It is perhaps right when in older days men used to deride women for being too emotional. They were of course not right when they identified it with the very nature of women. But then who was to say and prove them wrong?
When we see the education of the young today, this trend seems to be visible - Families who allow the desires of their children to grow unchecked, and also fill them with petty concerns of status and prejudice, end up with children who remain permanently childish, even in their adult lives. It is a true thing that has been said, that human beings have to become human - we are at one level born pure, in tune with the wider consciousness, with nature... in this sense we are both utterly natural and supranatural. We can, as we grow, mature to become humans, humans who are aware of their nature and the nature of things around them... aware of other sensibilities, other modes of living (human and other alike) or they can be more animal like. And a human animal is worse than an animal, who is at-least living as to his nature. The nature of man is to become something more that what he is as such, only in this does he/she realize themself.
In a society where women barely interacted with the world and esp. women from well of and protected families who were very aware of desires and status and having various things and competing, and without any education to allow their minds to flower and expand - it is not surpising if women remained petty and emotional, affected quickly by things. I see this in so many of the government school teachers, who are women, and it is sad that such teachers, conscious as they are of their very pious burden of being housewives - how they are clear that their families are priority. In Rajasthan I heard teachers tell me with a kind of martyr pride, that they get up at 4 am in the morning, cook for everyone, pack their own lunches, if they have children then prepare and send them off to work. In school they rearely take up any extra work or initiative (of course there are important excpetions). These are teachers who will not do any extra homework to figure an interesting way to teach a child, but rather will buy something for the house or cook a extra dish. Of course they would do this - their identity and power are simply associated with this. The job they do, they do minimally, enough to keep it. But more so because they are somewhat alien to the other avenues of the mind and the self that they have not explored.
When we see the education of the young today, this trend seems to be visible - Families who allow the desires of their children to grow unchecked, and also fill them with petty concerns of status and prejudice, end up with children who remain permanently childish, even in their adult lives. It is a true thing that has been said, that human beings have to become human - we are at one level born pure, in tune with the wider consciousness, with nature... in this sense we are both utterly natural and supranatural. We can, as we grow, mature to become humans, humans who are aware of their nature and the nature of things around them... aware of other sensibilities, other modes of living (human and other alike) or they can be more animal like. And a human animal is worse than an animal, who is at-least living as to his nature. The nature of man is to become something more that what he is as such, only in this does he/she realize themself.
In a society where women barely interacted with the world and esp. women from well of and protected families who were very aware of desires and status and having various things and competing, and without any education to allow their minds to flower and expand - it is not surpising if women remained petty and emotional, affected quickly by things. I see this in so many of the government school teachers, who are women, and it is sad that such teachers, conscious as they are of their very pious burden of being housewives - how they are clear that their families are priority. In Rajasthan I heard teachers tell me with a kind of martyr pride, that they get up at 4 am in the morning, cook for everyone, pack their own lunches, if they have children then prepare and send them off to work. In school they rearely take up any extra work or initiative (of course there are important excpetions). These are teachers who will not do any extra homework to figure an interesting way to teach a child, but rather will buy something for the house or cook a extra dish. Of course they would do this - their identity and power are simply associated with this. The job they do, they do minimally, enough to keep it. But more so because they are somewhat alien to the other avenues of the mind and the self that they have not explored.
But then, how is it that in a world where there is so much they don't understand, these women do not have the desire to know. to be more than what they are. Of course this is not to deny that there are women who have remained thoughtful and deeply insightful even within the limited exposures they have. And one can argue that exposure itself means little, if one is to compare the average well-heeled and well-traveled variety among some corporate youth who hardly seem driven to something more than who they are. And there have been writers, men and women, who have barely ever left their hometowns and have written insightful things.
There is somewhere, someone who perhaps in our life, a parent or uncle or aunt, who pointed to us the ability to observe - to see more than what we see. whether it was the quietness of the morning or the changes of generations in the family - something that shifts the mundane viewing of life. Or sometimes it is a sense inside some of us, the few of us who flower even within very trying environments, with the ability to see. And also the ability to remain strong... What then can be done for those who are not so?
This really is the only learning needed right, for any of us. A condition, an atmosphere of learning... If a teacher can create a condition for learning, then her or his job is almost done. Actual instruction means very little in itself. But for this, musn't our teachers too feel the magic of this - the joy of discovering, a new feeling, a new experience, of reflection or contemplation?