective is only justified if it is for the benefit of those who really deserve it. The sacrifice of the collective should be made so as to give economic independence to those who are talented, so that they can dedicate their time completely to study, so that they can study in earnest. This problem is dispensed off entirely if education is not under the purview of the State but private, for-profit entities, which will automatically pivot towards one form of meritocracy – money.

The working class are excluded from middle and secondary schools because of current societal conditions which mean that there is a division of labour among men, in a most unnatural manner; it is not based on individual ability and therefore, devastates and corrupts production. This class has to fall back on subsidiary schools; those of a technical and professional orientation. These technical schools were established on a democratic basis, yet, because of the antidemocratic provisions of the State budget, they have gone through a transformation which has destroyed their very essence. Now they have mostly become accessories to the classical schools, an innocent outlet for the petty-middle class obsession with finding a job. The admission fees which are constantly on the rise, and the practical possibilities which they offer for life, have made these schools too somewhat of a privilege. The majority of the working class is excluded from them, automatically, because of the uncertain, random life that the wage-earner is forced to lead; a life which does not go hand in hand with following a course of study.

The working class needs a school which is neutral. A school which gives children the possibility of educating themselves, of becoming men, of acquiring the general knowledge needed to develop their individual character. A humanistic school then, as the ancients and the most recent men of the Renaissance intended it. A school which doesn’t mortgage the child’s future or constrain his will, his intelligence, his conscience, so as to set him off on the road with a fixed destination. A school of liberty and free initiative and not a school of subjugation, where people are quasi-mechanized. Even the children of the proletariat should have the power of choosing from all the possibilities available, all areas should be free to them so they can fulfill their own individual purpose in the best way possible, and consequently in the most productive way possible, not only for themselves but for the rest of the society. Vocational schools should not become a breeding ground for monsters, dryly educated for a job, without being given broad ideas, broad knowledge, without any spirit at all; just an accurate eye and a steady hand. Through professional education too, men can be allowed to break out of their childhood; as long as this education is just that; educational, not merely informative, not just the study of manual procedures.

Certainly, for the harsh industrialists, it might be more useful to have worker-machines instead of worker-men. Yet the sacrifices which society makes in order for progress, in order for the best, most perfect men to fly from its nest, who themselves will help to improve things even further, should see a wealth of returns which benefit the whole of society, not just one type of person, or class.

It’s a problem of rights and of power. And the working class should be on alert, so it doesn’t suffer even more oppression, as it has suffered so much already.

— Antonio Gramsci, edited for easy digestion.

#education #workingclass #inequality

All four of the rape/murder accused in the Hyderabad rape case have been killed and that too at the scene of the crime. Four uneducated lorry drivers/cleaners who thought burning a body will absolve them of the crime. CCTVs, phone records and police investigation are alien things for them, even the flimsy Telugu film media should have been out of their reach to not consider better ways to hide their crimes. Why is this important? Hiding a crime shows that the intent was deliberate and the guilt+consequence of getting caught. Their crude morality at least allowed for the hiding from their crimes whereas in the 'encounter', the police do not have that operation of defense. They could kill and they did, the law does not matter. Nothing matters at all because it is state-sponsored anarchy and it has its own rewards.

What is rape? Let us not look at the word itself, as with all its weight and historical baggage it loses its meaning, Rape is the forcible sexual penetration of a person. In this case the killers tooks turns in raping the victim and in the process she died and they burned her body to hide the evidence. All this is hypothesis, we do not know if it is the rapists who killed the veterinarian doctor, it could've been a simple case of framed killers. There have been an umpteen number of cases where the accused were convicted of sexual crimes they did not commit, like the Ayesha Miran or the the Ryan International cases. We will never know because here the accused were 'encountered' before the court of law could examine the minutiae of the case.

Is this justice in a modern, democratic nation aiming to conquer the world and then Mars? The reactions of the public show that the legislative, the executive and the judiciary were all afraid of the consequences. Baying for the blood of the rapists (whoever they are. After the death of the accused and with no official sentence, we will never know who the official perpetrators of the crime are, just assumed suspects) the people and consequently the media have applied pressure on the political, police and judicial frameworks, which must've led to the collective shitting of pants in the backstages. Note that the second-in-command in the Telangana State called for a swift action against the accused and the Chief Minister of the State and the Prime Minister of the country have both been silent on the issue.

reality is just too complicated for anyone to understand, let alone for politicians to control. In response, those who aspire to power create simple narratives for the populace to buy into, in order to make sense of the world, and make it easier to control. In the process of creating this new 'map' the narrative bears little, or no resemblance to what is actually going on. Lies are built on lies, which are built on more lies. The delusion becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and the fakeness was accepted by everyone as real. This is Hypernormalisation.

Let us come to the issue of the Telangana Police. The man behind the press meet and hence the face of everything, Police Commissioner Sajjanar was previously also a part of an extrajudicial killing in 2008, for which he was hailed as a hero. And today, he's smiling before the media again, proud that he is getting away with it for the third time. And he will get away with it, he already escaped public scrutiny now, who cares about what the other institutions in the governmental framework think? The people have come out with flowers and appreciation all over crime scene and the social media. But it also shows the short-term thinking of the mob, they have already forgotten that the police apathy on the day of the veterinarian's kidnap where they assumed that she must have “eloped” with somebody. Before they woke up the deed has been done and in the posthumus responsibility towards their duty they shot dead the accused. This is a way of saving their skin but they have zero regard for the dead girl or the families of the rapists. The cops here are the worst killers as they show the duplicity of the people in power – their acts can do not go through the same scrutiny as the alleged criminal's and they get to roam around free in a society that is corrupt across various levels. Remember, the accused have been 'dealt' with quickly because they were poor, the rich live in their own universe.A question to consider is the number of politicians in the parliament accused of rape.

This mode of justice is appreciated by everyone, but it is also a quick fix. Opposing the judgement meted to them does not mean supporting the act of rape, the fact that this very argument was taken up says something about the people of this country. Though on one hand the attention that this act has put out on the general sexual violence that happens around the country it also shows that the people are ill equipped to handle such a moral dilemma. This deteriorating moral health can reflect upon other areas of living as well, such as the ossification of the discrimination against muslims as seen in the Citizenship Amendment Bill that has been tabled in the Parliament today. It seems like it is such a huge step between the rape of a woman, punishment and the ghettoization of a minority but the vision for us is here to see. We saw this happening several times over the past decade: where the quality of protests, the quality of debate we engaged in and the solutions we saught are are all the mistakes that have led us to this point.

As a nation we have not questioned all the little wrongs that have happened over the course of time. We raised our candles and black dots during the Nirbhaya rape case and demanded that the guilty be hanged, but we did not ask why these rapists committed that crime in the first place. We demand that Pakistan be blown to smithereens or that people should stand up for the national anthem before a leave-your-brain-at-home Bollywood movie titillates on screen. The discourse has become simplistic and we crave for solutions like they provide in the cinema. Our lives are too shallow to understand that as humans our lives are complex and issues have multiple dimensions which can only be understood in time. But no, shoot the culprit and move on. Tweet and sleep. This is what we have been reduced to, walled in our own echo chambers we have no way of escaping.

The government has escaped scrutiny, the judges need not deliver justice and the police have done their job. The biggest losers in all this is us, the people. We have been hoodwinked yet again and there is sadly no voice of reason amongst us. The need of the hour is focus on where this vacuity of morality comes from – which caused both the rape and the snap judgement. Giving the people a moral compass is an intagible effect that the State should work upon and so far its version of religion, ethics and propoganda do not seem to be working. This requires going back to the drawing board and working on the problems bottom-up, because in addresssing these problems lies the future of the country. Either for boom or for bust.

#rape #India #education #gender