Intellectuals and the mentoring process

In Prison Notebooks, Gramsci writes: "Mass formation has standardized individuals both psychologically and in terms of individual qualification, and has produced the same phenomena as with other standardized masses..."

Teach in India began the process of mentoring via email last week; our first batch of proteges includes among others a young engineer-turned-marketing analyst, a cub sports journalist, a grade 12 girl who says she has no idea what she wants to study in college. These are people who are, with or without their knowledge, trying to undermine the the status quo in India.

Mentoring via email is one of the many ways Teach in India is employing in the effort to reach out: we organize talks and debates in Indian high schools, we also provide career counseling. The idea is to expose kids to multiple voices and opinions so they might slowly develop the ability to analyze information by themselves. For instance, the market analyst has received inputs so far from six to eight consulting professionals; he had in his introductory email expressed a general interest in getting a job in strategic consulting. The respondents have focused on encouraging him to ask penetrating questions, questions that get past the "How do I get a job with McKinsey?" phase.

We achieved a minor breakthrough with him yesterday when he asked the question, "My boss once told me he found it hard to break into his current job because he'd worked earlier in a small company; does working in small companies contribute to prejudice against you?"

Gramsci says, "When one distinguishes between intellectuals and non-intellectuals, one is referring in reality only to the immediate social function of the professional category of the intellectuals, that is, one has in mind the direction in which their specific professional activity is weighted, whether towards intellectual elaboration or towards muscular-nervous effort... In the modern world, technical education, closely bound to industrial labor even at the most primitive and unqualified level must form the basis of the new type of intellectual."

We're trying to catch 'em young. This individual, whose example we have arbitrarily taken, has the ability to transform into an organic "intellectual" himself; in a sense he merely needs to learn how to ask the right questions.