The Protest Is the Lesson

Across India, tens of thousands of young people have left their classrooms and taken to the streets. Images of students marching, carrying handwritten placards and demanding accountability for repeated exam leaks, are impossible to ignore. Many see this as an interruption to their education. I wonder if it is, in fact, one of its most important lessons.

For the past eleven years, I have lived in Auroville, an international community that can sometimes feel wonderfully insulated from the turbulence of the wider world. It is possible to spend days discussing education, ecology, philosophy, and the future while the worries of students a thousand miles away remain just that: someone else’s worries. There is a privilege in that distance, but also a danger. It can lead us to mistake detachment for wisdom.

I have also avoided writing about politics for years. Not because politics doesn’t matter but because I believed my work focused on education. Schools, teachers, learning, and the future have occupied my attention. The events of the past few weeks have made me realise that these are not separate conversations.

I do not know whether every slogan shouted in the streets is wise. I do not know if every demand being made is justified. Democracies rarely give us that kind of certainty. But I do know this: when thousands of young people feel the need to protest because they believe something valuable has been broken, educators should not look away. We may disagree with their conclusions. We may question their methods. But we cannot become spectators.

The term political has been reduced to elections, parties, manifestos, governments, and ideological battles. Yet, politics is something much older and deeper than electoral politics. It is the ongoing conversation through which a society decides how it wants to live together. It is about power and participation, rights and responsibilities, freedom and accountability. Every society must decide who gets heard, how disagreements are resolved, which freedoms are protected, and what responsibilities we owe each other. Those are political questions whether discussed in Parliament, in a Gram Sabha, or around a family dining table.

Education has always been part of that conversation. Every curriculum reflects a set of choices. Every classroom embodies a vision of the kind of person a society hopes to nurture. We decide what histories deserve remembering, which questions are worthwhile, whether curiosity is encouraged or conformity is rewarded. Schools do not just transmit knowledge. They shape citizens. Education, whether we admit it or not, is a deeply political act.

This is why I have become uneasy with the common belief among many educated professionals that education must remain "apolitical." If we mean schools should not become vehicles for partisan propaganda, I completely agree. A classroom should never recruit children into political groups. Its purpose is to expand their ability to think independently, not to tell them what to think.

But neutrality is not the same as silence. Neutrality is essential when evaluating evidence, teaching history, or assessing a student's work. It protects fairness and intellectual honesty. Silence is something else. There are times when refusing to engage with questions of freedom, justice, or democratic participation is a political choice. Silence does not elevate us above politics. It simply accepts the existing power structure without question. Refusing to choose is still a choice.

Perhaps this confusion comes from a deeper misunderstanding of what education is for. In recent decades, we have grown used to describing education almost entirely in economic terms. We ask whether schools produce employable graduates, whether universities create skilled workers, and whether students have the skills the market requires. These are important questions, but they do not tell the whole story. An education system that prepares people only for the economy has lost sight of its larger purpose.

Education should expand human freedom. It should enhance our ability to think critically, change our minds when evidence demands it, imagine alternatives, recognize injustice, and engage meaningfully in shaping the society we live in. It should teach us not only how to earn a living but also how to live together.

That is why the current protests matter, regardless of where one stands on the specific demands being made. Their immediate causes, the exam leaks, concerns about fairness, and calls for accountability, will continue to spark debate. People will disagree about the protesters’ demands, about the government’s response, and about what justice requires. This is entirely appropriate in a democracy.

The deeper question lies elsewhere. What should we hope to see when young people believe an institution that profoundly shapes their future has failed them? Should they retreat into private frustration? Should they conclude that citizenship consists only of voting every few years? Or should they learn that democracy also asks something of its citizens: a willingness to organize, persuade, listen, disagree, and when necessary, stand together in public?

Peaceful protest is not a failure of education. It is often one of its most important outcomes.

The classroom teaches us how to think. The public square tests whether we are ready to use what we have learned. It is there that abstract lessons about rights, responsibilities, evidence, dialogue, and moral courage meet the unpredictability of real life. Citizenship cannot be mastered from a textbook any more than compassion can be learned from a definition. It is a practice before it is a concept.

There is an irony here: we celebrate schools that promise to nurture critical thinking, creativity, and independent minds. We encourage students to question assumptions, challenge accepted wisdom, and think for themselves. Yet when those same habits focus beyond exams and toward the institutions that shape our lives, our enthusiasm often fades. We applaud critical thinking inside the classroom but become uneasy when it extends beyond its walls.

Of course, democratic citizenship carries responsibilities alongside freedoms. A protest cannot lead to violence, intimidation, or hatred. The rights of one group can never depend on denying the rights of another. The ability to disagree without dehumanizing those who disagree with us is itself one of the greatest achievements of an educated society. Democracy requires both freedom and restraint, conviction and humility.

Perhaps this is the forgotten purpose of education. Schools are not just factories producing doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, or civil servants, valuable though all these professions are. They are the institutions tasked with preparing each generation to inherit a democracy. If they succeed only in creating productive workers, they have succeeded economically while failing in their civic mission.

We often ask whether our schools are preparing young people for the future. It may be time to ask a more fundamental question.

Are they preparing them for freedom?

Because an education that teaches us only to calculate, compete, and comply may produce capable professionals. Only an education that also teaches us to think, question, listen, and, when our conscience demands it, stand alongside others in the public square can produce true citizens.

I still do not think my work is about politics. I think it is about education. But if education is ultimately about expanding human freedom, then there are times when remaining silent is no longer an educational position. It is simply silence.

For me, this is one of those moments.