Educated Gangsters

Human being, as it is supposed to be, is a constantly learning machine, focusing on its environment and keeping the process of learning in one way or another, till the very end. Individuals of a social order owe their existence and workability not only to the academic and formal education provided but also on the informal education or in other words, their experience. Thus when we contemplate about a social paradigm, not only academic theories and hypotheses should be considered, one should also take care of the historical experiences or observations so as to come to a workable and positive conclusion. A solution solely based upon academic theories is either impractical or is certain to fail as academics only is unable to fathom the diversity of human nature and social behaviours. Similarly, while a system is being followed, there are events and facts that may ring bells for the people to realize if they are working on the right path or the wrong one. Thus it is obligatory for a student of social behaviours to keep a close eye on events happening around him, so as to draw constructive conclusions.

One of the most important events of the year 2011 was London riots, a series of events, which attracted extensive and worldwide media coverage. People watched in shock and Britain’s Governmental institutions groaned in awe and despair, as the young Brits vandalised and torched their own very Capital and other cities of Central and Northern England. The riots were controlled only after a crackdown, thousands of arrests and a police-state type of baton play by the Government forces. Even foreigners were killed in the destruction that had engulfed the mostly-urban areas and was a major source of concern for families having their loved ones in Great Britain for studying or any other purposes. After the situation was contained, thousands of people were tries in the courts, allegedly even for ‘misuse of social networks, and were fined or jailed to straighten them up.

After this entire hullabaloo, the event became a question. The question was, that how on earth was the mind-set of the British youth changed to so much destruction ,that even being one of the most educated lot in the world, they became a third world mob set around lighting their very own markets and malls? Normally, when a group of angry protesters or a band of disgruntled factory workers does the same in any poor country, the trend is ascribed to their poverty and intolerance arising from their being uneducated. But the young Brit vandals were mostly neither that poor so as to yearn for a living, nor they were uneducated. Ti explain this question, many explanations were put forward. Financial Crunch, frustration due to unemployment and many other explanations were given to explain even in some cases advocate for the cause which led to scenes unfathomable for a country like England in years. What we need to observe is, that if British education system is unable to tell people their social duties and control their frustrations in case of a chaotic situation, is it a successful education system? Or is it even an education system at all?

The answer is a bitter truth. The British system of education was unable to realize in the minds of their youth the social duties an individual has for the society, and consequently this is the key system that has to be held responsible for the devastating events that took place. Putting it straight forward, if the social duties of an individual and respect and honour of other people’s property had been institutionalized in the minds of the British pupils in the past, there would definitely be less carnage and destruction, no matter what was the cause in the perspective. Imparting information is not education. Education is to implant all the necessary components to an individual so as to build a complete and dynamic personality for the betterment of the society. If only information is being flown into an individual with none or very less emphasis on character building, this will result in a bio-mechanical robot programmed to achieve anything it desires at all costs. The concept that laws of a country can contain this kind of social chaos is unrealistic. Laws are actually formulated to keep people streamlined or in this paradigm, the criminal laws and punishments are formulated to keep people astray from committing a crime by generation of fear of punishment. But a mind which becomes corrupt, or in other words which has no respect or character so as to take into account dignity of other people’s choices and property, these laws become just liabilities or obstacles to be dexterously avoided and cleverly evaded. Thus in an education system which just relies upon flow of information as its basic purpose  with no emphasis on character and social responsibilities, there is a constant generation of highly intelligent and overwhelmingly clever criminals. Under a social downturn, everyone educated in this way may start attacking everyone else, thus generating more chaos which actually formed the basis of London riots under the pretext of the killing of one man by the police. Not everyone was protesting the death of the person, neither was destruction of life and property any goo way of protesting. Neither was everyone protesting the death of that individual, nor is the extermination of public life and property any explainable or educated way to protest.

Regrettably, albeit all these shortcomings and ineffectiveness in generation of a good individual by this kind of Education system, our country walks on the same pattern as defined by the British social pundits. And the result is more than obvious: We have an extremely educated lot with a disdain from our culture, society and traditions. Unscrupulous in ways and crooked in thinking a hooligan culture is taking birth in the educated streets of our urban household. In a number of street robberies, educated and most importantly, sons of influential and lavish families have been found involved whose background education is sometimes mind boggling to even believe they are criminals. If scarcity of education is producing criminals and terrorists, this kind of information flow is resulting in generation of materialistic hooligans. This is the hour of the need that our social pundits learn from experience and at once start redefining our syllabi and curricula so as to inculcate and institutionalise sense of social responsibility, human sympathy and dignity in the students’ minds. Otherwise, as they say about Pakistani people, this is already an inflammable liquid and in an event of social disorder, even the most educated will become the most violent and the hypothesis that education teaches tolerance will be licking the feet of vandalism.