Is A Reboot of Indian Education System Needed?

Does Indian School kill creativity?

In a workshop conducted by well known non-conventional educationist (Vidhi Jain), 30 students were given a sheet to draw anything they’d like. Unbelievingly, it was observed that 26 of them drew scenery with mountains, river, and the Sun. There is no scope of making a mistake, if you make a mistake you get punished, you get labelled and those de-humanizing labels stay with you life-long. We carry them and eventually start accepting them! How many time has it happened that in a class of 60, a student asked a question or are the teachers bothered about it? When a teacher is asked to complete a set syllabus does she even care what is she teaching? We have progressed with time.

However, we still have not been able to move away from rote learning. While we know that IB schools are changing the education system at their level, but we also need to understand that the population that goes to IB schools is very limited in nature. Not everyone can afford the education system that they offer. Marks continue to play an important role in a students life rather than practical knowledge when you see a question, how many students think about learning something new? Some of them start thinking whether they’ve learnt it or not and others tend to avoid it if it’s not an exam.

How many schools teach us the purpose of teaching? For instance, Smoking is injurious to health! Every one of us knows but still, students smoke why? It is because we tried to impose it on them rather What if schools asked them to solve this problem in their way, practically. This makes them more solution-oriented, improve their reasoning skills and by trying to eradicate it in their innocent way they’ll think hundreds of times before smoking. 

Is Curriculum a problem?

When CBSE mandated it’s exam pattern to be strictly based on NCERT books, there comes a responsibility of providing competitive and updated content to the students. With the fast- growing world where 1300 start-up being added to the system every year in India alone, how can things remain the same even after 10 years, yes that’s when NCERT books are updated. With AI taking over the world NCERT books don’t even mention them, students are still studying outdated coding languages like Java, C++ which when they’ll come to the corporate world will be of no use.

It’s no wrong to say that the current education system is unable to deliver efficient and competitive individuals on a global level which leads to underemployment problems. In India, we still depend on theoretical knowledge including the top B schools(excluding IIMs) whereas Business schools like Harvard University depend 80% on case-study, 10% on the project, 5% on lecture and 5% on the theory which is a case with most of the top-notch institutions across the world. 

Attendance System

Most of the schools & higher educational bodies in India have set their attendance criteria! At the age of 18+ when a student gets the right to vote and he marks his importance in choosing the leaders who’ll run the country. Can’t we stop spoon-feeding him?

If the lecture is productive enough to deliver the strong-content in an interesting manner why a student will miss his class, at the current age he gets mature enough to take his life decisions.

If a University sets 85% attendance criteria for qualifying to sit in an exam, we switch his focus from learning something new to just gaining attendance.

In India, a student is free to choose what he wants to learn after 12th then why do we force him to attend the class which he chose for himself. A survey has found that 61% of education leaders in India believe that higher education in the country has failed to keep up with changing markets. The report, published by the IBM Institute for Business Value in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveyed 289 education leaders across five roles, namely corporate recruiter, corporate learning executive, senior educator, academic leadership, and educational innovator. 

The emerging concept of de-schooling

Many students, especially those who are poor, intuitively know what the schools do for them. They school them to confuse process and substance. Once these become blurred, a new logic is assumed: the more treatment there is, the better are the results; or, escalation leads to success. The pupil is thereby “schooled” to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new. His imagination is “schooled” to accept service in place of value.

Medical treatment is mistaken for health care, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work. Health, learning, dignity, independence, and creative endeavour are defined as little more than the performance of the institutions which claim to serve these ends. There is a University called Swaraj University which beliefs in content-based learning instead of certificate-based learning, students get to choose their curriculum there and no certificates are awarded on successful completion of the course.

The companies hiring you without a degree are surely less in number but they do exist! Google, Apple Inc, Costco Wholesale, Latest shipment, Hiltons, Starbucks, IBM and many more coming. These are some companies which try to evaluate your skill and don’t care if you have a degree or not! 

Conclusion

As the world progresses, people face more complex social, cultural, economic problems and political crises which often affect their personal and social development. Education plays a vital role in solving these problems and resolving the imminent crises. One should focus on earning the skills rather than just a degree. The kind of shift in the corporate sector to skill- based hiring proves that certificates will not be the only criteria to judge one’s ability. Certain things in our education sector need improvement but it’s not that we should stop learning rather mindful learning is important.

One should always go behind the reasons, education gives us the power to as WHY and when we start exercising that power we break various barriers and challenges that the current education system restricts us in.

These days a lot of positive changes are happening in the education system of India, Emphasis on practical knowledge is increased. The belief that we can bring about a change can bring one!

Written by: Mukund Mangwani
Edited by: Nidhi Verma



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