~Shikshit Bharat, Saksham Bharat~

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.

This is how India will prosper. :)