The purpose of teaching is not the
memorizing of some dates & facts, that the student is not interested in
knowing the exact date of a battle or the birthday of some marshal or other
- Adolf Hitler
When did the battle of Plassey
started? Who won the battle of Panipat? In what period Sindh Monarchy existed?
These were the questions which toppled my mark-sheets in all standards. At that
time I used to think what these Integral and Differentials equations of
mathematics have to do with our lives, and I am still wondering. Those boring
chemistry reactions and equations which we crammed day and night, but still got
doomed by their fable.
While reading Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ I took a pause at the above statement by him, and was
forced to think that our educational system is still the same as the Austrians
or Germans had at that time. I don’t know whether their academics has changed
or not, but I can definitely say that Indian education system is still the same
or we can say, it deteriorated a lot instead of improvements. Recently I was
reading some reputation rankings announced by some international education authority
and not even a single Indian institute figured in the top hundred.
Indian Universities have proved to be
irrelevant or not good enough for the rest of the world. We may be churning out
the largest number of engineers in the world, or have millions of graduates
each year. But until our universities perform better and create a reputation
for themselves, the degrees do not carry much value. An Indian degree is still
seen with suspicion across the world. And they are right too, as there are
hundreds of such Universities which are selling degrees like cakes; and these
so called distant education centers made the situation worst.
In India what are pupils expected to
do? Read? Write? Memorize? Think? Socialize? In my view academics have a range
of deliverables, prime among them is leadership, Social etiquettes, Character
development and well-being. But sad to say, here we don’t teach children even
the commonest things – love for the Environment, for the cleanliness, for the
fellow students; all we teach is competition. You have to score 90 - 95% doesn’t
matter how you achieve it; by putting your health down or your character.
Almost everybody watched and praised
‘Taare Zameen pe’ but nobody followed the lesson it delivered. It’s really
common, we like those movies which shows a different side of the stories that
don’t exist in India and we want those to exist, but don’t do anything for that
to happen. We either do not know the way of value creation or we are unwilling
to break down the barriers to working with our ideas and intellect. Be the
change, let’s open up, encourage your children to diversify to think on their
own, let them generate their own ideas, their own future. There is life outside
the Engineering and Doctorate madness; there is life outside the mad rush of
percentage.
