I have heard people speaking about a 'great' personality, 'charismatic personality', 'creative personality' 'weak personality'e.t.c , looking at the emphasis on this term personality , I started contemplating what actually is personality, especially in the context of education as it provides a platform to 'develop allround personality' of an individual as it is one of its basic aims.
In the process I observed that etymologically 'persona' means a 'mask'. Now started my further enquiry- what is being masked? is it the real self? is that what we call as personality?what actually do we mean by personality? so on and so forth.
Then started the analysis regarding what does personality consist of? As I pondered and pondered I realised personality is not a single dimension, it includes other dimensions..its like a package of different blend of colours...now, what are these? Thus started the identification- intellectual, physical, social, spiritual,emotional and moral dimensions. Now the dimensions being so varied and exhaustive, how on earth can just schooling bring on an 'allround personality development'? Don't you think that it would be humanely impossible to bear the burden of developing an entity in all the dimensions of personality just through the formal education/academics, provided within the four walls of the school! Shouldn't we as teachers, parents, peers, interactors of this thinking and learning society and community, and citizens of generation ahead, contemplate that we should provide education beyond academics, at all times and all places, using varied methods, strategies, content, technology and techinques which would provide and educate today's youngsters for life?for their all round personality development?
In the process of this contemplations I am still struggling to find out whether our today's education is masking our real dimensions of ones personality? Looking transparently into the process of education itself, one has to agree, to an extent the objectives of intellectual , physical and social development is met but aren't we neglecting on spiritual,emotional and moral development? Here many moral education specialists can raise their voice and say that they have value education, moral education and one of the aims and objectives of teaching soical sciences and languages are also to inculcate values, but can we really inculcate values just by talking about it ? Then why is there an emotional and moral drain in our youth? Shouldn't we wake up to realise there is something amiss in our education system, processes, transactions and interactions as fellow human beings; and bring in corrective measures before it is too late? Reading about the achivements of today's youth any body can agree they are far superior than the older generation regarding their development in the intellectual, physical and social domains but what about the other two? what is that we were exposed to and they lack? It is a question we have to seriously contemplate before the major harm is done and give us a chance to repent again, as we are repenting over the enviornmental experiments and its hazards and impact.......So it is a request to all those who read this to seriously contemplate regarding this issue and take a step each, towards undoing the damage.......before its complete and irreparable-an human being losing all his dignity of being just humane and losing the meaning of one's core existence.
