Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Educated Ignorants!

There is a new breed of people around me - every one of them is highly educated, most having professional degrees, some graduates of premier institutes of India. Yet, when it comes to common courtesy, decency, and common sense, I think an uneducated person may sometimes have more sense than them. I call this breed - "Educated Ignorants".

Here are a few symptoms of the people of this species:
  1. They don't throw garbage in the dust bin. For them, if a lot of other people have strewn garbage at a place, it is a legitimate reason for them to not use a dust bin. If you try to educate them about general civic sense, they would mock you or dismiss you as being dumb, idealistic, and purist.
  2. They throw garbage outside their car window. Obviously, the car is not to be dirtied even if it means only keeping an empty wrapper until they get out of the car and throw it in the dustbin. Some of them argue that God has created wind to sweep the garbage away from the roads. Some others contend that if they don't throw garbage out, a lot of cleaning personnel will lose their jobs or worse, it is the job of the municipal authority to keep the roads clean and they will be damned if they do that job.
  3. They do not even blink at jumping red traffic signals or going on the wrong side of the road. If there is a traffic light, it is the police's problem that they installed it and they can't be bothered to respect it. If there is no cut in the median, they have every right to take a shortcut by simply going on the wrong side.
  4. They burp and sneeze unapologetically, without putting a hand on their mouth. Their argument - it is a natural process and they should feel proud at burping loudly in public, it only means that they had a good meal.
  5. They have poor personal hygiene and see nothing wrong with it. Of course, they probably cannot smell their own body odour.
  6. They have no respect for the rights of non-smokers and would simply go and smoke in a public area even when it clearly says "NO SMOKING". It is after all the other people's problem that they don't smoke.
  7. They jump queues without even saying excuse me.
  8. They would bump into you and not even say sorry.
  9. They spit chewing gum without wrapping it in a paper.
  10. They spit on the street without a pause.
  11. They pee by the roadside.
I am sure there are more symptoms but these are all I can think of at the moment. Anybody got any suggestions?

Caution: Do not try to educate this species about anything. You will only fall flat in your face or you may even be converted into one of them!

2 comments:

fox2mike said...

Haha, totally agree with this.

Bhavesh Sanghvi said...

Agree with what you said. I hope the common sense prevails and we see improvement.