25th aug,2006
" Education is what remains when you have fogotton all that you had learnt"

the past few days have seen me at the peak of my anguish against certain issues,things and people. shouting ,protesting,howling-i did this all to prove my point. i wantes to make a statement but ended up making arguments. or was made to sound like that. actauly i wanted , first, to be heard, then, thought , and then, be argued. but simply got argued on. and by another rudimenart underexposed vestige of indian mind, less desirous of accepting change and staunch in his inherited value system-- that obedient son of his father! he clearly seemed to have mugged up al his knowledge to reach his stations-- hardly showed any understanding of the great altruist conceptswe got from our books of international maritime legislation composed mostly by the westeners. the indians, esp this pal of mine,my namesake, believs that those laws are impractical in reality! and why not must he think so!?where have we seen such greatness of philosophy, the altruism, in action in our real life.
actually, the laws we read SOLAS, STCW, ISM, Code of Safe Working practices for Merchant Seamen, and many more, in general are based on principles of humanity. Basic laws like proper rest hours, healt working condition also had to written down to avoid controversies regarding them. in India, unlike the UK, they couldn't have been taken as the unwritten-- the Common Law.
i guess it was known to the west that people can be inhuman as well and particularly those from the other hemisphere. what other classic explanation can we have to understand indians 'impracticable' viewpoint for the period of rest hour! My other pal from the SCI who has now migrated to Shell (the oil giant),top-managed mostly by the British, tells me of the easy life he lives over there--relaxed and comfortable. tasks,to us, appear to be exacting at first thought itself and create huge revulsions.drydocking in my comapny is a severe ailment to me.
then why at all do we say 'yes' to such 'impractical' legislation at international forums??the top managers of ours, the govt surveyors and the DG shipping, and the shipowners admit their implementation while the lower rung, the ship masters and other staff, in the closet, express doubt in them!?why this collective hypocritcal behaviour of us?! the STCW, infact, at one point makes it binding upon world governments to make college cirriculum for mariners as close to what we get in real. then why do we fail to do so. why can't we just dispel such legislation in the making itself rather than in a closed room.
Think correcting of magnetic compass for deviational errors binding upon we sailors. although we are taught the theory of this, but are we really given any hands-on training on them then does ISM code make provision for its continuous traning, considering our human factor of forgetfullness. do we carry any instruments required for the task on board as mandatory?No; none. Then why were we taught all this??
i think thats where our confusion arises. the unawakened pal, in his quest to find meaning of his subjects ends up surmising that all things are meant to be executed!, for management and decision-making as a subject appears to be unknown to him. the purpose of learing this in theory, to me, appears tobe purely for reasons of critical decision-making.however the argument fron the line of thinking of STCW legislation of making subject close to practicability raises many debates in our unaware, under-developed-now-but-developing-always minds. we first first needto be told that not all material is suppose to be executed as it is,but for the purpose of knowing only;for the incidence of critical decision-making.
When are we going to incorporate thinking also in our gand process of learning.when are we designate 'memorising' to its proper place and when are we going to 'think' 'observing' in our 'learning' ?

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