Education
There is no other way to say this story- somewhere amid pain and chaos, a child is born. He cries while his mother smiles in exhaustion. His father holds him for the first time and with dampness in his eyes, he promises his child something he could never get. A good education. A happy life. Three years later, the child gets introduced to the Indian education system, which will eventually, like a slow poison, curb his rights of seeing dreams.
No amount of words can describe how important education is, in today’s world. Education is an essential tool for a bright future for all of us. It certainly shapes our world for good.
India with a huge population of 1.38 billion people, has the largest school education system which caters 26 million students every year. India has over 1.5 million schools. A fundamental right, article 21-A, gives the right to free and compulsory education to all children between 6 and 14 year age by the Central and state governments and Union Territory Administrations. Free education is provided to girls to empower women and mid-day meals are given to students which aims at students health. Scholarships are provided to meritorious students. Moreover, steps have been taken to give education to adults to eradicate illiteracy. Every coin has two sides. And, surprisingly the other side of this coin is way more wider.
Like every education system in the world, the Indian education system has its disadvantages. India, unfortunately, has a rotten education system. The system promotes rat race. Even today, no matter how old the student is, what degree he is pursuing, students are deeply under the concept of rot learning. Even after knowing that conceptual learning is highly beneficial, they prefer mugging up. In a bid to score high, a student usually memorizes things rather than learning them. And, those who score low suffer. The evaluation system has killed creativity among students and made learning a mere race in which if you don’t win, you’re worthless.
Schools and colleges now are merely a factory in which humans are photocopied.
We've often heard people use the phrase "there are two kinds of people in the world....". Even today, you could make an argument that there are indeed, two kinds of them. In Indian society, some do nothing and still live an extravagant life. While there are people who work as hard as they can to get negligible wages. Similarly, there are two kinds of children. Some kids are pushed to get the best education, but are never asked what dreams they see when their eyes are wide open. And, some kids never get to know what dreams are, how are they even spelled. Physics-cally, the quality of education one gets is directly proportional to ones social status in society.
The education system of India encourages flock mentality- first among parents and then among their children. Since it is parents that decide the career of a child, they tend to follow the flock and opt for traditional favorites. It also is badly affected by bottlenecking, in which many students who deserve a good higher education or jobs don’t get a chance because there aren’t enough chances for them. Sadly, the teaching methods of teachers rarely get questioned. Many institutes hire teachers having inadequate knowledge and never try to know about their teaching skills.
India is known for its moral values since forever. But, it’s degrading drastically. There is a real urge to work on the social and moral values of the youth. Schools and colleges should prioritize in teaching one to become a good human being rather than teaching how to do trigonometry. You know what is the reflection of our grappled education system? Social sweet media we spend our entire day on. After the internet became cheap many people who are uninformed, uneducated, people who don’t have any knowledge or social skill, people who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong are getting opinionated on social media. These opinions are getting curbed by people who have the power to do so. Most of these opinions being toxic and filthy, is badly affecting the society and mindset of people. This example simply highlights a big loophole in our education system.
Government expenditure in education has been only approx 3% of the GDP which is a really small amount. Moreover, more than 40% of seats are used for reservation. Reservations should be given to the needy but lately, the concept of giving equality has started to take away equality from worthy. The concept of reservation has snatched opportunities from so many people who worked hard, who deserved good, who chose to give up in the end.
Of all the drawback our education has, one of the most severe drawback is that it affects students emotionally. They get emotionally affected is merely an understatement. A shocking 12 percent of Indian students between the ages of four and 12 suffer from some form of psychiatric disorder. Another 20 percent of students show clear signs of mental sickness. At least one student attempts suicide every hour in India. Why? Due to stress that the Indian education system causes. Young minds are unable to cope with this educational stress and pressure from parents to “excel” at studies. They are unable to cope with the heartless criticism of not scoring good, of not being good enough. These stats can never define the burden, the pain that a child is undergoing, or has gone through. It can never define anything at all and even if it does, it won’t matter much. And, even if it starts mattering, it won’t ever matter more than the necessity to score good, to be a good child, to be a good student, to get a precious academic degree. I wonder how many Picassos we've traded for the engineers, or much less, nothing in this country.
Despite all sorts of challenges, the country continues to flourish and churn out some of the exceptional brains of the world. Yet, there are so many words left unsaid, so many music unmade, so many voices unheard. So many talents are left hidden and perhaps will always be left that way. Steven Gould said- “I am, somehow, less interested in weights and convolutions of einsteins brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
Certain great changes have been made by the government in the education system which hopefully will make great changes for good. Perhaps, soon a sea change will be brought up in the education system. Perhaps, someday, the side of the pros will be wider than the side of the cons.
