In the South Asian finals 44 out of 60 participants were girls, infact at most city level finals 8 out of 10 were girls. If one assumes that this is a trend evident in India; then read this: the 3 finalists from Sri Lanka were all girls, Pakistan had 2 girls among 3 finalists. This trend is not just limited to the middle class private schools across India. In our extensive work in government schools of Karnataka through our Akshaya Life Skills programme I have noticed that girls tend to do better even in if they are economically backward. Year after year all of us have seen this trend in the results of class 10 and class 12 of various boards. Wonder why this is happening and where is this leading to?

A pertinent question that needs to be addressed to answer the question needs us reflecting on what happens to all these brilliant girls after schooling? A sad reality is that most of them do not get an opportunity to study further for various social and economical reasons. If only they are given opportunities sighs the mind! All of us talk about and debate on reservations but creating opportunities for these girls in our society is the true challenge. Pondering over the flip side of the question; one needs to study another school of thought which says that boys mature late and they tend to shine a little later in life. But even if you look at higher education, wherever there are equal opportunities, girls tend to do better!

I see that the future will see the rise of ‘feminine’ energy in the main stream of our society and a lot of things will evolve with that energy in the forefront. It is very evident that women do well in certain traditional professions like teaching, nursing but male dominated professions like politics, bureaucracy, corporate, technology will all have adverse impact in their functionality if women start dominating them. Evidently it is happening, albeit slowly. With the way things are going in this part of the world I will not be surprised if we have women in the near future ruling the man’s world, not just the man’s home!

Staying on this point and looking at our educational system from this perspective, the way it is being run is very mechanical, very masculine, what is missing or waning is the feminine energy. The strength of Indian educational system in the past had been the sensitivity with which our society looked at teachers and schools. In our mad rush to educate masses we are losing out on that sensitivity and we are now treating the most important aspect of education – Principals and teachers as elements that deliver quality. If we look at some of the biggest issues facing our planet – terrorism, environmental degradation by man, politics, corruption all of them seem to stem from a very ‘masculine’ form of energy. Unless we bring back that ‘feminine’ energy into our planet, things will not change. If we do not sustain this ‘feminine’ energy, we will only churn out youngsters with degrees, not educated youth with the potential to live a peaceful life of coexistence and harmony.