The most significant variables are the education program (curriculum) and the instructors. Rather than being the most honourable and responsible profession, schooling professional is today thought of as despairingly and looked down upon.
The curriculum is unimaginative and doesn't encourage analysis, thinking, conceptualization, rationalization etc. It's all rote and memorizing of information. Today, most teachers are moulded and conditioned to a fixed routine without anything new or fresh. It's like just passing of data day after day, week after week, year after year, like a parroted parrot.
Educators are not concerned with integration and intelligence or the enquiry of truth or wisdom; they are more anxious and concerned about religion and creed, caste and temples, temples, churches and mosques. No teacher helps children to introspect, to look within. No teacher helps children to discover themselves. Today, educators have turned into government officials bound to shallow and ideological instructions that have nothing to do with education.
Assuming that if we need to create a new world order, each educator must be both a pupil and a master. We first need to educate ourselves before we go out to educate others. If another social and educational order has to be laid out, the individual who instructs simply to acquire compensation can clearly have no place as a teacher. Bringing in cash as an instructor amounts to exploitation for one's own benefit. Tuition and coaching classes are a pointer in that direction. For a genuine teacher, worry of his own comes last.
Parents and guardians are no less to be blamed and faulted. They say they love their children but are unwilling to change the current social circumstances and existing education order. They are not willing to bring about the necessary transformation of this horrendously violent society.
Assume, if parents genuinely love their children, they would attempt to draw a new social and educational order. Most parents and guardians couldn't care less; they neither have the time to manage or address earnest educational issues. They, however, possess enough energy to time to bring in enough cash for amusement, entertainment, clubs, parties and so on. They have no opportunity to spend just thirty minutes with their kids. They would joyfully give a couple of hundred rupees as compensation for not being able to sit with them and, of course, to suppress the resulting guilt. This is a reality that a more significant part of our guardians would rather not face, for confronting it would mean surrendering their entertainment and clubs. Most guardians have diminished themselves to a lucrative earning machine, embracing power and pleasure. They would rather not face the intricacies of bringing up the kids, little understanding that they would be leaving behind a dangerous and horrendous world profoundly risky for their children.
The world we have created today is shallow, counterfeit and horribly revolting. Still, we embellish it with flowers and draperies, trusting that the artificiality will be concealed, but for how long ......
- Soham Anand, Dehra Dun, India. Originally posted on Facebook for friends and teachers.
One of the best articles I have seen that expresses the correct view of the present state of education. Since I have been involved deeply in it as well, I completely echo the views expressed.
ReplyDeleteThe syllabus is weird, the focus is in the wrong places, nor does it factor in the new dimensions of education are required for children.
We are flooded with coaching institutes and tuition culture and parents have become ATM machines.
It looks like we are more focused on literacy than on educating anyone.
It is amazing to see the kind of restrictive boundary created by these boards on schools and teachers to operate, innovate or create even if they wanted to.
There is indeed a lot to write on this topic, but it was great to read this since no newspaper publishes such articles.
Finally, we see most graduates are not eligible for Jobs, in fact, most do not even clear job interviews or written test. This in turn increases the cost of doing business in India, due to low supply of well educated and skilled talent.