Change is a must
Mohammad Nadeem Parray
Education has been the most pressing issue that has become vocal in recent times. However I have not found anything that provides a sure shot solution to this ‘Dinosaur in the Room’. It is completely understandable that there is not one single solution that will resolve this issue, but there is as good as zero inputs to improve. I have been browsing through various social media sites where in people are talking about education, however I am deeply disappointed to find out the following:
Problems of the Education System. But where are the solutions?????
So, schools are hypocrites, they teach absolutely nothing that is prospectively required, and the exact replica of a prison. Is that all? Are these the problems we need to solve? The solutions are so simple to these problems that you and I can come up with a couple solutions in a less than an hour.
But we fail to understand that to solve something that is a global issue can take time. Speaking of the education system, it is by far the worst system any country could ever follow. You can praise me for using honey coated words while I describe the devil in this system.
I call the present Education System a Factory.
A 4 year old “Raw Material” enters the system. It is polished, brain-washed trained to perform a limited set of skills and as they call it “taught everything he/she should know”, every year for around 16 to 18 years and there comes the “Finished Product” ready to be sent to the “Market”. And of course, the Government has the “Expiry Date” somewhere around 60 years of age, and then product can be discarded. Wonderful, isn’t it?
Well, in the most civilized words, this system is absolutely sickening. It is the utmost despicable system any country could possibly follow. How do you expect a child to go through a system for around 18 years and be completely ready for what? A job? And who certifies these individuals to be “Market Ready”? — A set of half educated self proclaimed educators with minimal actual knowledge about what a person needs to be called well educated who build sky high schools with all possible facilities, but all this without truly promoting and spreading “Knowledge”.
Let’s look at an instance: A child interested in the field of Mathematics and Statistics who is exploring the subject all by itself at the age of 13 and writes a research paper on her subject, but he/she cannot skip school and get admitted for higher education at age 13 because they are too young and do not fit the age limit to start higher education in a college which is 18 years.
So the child fully capable of studying at a college has to wait till the age of 18 and study something too easy for the student to finally enter a college, which by the way is a whole new circus in India — Application for admission, Entrance Tests, Admission Procedure and then a 3 or 4 years of college for a piece of paper that in a way, says, “Congratulations you survived 4 years of boredom, torment, college activities, long assignments and homework and the history of your subject and learnt absolutely nothing important in College, but we give you this certification called as “degree” to show to your friends and family and tell them you passed out from our prestigious University”.
Now let’s look at another scenario: A child is interested in the field of Mathematics and Statistics who is exploring the subject all by itself at the age of 13 writes a research paper on his/her subject and requests different institutions to admit him/her in the college after passing a test that evaluates his/her knowledge on her subject and if he/she passes the test, gets admitted to the college/institute for the exceptional set of skills and knowledge he/she has achieved by self motivation and self learning. At a young age of 13, the student was able to discover the teacher within, and was able to save 5 years worth of time learning something mediocre.
Now imagine a scenario where we can do this for all of our students. No age limits, no restrictions on the choice of subject, self motivated students who know what they want.
Authentic Lines of my Friend:
I have completed 3 years worth of psychology studies in under 8 months, all by myself — No teacher, No tuition, No college, yet I cannot get admitted in a Higher College because I don’t have the piece of paper called “Degree” given by the so called “Authorized and Recognized University”. I have trained myself to be a psychologist but no one recognizes those efforts, they need me to go to college for 3 Years, get a certificate and then call myself a Psychologist.
In the last few days, Exam Results were declared for classes 10th and 12th and the students have come out with 100% marks. A large number of students have scored 90%+. But I have failed to understand why these kids are wasting time in school. Besides, if the syllabus is so easy that they can secure 100% marks in the exam, there are two possibilities: They’ve learnt the pattern of the exam and rote everything that they speculated could possibly come in the exam, or they are brilliant and are undermining their knowledge by staying in this system of schools, degrees and getting a piece of paper that will ensure them a job in the near future in a large multinational company where they can work 9 to 5 and receive a salary. In today’s population and current Job Market we can observe the rate of unemployment hiking. And if these students are oblivious to these I do not know what they achieved by securing 90% and more.
So our education system basically creates cheap labor for foreign companies. It is heart wrecking to see that these students will work for someone else and not for themselves. Indian mentality has always been replicating what Americans and Europeans create. For once why can’t we teach our children to make something that the rest of the world will want to replicate — something the rest of the world did not see coming!?
A diminutive number of our youth is working on starting something exceptional on their own. India ranks 2nd in World Population, but fails to achieve success on the grounds of research and innovation. It ranks 77th in the category of number of researchers. Who is to blame? The Government? The Policy Makers? The Educators? Our Schools and Colleges? or simply us? The answer is all of us. Every single one of us has to take an initiative and work towards betterment of the education system. It needs the support of the students, teachers, our policy makers and the Government to build a system that is fair to everyone — a system that does not discriminate on the basis of Gender, Age, Race, Nationality, Color, Financial Status, Ethnicity, Origin, Region, Religion or Tongue.
We need a system that can recognize the ability, skill, knowledge and interests of every child — because every child, every student, every person is unique and needs an environment to sustain and work on their own ideas, imagine and be creative, build their own school of thought and follow their own ways to gain knowledge in their areas of interest.
I do not believe in the sensibility of the current education system, but I do believe in following a solution oriented approach to mend this system into a positive environment — to make our teachers as our mentors who will guide us through our journey. To find and develop a Research Oriented Mindset that does not require us to get the highest grades to pass but to enrich us with knowledge, facts and discoveries. We need to teach our society that we need to innovate and break these stereotypes. We need to teach our children to stop following and become leaders. There is a wide spectrum of career choices and we need to let everyone explore those areas. Every child is different and every child has far more potential than this system allows it to realize.
When Students cheat on exams it’s because our School System values grades more than Student value learning.
(The author is pursuing Post graduation in Chemistry at KU)
