Stupidity

I fear stupidity.
This is a complete, debilitating entity. I don’t mean to exaggerate when I say this, but my fear deserves its own ______phobia word.

I fear stupid people, I am afraid of being stupid and I am afraid of doing stupid things accidentally.
Stupid people… are dangerous. But the real reason perhaps, is that I see precious little that separates stupidity and madness. Ignorance is not an excuse. You are simply someone who fails to do the right thing when you had to.
It makes me lose faith in humanity.

I believe that what I am is a culmination of a lifetime of dedication to my curiosity, my ideals, and my pride. I didn’t suddenly pop into existence with a 140 IQ and a small article about everything in the world written in my head. People just say ‘natural talent’ or some shit like that to excuse them from having to make the effort to change.

I’ll tell you this right now- I have no ‘natural talent’. I eat more than you, but my body’s metabolism does not burn fat faster than yours. Everything you see is simply an extension of my stubbornness, my refusal to accept the cards life has dealt me with.

I would like to think that there isn’t much that separates us. As a scientist the extent of our similarity is probably more disturbing than our disparities.
But it’s hard sometimes.

My grandparents in their most senile moments will be five times more lucid than my maid. The things that I take for granted- a basic understanding of probability, an understanding of cause and effect, initiative- in other words- common sense- don’t seem to apply.

For example, she fails to have food ready for me and my sister before we leave for school- and attracts my mother’s ire for the same, so she makes it AFTER we’ve left and convinces herself that the fault lies with the children who left before she decided what to cook- that it was not in her power to get this right in the first place, and therefore she is not at fault.

Apply this (absence of) logic to every sphere of a person’s life and you will understand the reason I am depressed.

I’m not trying to be mean to the poor woman, but my soul seethes at the thought of someone willingly relegating themselves to incompetence. Do we really need this kind of delusion? It’s the same thing the rest of us do when we refuse to look at our mistakes with a view to fix them- and try to have no expectations, and thus never be disappointed.

This lady does not consider herself capable of making two decent sandwiches in an hour.
In her life she has been unable, or unwilling, to learn Hindi as we know it and still speaks in some obscure dialect that no-one really understands- her children need to translate for her.

The image of the Ouroboros comes to mind, the snake that feeds on its own tail. The symbol stands for the circle of life and death… but what I see is a lot less complex, a lot more cynical.

If I had never had any formal education, would I be like that too? Surely not- man had his ingenuity long before we invented schools, right?

A while ago, the maid asked me and my sister to help her daughter. Her daughter had failed her math exam and had a month to prepare for the re-test.

At first I was angry, it was this woman’s fault for neglecting her daughter’s education in the first place. She was making her do chores in her own home while she worked in ours. You can call it child labor by proxy.

She cannot imagine her daughter being able to accomplish… anything.
She treats her the same way that she treats herself.
Now we’re supposed to have a magic solution to that?

We were up for the challenge, though. 96 and 100 percent in math respectively, with my sister literally being the highest scorer in the nation. Surely we would be able to teach this 8th grade kid enough to pass… or at least give it a good shot.

The daughter was an enthusiastic worker, and we had known that we would have to teach her from the ground up. She was being taught algebraic identities.

(a+b)­2= a.a + 2.a.b + b.b

I felt a little nostalgic here. At some point I must’ve had trouble understanding this as well. I didn’t expect her to get everything in the first try or appreciate the ingenious way in which the ancient Greeks practiced their algebra.

My sister didn’t really know how to start, I’m the one who usually tries to explain myriad miscellaneous things to people who don't understand it.
I asked her to do a few two digit multiplication sums just to see if her basics were fine.
They weren’t.

She managed to get ‘most’ addition problems right, managed to screw up subtraction, division and multiplication. Polynomials and Linear Equations are a far cry from 25*16.

There was no way for us to start with class 8th material, so we started the only way we could- by teaching her things she should have learnt five years ago. She was enthusiastic with the classes, although not particularly interested in studying- maybe it was just a way for her to get out of working at home. Even though her basic math was improving, I tried make her interested by telling her that all of what was being taught was not some random junk- but had utility in everyday life. (Even lectures on how shopkeepers swindled people with poor arithmetic!)

There was really no hope for us as we struggled to get her started on 6th grade algebra.

I gave up.

I cited my reasons- that my own exams were coming up, and I had to study too.

I still gave up.

I was just a kid damn it. Not a miracle worker. I can’t teach someone high school math when they don’t know matter at a primary school level! How the hell have they kept allowing her to pass up to eighth grade- she should be in sixth!

My sister didn’t give up. She has a lot more faith in the ability of people to rise up through sheer effort, I think. Even when our student had no chance of success, she kept trying everything in her power to help her. She gave her homework, checked it every day, and even tried to teach her about the identities (Just memorize them!),

Our student failed, she could not have passed anyway.

But I wonder, about those school teachers that must have taught her. If they had been half as good, half as interested in teaching as my sister was- that girl would not have been in this situation. Nor, perhaps, would be so many others… people with potential that is never nurtured.

I remember volunteering for the neighbourhood programme of our school before I lost faith in that as well. (Most of the money they collect goes to buying food from the canteen, a classic example of preNEPesque socialist/public-sector waste of money. Stupidity.)

There was a kid there- he couldn’t have been more than eight. He was drawing a motorbike even as the others around him struggled with flowers and grass. I daren’t try to draw my own bike next to his- I might have ended up shaming myself.

How was I supposed to tell him to keep drawing? You can be a great artist- you’ve got talent, real talent. If you nurture it, you can fight your way out of this hell you’ve been born into.
Don’t do what the other kids do… some of these kids were found, and mind these children are not even in their preteens, getting high on a weed. Not marijuana, literally a weed. On doing some further research, I found that a poison released by the plant made them feel less hungry. The kid gave me the same look I would’ve given to someone like me when I was eight, and ran away to get another piece of paper to draw another bike.

There are gems hidden here, but surrounded by so many ‘bad’ influences that it seems like only a miracle can save them.

I haven’t lost all hope yet though, because of one guy. He used to be a kid in our school’s neighbourhood. It was here that he started learning the Tabla. This guy fought his way out though- ended tutoring students of this school in math- to repay a guy who had taught it to him when he had needed it.
Now he’s the lead singer and ‘drummer’ of a rock band that uses several Indian instruments in conjunction with an electric guitar. They haven’t hit gold yet… but with their quality they shouldn’t do badly at all.

In the mean time, Let those government school teachers come up with more verbosity about the lack of interest government school students have towards academics, as they lie back and draw fat paycheques.


EDIT:
My sister says that I am mistaken to think that the girl failed, says she passed her re-test.