2. Something that restricts, hinders, or confines: the straitjacket of bureaucratic paperwork.
[http://www.thefreedictionary.com/straitjacket]
The year was 2000, I was participating in high school debate (with my favorite debate partner) speaking against the motion that formal education was not a necessary perquisite to success. I remember arguing quite convincingly that every successful person has had some element of formal education in his life at some point of time or the other, and like it or not this has had a positive impact on the person's life and is a necessary perquisite to success in one's life. I guess I was able to convincingly argue my side of the case because it resonated with my own view of life and formal education. Right upto my graduate course in business administration course, I have believed that any success that has come my way has been largely due to my formal education and my single minded focus in excelling at the same.
I had a family friend visiting today whose daughter is in the twelfth standard, at the cusp of making the crucial decision on the form of formal education to pursue after high school. Couple this with the fact that I have just completed reading the first chapter of "Rich Daddy Poor Daddy" I took some time off to analyze and think of i see in myself today and root cause it to any facet of my formal education.
One aspect that struck me immediately is the emphasis that was laid on and linearity and certainty in the teaching of science. Everything in nature could be explained in a model in which results that were certain in nature were obtained from well defined fomulae. That kind of skewed up my thinking for the rest of my life i guess ... right from high school and through college i believed in the absolute nature of things, about how things would happen with certainty given the model that you superpose on the situation and process at hand, the modeling was always right. I read a lot of scholastic writings that debunked this theory, but the only action I would take is to feel intellectually stimulated with these thoughts and then get back to the safety net of my fixed and linear model that worked well for me.
This linear and certain way of thinking worked well for me until a few years back, i knew the model for a given situation, and i knew the result that would come out as a consequence of my action, because i was trained to believe that the model was always right. The formal system for science education never gave me a chance to appreciate the randomness and non linearity that is the characteristic of everything in life. The real problem lies in the fact that i continue to place this "straitjacket of linearity and certainty" in my thought processes. It has been tough for me to make the transition and freeing my mind from these shackles, from this stifling "straitjacket" . All my life things have fit so perfectly into my view of the world that I never gave a thought to the possibility of things working outside of "my way" which to me was the right way.
I am not discounting the usefulness of a formal education, but what I certainly feel very strongly about the shackles that this has placed on my thought processes. Thinking out of the box does not come as easily as i wish it would come ...
The important thing is that i have been able to identify this drawback, and I am working on it. It is not easy and very often painful! I am reminded of a quote that was oft repeated in the Services Marketing class in college :
"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all"
Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )
Its time I got out of the straitjacket of "certainty and linearity" once and for all, it is going to be a painful process, but a necessary right of initiation into the other endeavors that beckon me in life.
The year was 2000, I was participating in high school debate (with my favorite debate partner) speaking against the motion that formal education was not a necessary perquisite to success. I remember arguing quite convincingly that every successful person has had some element of formal education in his life at some point of time or the other, and like it or not this has had a positive impact on the person's life and is a necessary perquisite to success in one's life. I guess I was able to convincingly argue my side of the case because it resonated with my own view of life and formal education. Right upto my graduate course in business administration course, I have believed that any success that has come my way has been largely due to my formal education and my single minded focus in excelling at the same.
I had a family friend visiting today whose daughter is in the twelfth standard, at the cusp of making the crucial decision on the form of formal education to pursue after high school. Couple this with the fact that I have just completed reading the first chapter of "Rich Daddy Poor Daddy" I took some time off to analyze and think of i see in myself today and root cause it to any facet of my formal education.
One aspect that struck me immediately is the emphasis that was laid on and linearity and certainty in the teaching of science. Everything in nature could be explained in a model in which results that were certain in nature were obtained from well defined fomulae. That kind of skewed up my thinking for the rest of my life i guess ... right from high school and through college i believed in the absolute nature of things, about how things would happen with certainty given the model that you superpose on the situation and process at hand, the modeling was always right. I read a lot of scholastic writings that debunked this theory, but the only action I would take is to feel intellectually stimulated with these thoughts and then get back to the safety net of my fixed and linear model that worked well for me.
This linear and certain way of thinking worked well for me until a few years back, i knew the model for a given situation, and i knew the result that would come out as a consequence of my action, because i was trained to believe that the model was always right. The formal system for science education never gave me a chance to appreciate the randomness and non linearity that is the characteristic of everything in life. The real problem lies in the fact that i continue to place this "straitjacket of linearity and certainty" in my thought processes. It has been tough for me to make the transition and freeing my mind from these shackles, from this stifling "straitjacket" . All my life things have fit so perfectly into my view of the world that I never gave a thought to the possibility of things working outside of "my way" which to me was the right way.
I am not discounting the usefulness of a formal education, but what I certainly feel very strongly about the shackles that this has placed on my thought processes. Thinking out of the box does not come as easily as i wish it would come ...
The important thing is that i have been able to identify this drawback, and I am working on it. It is not easy and very often painful! I am reminded of a quote that was oft repeated in the Services Marketing class in college :
"Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all"
Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (1920- )
Its time I got out of the straitjacket of "certainty and linearity" once and for all, it is going to be a painful process, but a necessary right of initiation into the other endeavors that beckon me in life.