For the Record

My daughter wanted to go to college. I really thought it was an awful idea. But she's there and will - if all goes the way the wheels of Academia turn - graduate in 6 months or so.

I hate schools, colleges, Education - an ideology, often diametrically opposite to Learning (which I worship). But, then, what does one expect from anything that has been institutionalized or turned into a System. Yes, I hate Systems, too. (Time for some of you to switch to reading another blog, maybe.)

So, it is only natural that I get asked, often by genuinely interested people, but more often at a panel discussion or debate, by someone trying to win his lost arguments through rhetoric and mockery, "So, why did you send your daughter to college? (Snicker!)

I admit there was a conflict and I could not solve it easily. To have not let her go would have been dictatorial. And although I am sure I have behaved that way on occasion (although far less than by my daughter's reckoning), those occasions have dwindled with her growing up. After all, she was almost 18 when she was making that choice and would soon be legally an adult in many countries. Too, it was not essential for her to accept my view of things just as it was essential for me to acknowledge that she had a right to her views and a right to act upon them.

Since her choice of colleges lay outside Pakistan, I felt that the independence, the varieties of experience she would have, and the exposure to some amazing people on the visiting academics category would offset, partly, the evils of the system. And Pakistan, with its increasingly stifling society, seemed no place for any young person to grow up - much less a girl.

The compromise I reached with her was that she could go, provided she got aid or scholarship. I would not be a paying party to such a venture. That's how she ended up at Hampshire College, a radical liberal arts space that, at least, tries to do away with some of the more rigid aspects of institutions. But I hope that when it comes to her life as a parent she will excercise better judgement ;-) for her own children.