In simple terms, education means all-round development of personality. Now to get M.A, M.Sc and MBBS degrees will not be considered as an educational act unless the person is not equipped with essential characteristics of modern man. A man must learn how to behave, how to maintain peace and harmony in the society and how he could become a quality human resource that could make our society and the world a better place to live in. We should endeavor to teach and train our students so that they become architects of a competent and vibrant knowledge society.
We are a land of intelligent gene pool. Careful handling of this raw material could pay us dividends beyond imagination. We are a young country. As per International labour organization, 65 percent of India is under 35 years of age, 50 percent is under 25 years and the 10-19 years are 226 million of our population, who are ready to enter higher education. World is aging. Average age in India will be 29 in 2020. In Japan it is going to be 47, in china it will be well past 45, and in Europe it is going to be 46. In youthful USA, it will be past 40. We are the people who have a role to transform the world. Exactly the way china did in the past generation, this role could be ours in the coming generation with 160 million in the working age of 20-24 years.
We are a dynamic power of young and talented people. China will have only 94 million people in this age group; USA will be 17 million short of people needed for work there. We need to take advantage of this and empower our students with knowledge and skill to make them work for the changing global labour market. This way we will not just transform our own economy and society but the whole world. And if we get it wrong the demographic dividend becomes demographic disaster. We witness what happens when unemployed, under educated frustrated youth fall prey to blandish guns and bullets of different kinds. We should equip our youth to make much from the offers of 21 century. Only expansion of education is not the approach to tap this spring of opportunity. Equity in education is more or less achieved by now. Excellence is needed for making our students globally competent.
We need quality in education. The quality of education is not satisfactory in average Indian schools and colleges. The graduates we produce or not worth employment. Our educational institutes are grossly under financed. But money is not the only solution to the problem of quality education which we have misunderstood so far. We could still do better with the available share of finance. Research and training needs much money. Government is trying to pump in money. The allocation of funds has been increased from 1% to 2% of GDP. Innovation requires new ways of thinking. We need to do the things which others have not. We have 17% of world’s brains and only 2.8% of worlds research output. We need to revisit our classroom. Our students have brains full of facts, text book materials and teacher’s lectures. We need well formed minds. A mind which is prepared for real exams of life which doesn’t give you only familiar problems that you have prepared for but situations where we need to apply mind, a mind that is shaped by original creative thinking that will not just ask why, but why not. A mind that reacts to unfamiliar facts and details and synthesizes information that it hasn’t studied before.
Back home, what we saw recently was an urge to conduct the exams without caring whether the objectives of education were met or not. The people administering the education system in our valley probably feel that only conducting exams for class promotion is important. Without taking into account the razor edge competition that our students have to face to get selected in IITs and IIMs and other institutes of quality learning. These are the islands of excellence operating amid the sea of mediocrity of educational institutes. The authorities instead of hastening to conduct exams ought to have ensured effective and satisfactory completion of syllabi prescribed for different classes and courses. Uploading e-tutorials for students who are devoid of internet access amounts to mockery with the self declared aim of (Kashmir University): “education par excellence”. Exams should have been of secondary importance. Focus should have been on actual teaching and learning.
This new order of concessions and discounts in exams will have far reaching effect on the mindset of our students and society in general. This is becoming a new normal. Ninety-five percent of the children of 12 years age in India can read and write. Look at the percentage of literates our students have to compete with to carve their niche. In this scenario, reducing education to mere passing exams will have very bad effects on the quality of education. The constitution of Indian preamble enshrines in it to secure all its citizens: Equality of status and of opportunity. Therefore the right of our students should not be bypassed when their peers on the other divisions of the state and other states receive full education. The education of our students ought not to have been compromised with and their careers should not be jeopardized.
As per the constitution of India, school education was originally a state subject. That is, the states had complete authority on deciding policies and implementing them. The role of the Government of India (GoI) was limited to coordination and deciding on the standards of higher education. This was changed with a constitutional amendment in 1976 so that education now comes in the so-called concurrent list. That is, school education policies and programmes are suggested at the national level by the GoI, though the state governments have a lot of freedom in implementing programmes. Policies are announced at the national level periodically.
The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), set up in 1935, continues to play a lead role in the evolution and monitoring of educational policies and programmes. Therefore essentially those who took this decision ought to have taken a holistic view of the matter and carefully considered its lacunas. You can’t compare apples with oranges nor can you judge the students who availed whole academic year with those who just appeared in an exam with discounted syllabus.
REFERENCE:
Dec 25 2016.Beyond Exams, Focus on Quality Education.Greater Kashmir.retrieved from
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/beyond-exams-focus-on-quality-education/237031.html
