By: Preeti Sharma : “The imposing tower of misery which today rest on the heart of India has its sole foundation in the absence of education……” Words by Nobel Laureate Poet Rabindranath Tagore. Today after 90 years has anything changed? Have we done any good to our education system? Is our foundation strong enough today?
The answer to all these questions is no…… Today also we are standing at the same end where everyone is blaming lack of education as the root cause of all the evils. This is the condition since we got Independence and still we are clueless what to do of this situation to bring changes. Our rulers had introduced system in India to create clerks and civil servants and still a huge mass of students is giving 100% to become government employee even if it is clerical post. No doubts many changes occurred in education system. Country is working hard and investing a lot to improve education infrastructure of the country. Even after so many efforts our schools are producing the clerks for an empire that does not exist anymore. We are not diverted even a bit from the old pattern. Every year “N” number of private schools and universities are established. Many of them do not meet even the minimum standards of education. Every year Indian parents spent their life savings or borrowed money on education of their children. And still many of them end up having an educated unemployed child at home or lose their child in the run of high competition.
The Indian education system is sinking, it’s drowning… high tides of corruption, lack of ambition, tough competition to score high marks and lack of proper guidance are making it suffocated for education system to breathe and grow freely. The huge log of infrastructure is also drowning which can be saved by a small twig . The name of this small twig is “Teacher” which can be proved as a ladder to support education system to climb up from whirlpool. We need the teachers who teach to learn twice not the ones who consider teaching as risk-free, low-pressure job. Thousands of terrible teachers are wasting valuable time of young children all over the world. Perhaps the biggest flaw in our education system is that it incentivizes memorizing over originality. Once i heard a teacher saying to its pupils—–“well, if you guys don’t study it is entirely your loss- I will get my salary at the end of the month anyway….” Are these the people we should rely on for construction of strong future pillars. Students are taught to score high marks and become the part of rat race. Deviance is discouraged, risk taking is mocked. If the same pattern is followed year by year how we will get creators, innovators and researchers. Instead of centralizing we need to make education universal and approachable to everyone. An innovative educator can create a more reliable innovator……., let’s take an instance…… “India; a land of diversities where every state has it’s own dance form that attract many students from all over the world. many of dance teachers in every corner of world is teaching dance in many new developed ways. This could have never happened if there was a Central Board of Dancing Education to impose strict standards of what to be taught and how it has to be taught. Central regulations stifles innovation too. If we want to build a country build on knowledge driven by highly educated people we need to free our educators to teach in innovative way. The word ‘average’ should be eradicated completely from the mind of our students. The young minds should learn it is not okay to be just an ‘average’ , they should learn to define themselves by their creation not by their scores.
The purpose of teaching and education system needs to be re-defined. To build the foundation of a knowledge based economy rather than low-quality service provider we need to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers and writers.
We don’t need teachers trained in completing the syllabus but we need people who inspire, ignite the imagination and make students fall in love with learning. We need the stones who join themselves to save the drowning boat, not the viewers who stand at the shore and feel sympathetic for the boat and people on that.
When nature can use human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels… Why don’t we………????????