Imagine a
world without schools and colleges. Impossible, right?
No matter
how much we hate waking up early for school or study all night for those tests
and exams, we all know that education is very important. I'm not saying that an
uneducated man has no chances of being successful or an educated man will
surely do well in life. However most of us will agree that an educated person
gets better opportunities in life.
Today,17th
November, is observed as the International Students' Day worldwide.
'Shikshit
Bharat, Saksham Bharat' -that is educated India, capable India. So if every
Indian citizen is educated properly, it will lead to a more capable or
competent country.
Today, I
will be giving few views related to the changes that need to be made in our
current education system. Change why? Because the old education system is not
doing much good.
Education
has been a problem in our country and lack of it has been blamed for all sorts
of evil for years. Even Tagore wrote lengthy articles regarding how Indian
Education System needs to change.
Funny thing
is that from colonial times only few things have changed. Rote learning still
plagues our system. Students study only to score marks.
If there
are few centres of educational excellence, for each of those there are
thousands of mediocre and terrible schools and colleges-now even universities.
So here are
my suggestions for the betterment of education system:
Communication
skills: This should be taught right from the beginning, say class1, because
this is the factor where many people lack. In order for our country to develop,
people should know how to communicate with each other in a proper manner.
Encourage
innovative work and reward them- Nobody would like to invent anything perhaps
without a reward in return for their tedious hard-work.
Focus on skill-based learning- There are so
many other skills to learn other than studies, like singing, dancing, sports
etc. I don’t know why India doesn’t encourage all these activities much.
Feedback
based up-gradation of syllabus- The teachers should send a feedback to the
council of education every year in order to keep updating the system.
Make
English mandatory- English is a global language and everybody must be able to
speak and write it in order to make a good impact in the world. I have seen so
many students coming up saying "I have been educated in a Bengali medium
school, so I am not a very good speaker. I can't speak English fluently,
etc" This should not be the case. Every school must give a high weightage
to this subject.
No
to reservation- This is my personal opinion where I feel if reservation is
eradicated, brilliant students will get more opportunities.
Practical
approach instead of theoretical- I feel out here theoretical knowledge is more
looked upon rather than practical work. It should be the reverse so that
students can learn better.
Skilled
teachers- Teachers are the ones who impart education to the students. So they
must be really skilled in their profession, they must be trained so that they
can train the students properly.
Instill
patriotism in the mindset of the kids- I feel there is a lack of patriotism in
the kids nowadays. Nobody wants to stay in India after graduation. Everybody
wants to go abroad and serve other nations. Why won’t they work for the
betterment of their own motherland?
We may have
the most number of engineering graduates in the world but that has certainly
not translated into much technological innovation here. Rather, we are busy
running call centres of the rest of the world-that is where our engineering
skills end.
I would
like to throw some light on an interesting article I read few days back called
the 'Bhagat Singh Syndrome'. It states that we all like Bhagat Singh but won’t
want one to be born in our family.
We like and
support Kejriwal for his courage to come out in the open but willl slap our son
if he thinks of doing anything apart from being a doctor or an engineer.
How many of
us support and encourage our kids to visit places where they can make an impact
and do good to the society? The impact is more when we take the kids out of the
classroom and urge them to ask themselves how they can make a difference in the
life of a rickshaw-puller.
I strongly
believe that you cannot change the system sitting indoors; be it a cubicle,
classroom or Parliament. You have to step outside in the field. And same goes
with the kids.
Let us make
sure that they do not feel awkward while hugging a chaiwallah. We need to teach them empathy, not
sympathy and they will not learn it by reading a chapter on Gandhi, they will
instead be more responsive by spending time with the bottom of the pyramid.
And this
does not happen by once in a month field trip to some slum, it will happen when
schools start teaching these underprivileged children in extra hours and allow
the regular students to interact with them, give them the responsibility of
other kids and empower them.
Creating
few more schools or allowing hundreds of colleges and universities to mushroom
is not going to solve the crisis of education in India. We are in a country
where people are spending their parents' life savings and borrowed money on
education and even then not getting standard education and struggling to find
employment of their choice.
The mind
numbing competition and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and
originality of Indian students every year, it also drives brilliant students to
commit suicide.
I'll end my
article by stating what the goal of Indian education system should be. They are-
to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers and writers
who can establish the foundation of a knowledge based country.
