Part 5: Diary of an unknown SriVaishnavan travelling thro' America

[Guest guest]

(continuing from Part 4)

----------------------

 

Dear friends,

 

In my first but very brief tour of a famed American

university, U-Conn in Connecticut, I think I did get

carried away a little. But lest I went overboard in my

excitement -- or got far too fanciful in my

impressions of education and universities in general

in America (what with my rather exuberant comparisons

with "divya-dEsams", "vidyA-bhUmi",

"gnyAna-ananda-mayam" et al of my native India) -- my

good (SriVaishnavite) friend Prof.Narasimhan

Srinivasan of U-Conn made sure I was brought down to

earth a little. Thanks to him I got a glimpse of not

only the sunny side of American "vidyA" but its dark

side too.

 

I followed Prof.Narasimhan into a large seminar hall

where, he told me, he was about to address a large

gathering of students -- not his own from U-Conn but

from outside. "I'm scheduled now to give an half-hour

talk", my Professor-friend told me, "and I hope you

will not mind sitting in too". Why not, I thought to

myself, it might give me a different perspective into

another facet of America -- the so-called

"vidyA-bhumi" of my imagination.

 

"I'm going to address a seminar now", said my friend,

"A couple of colleagues and I are going to talk to a

group of about 100 inner-city youth from high-schools

in places like Hartford and other towns and cities in

Connecticut state. These teenagers come from poor,

under-privileged social backgrounds. They constitute

what in America we know as "minority students."

 

"Mainly, they are youth of African-American and

Hispanic origins. It would be hard for someone like

you, believe me, to imagine the distressing social and

family circumstances from which these youth come ---

broken homes, estranged parents, family history of

violence, drug, alcohol abuse etc. etc. ... Looking at

these children has often made me silently wonder: if I

were to come from their kind of social background, if

I were in their shoes, would I ever have made it this

far in life, as Professor at U-Conn?"

 

The Professor led me into a large, elegant,

fluorescent-lit seminar-hall with neatly terraced rows

of seats overlooking a lectern below in a

semi-circular pit of the room. A large projection

screen hung on the wall and a panel of professors --

Prof.Narasimhan's learned colleagues at U-Conn -- was

seated below it, waiting for the seminar to begin. My

friend Nawaz and I, mere onlookers, took our seats in

the farthest rear to watch the proceedings.

 

In a few moments, a hundred-odd young men and girls,

all in their teens, jauntily entered the auditorium.

As expected they were all either black or Hispanic all

from schools in the inner-cities in and around

Connecticut. For the first time in life, I took a good

first-hand look at young, 'under-privileged' America.

 

Dressed in colourful winter clothing, with peaked

caps, hoods and parkas, wearing sneakers and boots of

all shapes and hues, and carrying noteboooks in duffel

bags slung casually over their backs, they filed in

and took their seats, all the time gesturing and

calling out noisily to each other in loud, cheerful

tones.

 

I watched them take their own time settling down. To

someone like me from India, for whom the term

"under-privileged" connotes not so much lack of

Education as it does malnutrition or ill-clothing that

one may witness in some backward provinces of India,

these minority-youth appeared to be far from

'under-privileged'... I thought they all looked

particularly well-fed, and as happy and irreverent too

as high-school teenagers of the world tend to be.

 

But then I quicky realized what I was witnessing was

only America's social facade -- and that in a land

such as America where basic necessities of life such

as food, health, clothing and housing were reasonably

assured to almost all its citizens, the only deep

chasm that separated the poor, deprived classes from

the higher, privileged ones of society was "vidyA"

-- Education.

 

In a few minutes, the seminar began...

 

**************

 

I learnt that chief purpose of the seminar (a day-long

affair where my friend Prof.Narasimhan and faculty

colleagues spoke and made excellent audio-visual

presentations all meant "to raise awareness of

minority students of academic opportunities at

U-Conn") was to instil in the youth a strong awareness

about the inestimable value of university education

and the big, lasting difference it could make in their

lives. The main aim was to "educate them about

Education" i.e. encourage them to persist against all

odds in life and remain dogged in academic pursuit

even after high-school... rather than give it all up,

regress rapidly and get lost in life's -- and

especially America's -- many dark and hopeless

waysides...

 

"Many of these unfortunate minority students in

American high-schools", continued Prof.Narasimhan,

"drop out of school long before they graduate. More

tragic is the case of those who get beyond that stage,

are good enough indeed to make it to a university like

U-Conn, but alas, simply run out of motivation".

 

These young souls just give up hope of any higher

pursuit, or of the fine things in life. They

altogether forsake the great dream of Education,

letting slip the opportunity to break free from the

narrow and oppressive destiny awaiting them. Sinking

into apathy and despair, the black bane of the vast

social class known in America as 'minority', they just

waste away in life...

 

************

 

Listening to my friend's rather dark but insightful

commentary on the state of education in America, it

sounded both sad and ironical to me. The land I'd

imagined to be a virtual "divya-dEsam" of great

universities -- of 'temples of learning' filled with

the exciting air of "gnyAnAnanda-maya" -- and where

Nobel-winning minds flourished; a land with long

history and unbroken tradition of ample educational

opportunity ("vidya") -- opportunity that was as

bountiful in fact as its snow-fed fresh water

resources ("aapah")-- now, why was such a great land

of learning, a sacred "gnyAna-bhUmi", unable to

attract and embrace its children from the so-called

class of under-privileged "minority" in America?

 

My friend, Prof.Narasimhan's sad commentary, I

realized, had a deeper though hidden message behind

it. The purpose of a nation's universities, of its

great "temples of learning", is not only to further

the frontiers of Knowledge, to inspire great

discoveries of the human mind or to produce giant,

Nobel-winning intellects. Equally important, if not

more, is the purpose of reaching out to embrace the

social 'have-nots', the class of the

'under-privileged' i.e. making sure they are welcomed

and co-opted into the common mainstream of the

nation's life.

 

The success of American education -- why America's

very greatness as a 'vidyA-bhUmi' -- is thus not only

to be measured by the number of Nobel-laureates it has

produced or by the number of industrial or

technological patents it has enabled register in its

name worldwide. It has to be measured also by the

struggle its university teachers (like my friend at

U-Conn, for example) put up in seeking out and then

leading the under-classes of the land towards the

gates of the university.

 

As a passive but curious spectator that day at the

U-conn seminar, I think I was able to witness a small

but vivid piece of America's social struggle in action

-- the struggle and sacrifice its teachers constantly

put up to close the chasm between the 'have-s' and the

'have-nots'... and in the process increase the number

of students entering the great universities, the

virtual "divya-dEsams" of America.

 

***********

 

Late that evening my Muslim friend Nawaz drove me back

from Glastonbury to New Jersey. It was a long, long

journey into the night through the American

wilderness... While Nawaz concentrated on tearing down

the Interstate at a ferocious speed somewhere close to

the legal limit of 70-80 miles per hour, I found

myself drifting off into silent, private reflection...

 

The seminar that I'd just witnessed at U-Conn, what

was it essentially all about?

 

Was it not a sort of "aavahanti hOmam" too in its

essential character? Was it not a noble effort of

teachers, in the mould of the ancient Upanishadic

ideal of the Taittiriya, striving hard to gather ever

larger numbers of students under the wings of the

community of America's learned? Was all this hence not

the true wealth of America? And, indeed, all its great

fame as a nation?

 

As I journeyed to New Jersey that spring night, the

words of the "The Psalm of the Universal Teacher" from

the Taittiriya Upanishad, for some deep and strange

reason, kept echoing in my head:

 

"Lord, may I grow in spiritual wisdom,

And may I have food and clothes and cattle

 

 

May students come to me from far and near,

Like a flowing river all the year;

May I be enabled to guide them all

To train their senses and still their minds;

 

May this be my wealth, O Lord,

May this be my fame."

(Taittiriya Upanishad:(1.4.2)

 

************

 

(to be continued)

 

Rgds,

dAsan,

Sudarshan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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