“The aim of education is the opening of the inner eye towards light”- said Plato thereby expressing the importance and the ultimate aim of education. Education plays a key role in the progress and development of a nation. The solution to many a problems lies in educating the masses. Knowledge is power and education provides this knowledge. An educated person is more mature and sensible than an uneducated man. He knows how to handle the situations tactfully and wisely. Our country has been impoverished by a lot of strikes, violence and protests. And if we ferret out the cause for all these, we find that behind every such agitation there is a nexus of uneducated persons. If idle mind is a devil’s workshop, an uneducated mind is his lair. Hence, the need of the hour is to educate the masses.
Today, India has achieved an overall literacy rate of about 60%. However, among those who are literate, not all are educated. A clear-cut distinction has to be made between being merely literate and being educated. If literacy is being able to read and write, education is a broader and more involved perspective of being able to understand, resolve and apply the knowledge gained by being literate. It is not sufficient if one is just literate, one should also be educated. One should retrospect oneself and ask the question whether he is educated or merely literate. If literacy is the body then education is the soul. They should both go hand in hand. Our government should try to achieve 100% education rate and not just literacy rate.
Our current education system and the government policies of education are oriented more towards making people literate rather than educated. These policies need to be reformed immediately in the interest of country’s and peoples’ welfare. Great social reformers like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Annie Besant, Ranade and many others were also pioneers of educational reforms. They emphasized the need of educating people to prevent them from being exploited by the British, to make them fight for their rights. Gandhiji was a profounder of female education for he believed that if you educate a man you are educating one person, whereas if you educate a woman you are educating an entire family.
The need of the hour is to bring about a revolution in our education system by making suitable reforms that will not only enrich the quality of education but also make it more meaningful and knowledge oriented. The first and foremost step in this regard is to achieve 100% education rate. Emphasis should be given to education of rural masses. National literacy mission, a governmental organization, is doing a commendable job in this regard. However, in a country like India which has a population of more than a 100 crore, it is impossible for any single organization to carry out its job effectively. Hence, more number of private and non-governmental organizations (NGO) should come forward and take the initiative of spreading education in remote and backward areas. Government should offer special schemes, subsidies and provide all the required facilities to motivate these organizations and encourage other organizations to join them. Special incentives should be given to the people also in order to attract them and to prevent them from leaving the schools. A large number of adult schools should be set up. Informal education should be imparted through these schools. Vocational job oriented training should be given to the people in order to help them earn their living. Programs like ‘each one teach one’ should be encouraged to spread education among the people.
The constitution of India provides for free and compulsory education to all the children below the age of fourteen years. This should be extended up to eighteen years and strictly enforced. The number of school dropouts has been increasing at an alarming rate mainly because they want to go out and earn a livelihood. This should be prevented by introducing schemes like ‘earn while you learn’ where by the students can earn as well as learn simultaneously. Special scholarships should be provided to poor and deserving students. Free books, uniform and midday meals should be given to poor children. Although these schemes are in vogue, many students who are really in need of it are not benefited due to the prevailing corruption in the country. Stringent laws should be passed to curb corruption and a strict vigil should be kept upon the officials in charge.
The quality of the education needs to be improved tremendously. Educational boards of various states follow their own pattern and syllabus that more often keeps changing with the government and the political party, which try to enforce their views and opinions on children. Hence, first of all the educational boards must be freed form the clutches of the government. They should be made independent bodies vested with full power to monitor the quality of education. Highly qualified people who are an epitome of education should adore the board of directors for framing the syllabus. The syllabus should be periodically reviewed and updated to include the latest state of the art technologies. Obsolete issues should be dropped then and there. Value based education should be encouraged. ‘Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime’ is a well-known line from a popular poem. True to these words, the curriculum should include lessons on the lives of great people who have contributed to the social, political, religious, economical and scientific development of the country. Instead of having separate state educational boards, there should be only one central board of education in order to bring about uniformity in education pattern and to help those students who have to take education in various states because of their parents’ transferable jobs.
Most of the schools in our country especially in the rural areas do not have sufficient number of teachers. Hence it is not sufficient if the government sets up a large number of schools at close proximity from each other so that the students do not have to travel long distances. It should also induct sufficient number of teachers to take care of these students. These teachers should be highly qualified. They should be given proper training and paid a very good salary with other benefits like accommodation, transportation facilities, etc. They should understand the students and try to make their teaching as lively, interesting and interactive as possible. Example is better than precept. Hence, they should include as many real life examples in their teaching as possible.
Last but not the least is our examination system, which also needs to be reformed. The examinations in our country are mainly aimed at testing the memory of a student rather than his knowledge. The results only reflect the performance of the student in those stipulated hours of the examination to those few questions in the question paper and are not designed to test the knowledge attained by him in the entire course of study. Hence, new schemes should be devised to test the overall knowledge and the level of understanding of the student and not merely his performance in a few hours. Evaluation should be done continuously throughout the length of the course.
By incorporating all these changes, our system of education can be greatly improved and we can be a model to other countries in the field of education. This will also attract students from other countries to come to India for education and prevent our own students from leaving our shores seeking quality education abroad.
Trivia: This article written in January 2003 went on to win the second prize at state level essay writing competition.
Today, India has achieved an overall literacy rate of about 60%. However, among those who are literate, not all are educated. A clear-cut distinction has to be made between being merely literate and being educated. If literacy is being able to read and write, education is a broader and more involved perspective of being able to understand, resolve and apply the knowledge gained by being literate. It is not sufficient if one is just literate, one should also be educated. One should retrospect oneself and ask the question whether he is educated or merely literate. If literacy is the body then education is the soul. They should both go hand in hand. Our government should try to achieve 100% education rate and not just literacy rate.
Our current education system and the government policies of education are oriented more towards making people literate rather than educated. These policies need to be reformed immediately in the interest of country’s and peoples’ welfare. Great social reformers like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand Saraswati, Annie Besant, Ranade and many others were also pioneers of educational reforms. They emphasized the need of educating people to prevent them from being exploited by the British, to make them fight for their rights. Gandhiji was a profounder of female education for he believed that if you educate a man you are educating one person, whereas if you educate a woman you are educating an entire family.
The need of the hour is to bring about a revolution in our education system by making suitable reforms that will not only enrich the quality of education but also make it more meaningful and knowledge oriented. The first and foremost step in this regard is to achieve 100% education rate. Emphasis should be given to education of rural masses. National literacy mission, a governmental organization, is doing a commendable job in this regard. However, in a country like India which has a population of more than a 100 crore, it is impossible for any single organization to carry out its job effectively. Hence, more number of private and non-governmental organizations (NGO) should come forward and take the initiative of spreading education in remote and backward areas. Government should offer special schemes, subsidies and provide all the required facilities to motivate these organizations and encourage other organizations to join them. Special incentives should be given to the people also in order to attract them and to prevent them from leaving the schools. A large number of adult schools should be set up. Informal education should be imparted through these schools. Vocational job oriented training should be given to the people in order to help them earn their living. Programs like ‘each one teach one’ should be encouraged to spread education among the people.
The constitution of India provides for free and compulsory education to all the children below the age of fourteen years. This should be extended up to eighteen years and strictly enforced. The number of school dropouts has been increasing at an alarming rate mainly because they want to go out and earn a livelihood. This should be prevented by introducing schemes like ‘earn while you learn’ where by the students can earn as well as learn simultaneously. Special scholarships should be provided to poor and deserving students. Free books, uniform and midday meals should be given to poor children. Although these schemes are in vogue, many students who are really in need of it are not benefited due to the prevailing corruption in the country. Stringent laws should be passed to curb corruption and a strict vigil should be kept upon the officials in charge.
The quality of the education needs to be improved tremendously. Educational boards of various states follow their own pattern and syllabus that more often keeps changing with the government and the political party, which try to enforce their views and opinions on children. Hence, first of all the educational boards must be freed form the clutches of the government. They should be made independent bodies vested with full power to monitor the quality of education. Highly qualified people who are an epitome of education should adore the board of directors for framing the syllabus. The syllabus should be periodically reviewed and updated to include the latest state of the art technologies. Obsolete issues should be dropped then and there. Value based education should be encouraged. ‘Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime’ is a well-known line from a popular poem. True to these words, the curriculum should include lessons on the lives of great people who have contributed to the social, political, religious, economical and scientific development of the country. Instead of having separate state educational boards, there should be only one central board of education in order to bring about uniformity in education pattern and to help those students who have to take education in various states because of their parents’ transferable jobs.
Most of the schools in our country especially in the rural areas do not have sufficient number of teachers. Hence it is not sufficient if the government sets up a large number of schools at close proximity from each other so that the students do not have to travel long distances. It should also induct sufficient number of teachers to take care of these students. These teachers should be highly qualified. They should be given proper training and paid a very good salary with other benefits like accommodation, transportation facilities, etc. They should understand the students and try to make their teaching as lively, interesting and interactive as possible. Example is better than precept. Hence, they should include as many real life examples in their teaching as possible.
Last but not the least is our examination system, which also needs to be reformed. The examinations in our country are mainly aimed at testing the memory of a student rather than his knowledge. The results only reflect the performance of the student in those stipulated hours of the examination to those few questions in the question paper and are not designed to test the knowledge attained by him in the entire course of study. Hence, new schemes should be devised to test the overall knowledge and the level of understanding of the student and not merely his performance in a few hours. Evaluation should be done continuously throughout the length of the course.
By incorporating all these changes, our system of education can be greatly improved and we can be a model to other countries in the field of education. This will also attract students from other countries to come to India for education and prevent our own students from leaving our shores seeking quality education abroad.
Trivia: This article written in January 2003 went on to win the second prize at state level essay writing competition.
0 comments:
Post a Comment