Education is the only tool to transform the country

“Education is the only tool to transform the country”

Every alternate government experiments with the education system. Its situation is similar to a rat over which drug is tested several times. Every citizen of this country claims himself to be an educational leader, motivational guru and (uncertified) counselor. Presently, there is lot of hue and cry about skill development and vocational education. Thank God, off late but authorities rose from slumber. Perhaps, it is a boomerang. I wonder why to make the system so perplexed that everyone associated with this industry is baffled. It is absolutely like an old wine in new bottle.

This reminds me of ancient pre-historic time education system of Gurukuls. If we run down our memory lane, the primitive education system of India was unparalleled. Go back to the period of Kings Dynasty, where every child willing to study including royal kids were sent to gurukuls to seek education. Purpose of education was to transform the personality of a child with sole emphasis on harmonious development.

Education imparted was absolutely skill oriented. Focus was on training of mind, soul, senses and spirit. Real life preparation through training of warheads, spiritual knowledge, lessons on economics, physical endurance and astronomy in boundary less classrooms without any discrimination. The character and competency of teachers was unchallengeable. 

Modern education system is contrast to our conventional teaching system.  Educational institutions are mushrooming up with mammoth infrastructure providing world class facilities but the irony is there is dearth of eminent teachers. The only objective is to strive and survive. There is a buzz about Blooms Taxonomy but creativity of a child is crushed by making them pen pushers. Our promotion system is rotten which incentivizes the crammers and recognizes the number crunchers. In this technology driven era of big data, robotics, analytics, AI, we are still busy with testing the memory driven retention. Instead of projects and internship we still conduct outmoded and biased practicals as internal assessment, which is merely eyewash.

Children are overburdened with the monotonous curriculum which no ways contribute to their thinking skills, logical reasoning, decision making and cognitive development. Innovation, global competitiveness, entrepreneurship, leadership and preparation for future seem to be unrealistic distant dreams under the prevailing scheme of education. It is gargantuan task for the educators to kindle the flame of curiosity within 21st century kids. 

Only remedy to prevent our ailing education system to succumb to annihilation is revolutionary progressive amendments without further dissections. Abandoning conventional practices and then   re-introducing them with modern terms would not strengthen our education system. For an instance, isn’t value education equivalent to spiritual education, isn’t algorithm equal to astronomy, today’s HPE is what it was physical activities in the past, learning in laps of nature is similar to open theatres, MBA & Economics is same as Chanakya Niti, nowadays diversified campus were Gurukuls in the past, visual-performing arts-music and vocational education are not new skills they were the professions of our great grandfathers during yesteryears. Nevertheless, I leave you to ponder upon where is the innovation and novelty. Ultimately we are back 2 basics.