Editor’s note – Coming from a seasoned researcher based in Kolkata, this article talks about various aspects of the education system and where we need to improve.
Author’s note - education plays a pivotal role in shaping the human character and social order. The real function of education is to impart the genuine knowledge about life, existence and future. An ideal student is one which seeks the realities of life and universe. The tragedy is that the contemporary educational system in India aims only at creating a generation that fulfills the market and industrial needs. We are the citizens of a free India. It is time that a revolutionary change needs to be taken in our education system wherein we should address the basic limitations of the contemporary educational system, commercialization of education and other educational issues.
Education helps to build a man and gives shape to one’s character and personality. It uplifts the standards, promotes co-operation and maintains harmony in the society. The cognizance it instills makes each and every individual an intellectual citizen of the nation. Education system plays an important role for the development of a nation as it helps to enhance the country’s economic growth and technological development, thereby helping to minimize various social problems such as illiteracy, poverty etc.
However, education is the most neglected sector in India. Since independence, several committees have been appointed to review the existing system of education in India to make it more responsive to our daily needs. However, no concrete result has been achieved in half a century and education today lags behind from everyday life as it was prior to independence. Today we claim to be the biggest human resources supplier for the world. We supply bureaucrats to the government, software engineers to the IT companies, highly paid managers to the multinationals, engineers and science graduates as researchers to the foreign universities. But, are we concerned about the quality of human capital we are building and for whose needs?
The facilities for proper educational environment include institutional buildings, sound study materials, qualified teachers, sound incentive system for students and teachers, vocational training and employment orientation of the teaching programs. The Indian educational system is deprived in all these respects. This situation proves to be the greatest barrier in the path of our progress. It is therefore, imperative that the existing system of education must be reviewed and rectified immediately if it needs to perform any application in our everyday life.
A major area where the present Indian education system lacks is that education has taken the form of a rat race. The present system of education makes a student to work hard, rather than make them to work smart. A student who is always with the books becomes the high scorer. Take for example, if one goes to a student and asks a question from the text book, the answer the student gives would be identical to that in a text book leaving neither a full stop nor the vocabulary used in that text book. This does not, however, apply to all the students. But, still most of the students are forced to do so and it has become a norm in the education system. If there is a mismatch between the answer the student gives in the exam and the solution given in the text book, the student is awarded with negative marks, even though the concept is correct. Teachers expect the students to mug up and give the same answer as in the text book. It is the education system, in general, which is to be held responsible for this.
Each and every student has an own interest in a particular field. Teachers fail to extract the student’s interest where they can excel, so that they can be provided better opportunities and guidance in the area of their interest. Instead they are forced to mug up the mandatory subjects and their perspective remains confined to professions like doctors, engineers, lawyers etc. Indian education is thus expanding in quantity, and not quality. This system of education prevails in India right from the school and continues the sane way till college and university stages. The problem is, youngsters in India do not have the vision to think beyond. Neither their parents, nor their grandparents had that vision. This is where the root of the problem lies. This spoils the potential of the students for performing any creative or innovative work. In other words, the actual talent of the students remains hidden and is never allowed to come out. Generations have gone through a system which sucks. Educators of today’s India are products of that age old system. That is why no less than a revolution is needed in the education system in India.
Higher education in India is in an extreme chaos. The entry of private entrepreneur into the education system has led to the worsening of the quality of higher education. The sprouting of engineering and management colleges, degree and postgraduate colleges, dental and other colleges, and last but not the least - the deemed universities, with a few notable exceptions, have largely turned out to be more business entities, providing very poor quality education. These entities run their courses with temporary and under qualified staffs, without proper laboratories and libraries. The one and only concern of these self-financing institutions is to look for profit. The fee structure of majority of these professional institutions is so burdensome that the ward of an ordinary student has no place in these institutions. Our research institutions are equally in bad shape and do not produce quality scholars. They suffer from resource constraint and bureaucratic and political interference.
Education is one of the highest profit making ‘industries’ in the service sector, but its workers are the least paid compared to those working in somewhat glamorous sectors like the IT industry. Our degree and diploma holders have lost their inherent and innate worth. They find no place in the job market where experience, initiative and drive count more than any academic qualifications. Hence there is unrest among the educated youth today on account of the growing millions of unemployment among them.
In order to meet and overcome most of the challenges in the present education system in India, a revolutionary change needs to be taken which would help to eradicate these cruxes from the present education system. This is the high time when we start thinking of an education system that offers the knowledge not only to make Indian brains to work abroad, but to bring a greater change in Indian economy. India aspires to become a superpower and play an important role in the world. India needs a huge force of innovators who could make it self reliant in science and technology. India needs artists who could make its culture the most popular in the world – a culture which is not only saleable itself but will also aid in selling India’s products across the world. To make that happen various loopholes had to be rectified.
The bottlenecks we face in our educational system must be solved in an effective manner. Infrastructure has a meaning in education. World class universities and schools with world class libraries, laboratories and classrooms, in a world class building make a world class infrastructure for education. We need to give due emphasis on practical education system wherein students will be able to learn with all the modern techniques and equipments available and they need not be a bookworm. By adopting this modern education system, the quality of the education would be improved considerably. There need not be thousands of examination but the students can be assessed by their assessment during the tenure of the year. They need not be loaded with writing a lot of assignments, but they can be given various project works, seminar works, and research paper presentations and so on. This would make the education livelier and it is quite certain that many would love such activities. This would reduce the number of school drop outs. As the students start to love the subject there would be a lot of scientists, entrepreneurs, politicians, etc. One may say we had few. Truly, we had. M. S. Swaminathan who made India self reliant in food grains, Dhiru Bhai Ambani who proved that a common man can become a billionaire, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam who dared to build missiles for India, Pandit Ravishankar who is the ambassador of the Indian music to the world. Such people though in small numbers, were always there. But they are not the products of this education system. This system did not teach them how to become innovators or entrepreneurs or artists. Had it done so, they would have been millions in numbers. These people have inspired themselves. To some of them, their education may have given the technical know-how, but not the dream nor the inspiration needed.
We expect the revolution in education to bring lots of changes. These changes will undoubtedly result into – best talents of the country in the education sector; a world class infrastructure; greater investments into education for both public and private sectors; a career oriented education system; an education which encourages innovation and creativity; an education which encourages entrepreneurship; an education which makes a child sad when the last bell rings at the end of the day in school.
India has one of the most hard working people and excellent learners. It is the education which should inspire one to become something one really wants to. Education should make one free, should make one perform experiments and it should make one ask questions. Finally, it should make one realize what one really is. India has the potenial. We just need to put an end to corruption in our education system or aleast limit it.
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