Concrete walls of a shaky education system

After several weeks of mental torture I have decided to pen down my thoughts on an issue I am extremely pained by. Let me elaborate.

My academic endeavors have led me into meeting a multitude of personalities, queer, interesting and inspiring. To my good fortune till this date I have come across individuals who have been sources of knowledge, thoughts and inspiration to me. Interacting with these minds has been enriching to me and my experiences in life, so much that I naturally developed the daft hypothesis that most people I will ever come across in my professional and personal life, read people of my background and interests, would share a greater if not similar curiosity in the 'world'.

To my misfortune this belief has become so ingrained in me that I feel terribly depressed and agitated when these beliefs are invalidated. The cause of my current 'discomfort' is the apparent lack of knowledge and interest I find in the people around me. I do not refer to the ability to produce a decent program in code or analyzing an algorithm or anything complex in academics, but to the basic abilities of logic and reason 'one' would attribute to an engineer.

I refer to the knowledge of our being, our world and our surroundings. Facts, figures and trivia we would pick up in the fifth grade or so. Where is Brazil? Why are houses in cold countries made of wood? What is the country Hitler was from? The no brainers, the rapid fire questions in an ill prepared quiz at junior school. Apparently, these are no brainers only for us. I was shocked there are my dear friends who didn't know their facts right.

Whats amiss where? Are they illiterates , certainly not. Are they not smart, not if you go by their resumes. Then what went wrong here. It seems to me that there is a large gap in our education system, ever widening. There seems to be no reward and merit for knowledge gleaned not from the latest syllabus books. All this when, whatever knowledge (which I sincerely feel is huge) the secondary and junior school syllabus in India provides is more than sufficient to establish a basic knowledge of the world. Where did the amnesia or disinterest settle in from?

Was there a disinterest from the very beginning just because showing interest, curiosity for learning would not fetch anything tangible or socially appreciable? Was there never a desire to explore and learn more? Much saddening was there no one friends or family who ever talked about these things? Random discussions on objects, events, personalities....no one to indulge in those?

Perhaps there are a billion other questions I could jot down, all of which true to an extent. Parents, family and friends are the greatest source of knowledge and wisdom. One spends most of their childhood around them, a stage when lots to be learnt. If things are not inculcated, interests are not piqued and encouragement is not given to the various faculties of the human mind, what good is a world class professional degree?

If one conversation with a stranger outside your field of interest cannot last beyond a minute you have lost the essence of life. You are a subject matter expert not a generalist and for me, failed the test of life. Awareness of the self and of most things in this world is important. If not the knowledge only awareness if sufficient to instill a desire to know more at a later convenient date.

Ignorance is definitely not bliss. What are we leading into? A society of extremely polarized minds - whose awareness and curiosity is strictly restricted to the demands to activities leading to material gains. Sad, really sad.

I feel tired and sapped out to even wage this war against ignorance. Giving all my effort to erase it. perhaps I should find my cocoon, my comfort zone around the people I know. But now I am victim of my own principle, my awareness of what lies outside the comfort zone, will discomfort me and horrify me.