Every creature on this planet is actively engaged in their own life race, starting from fulfillment of their day to day requirements till their aim of achieving the so called life time goals and we human beings are no exception to that. India, the second most populated country in the world with 125 crores of people in numbers, despite having good infrastructural facilities and manpower resources is nowhere near the top rankings as for the education system is concerned.
Why is it so? This question is the basis for evolution of this article. This article gives a sneak peek of the current scenario of our India’s education system. Come. Let’s find out.
The life cycle of a successful student should start from getting over 90% in schooling, getting into an engineering college/doing a graduation and settling into a branded corporate with assured job. Well, this is the generally accepted life graph formulated by our neighbours, relatives and the entire society surrounding us in order to label someone as “successful”. And the parents are mentally forced by the society to develop their children in this standardised format failing which, they will also become prey for this society. And the cycle continues... Simple. If all the fingers in our hand itself are not identical, it is utmost idiotic to expect all the students to fit into a pre-defined circle and get labelled as “successful in life”. And hence, it is indeed essential for us to look into this issue from its root cause rather than commenting on a macro angle.
This article keeps on using the term “Education”... Well. What does it actually mean? Education is the process of facilitating learning or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits. This is what Wikipedia says... Whether our educational system puts a tick mark to all the above items?? The answer is a STRICT NO.
Schools, the starting point for any student’s education career tagged popularly as “FIRST HOME” as nowadays students spend more time here as compared to their home. But whether it works in the way in which it has to work?? Yes… it’s a big question mark.
The primary goal of school education system nowadays is not mainly targeted towards imparting good character, developing inter-personal skills, enabling the students to active application of their mind but, is confined purely to the completion of SYLLABUS within the time allotted and conducting the prescribed number of model tests and extra coaching classes. As a result, students are turned to be mere mark getters and their overall personality development ranks a big ZERO.
The students are not given the freedom to think over an issue except to accept and memorize the lessons taught and vomit in the exam answer sheets filling up the pages and this becomes even a contest among the students as to find out who has written more number of pages. The brain building fundamental questions such as What, Why and how are erased from the minds of the students and instead given the options YES or NO. The students are trained only to clear their exams with good marks and out of box thinking is strictly prohibited. Over a period of time, students even stop to ask meaningful questions due to fear factor and the same gets buried in their minds without any solution. It is not right to find fault with the schools or the teachers, but the entire system that should be blamed.
And w.r.t sports activities in schools... Sorry... Some people may even argue that schools have nothing to do with sports and often it is treated as an offence/misdeed by most of the parents. In most of the schools, the time allocated towards sports is very much negligible and even that classes are also occupied by the other subject teachers to finish their uncompleted SYLLABUS. And then, we feel envy on other countries like China, USA and Great Britain while seeing the OLYMPICS medal tally cursing our Indian contingent to the core. The training and passion towards sports can only be inculcated in the earliest stages of one’s career i.e., school life and once if it is missed, the opportunity is lost. We need to feel pity only on ourselves rather on feeling jealous on other countries.
And the situation even worsens when they step into college with their irrebuttable presumption that they have learnt everything, got good marks and coming here only to get a graduation. Of course, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Despite all these things, if there is one area that should be mentioned where the students get themselves developed with the latest changes happening, it is ENTERTAINMENT. We need to really feel pity on the current scenario of the students focusing more on reviewing the Friday releases and meme creations in social networking sites as compared to their overall personality development. The pressure that has been put on their shoulders by the entire society is the only reason for their distraction towards studies and I should say that evolution of social networking sites and modern technologies are leading every one of us in a wrong path.
Even though there may be a school of thought saying that the literacy rate in India has developed considerably, the social crimes happening in our society has increased even more at a rapid rate. This makes us to think where this education system leads us to, when our grand fathers/mothers have lived more happily even without going to these schools and colleges.
Having said all, now you may think that this article conveys something which is identical to that of the messages conveyed in movies like 3 Idiots (Hindi), Saattai (Tamil) etc., But I think if the same hero-heroine-villain concept itself is portrayed in enormous number of movies, it is definitely worth to talk about an essential important issue haunting our society even if it is identical to some of the movies. At least people will get a chance to remember and reinstate in their minds what is happening around in our country’s education system.
While the changes we desire to happen may not happen immediately still, we can be that ignition to bring out the revolution we desire, at least for the generations to come.
JAI HIND!!!
AUTHOR - NAGARAJ S residing in Chennai, currently pursuing CA Final and can also be reached at Krish10940@gmail.com
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