What is more messed up than India’s politicians, probably its education system, don’t get me wrong, I believe education is mankind’s ticket to freedom , this is just about the Indian education system and possibly any other region following the same, by the time you’re done reading this article you’ll get an idea about what caused this catastrophe, what is currently going on and what could be the potential future of our country’s framework for building educated individuals.
The origin
From contributing to 23% of the world's economy in the 1700s to around 3% in the year 1950, it was the British that messed up this country. During the colonisation, the Brits never wanted any entrepreneurs or people who could think for themselves, what they wanted were people who could do menial jobs for them and in order for this to work, they brought in Thomas Macaulay, a famous scholar, He came in and ripped apart the Gurukula system that has been going on from 5000 BC and introduced the system that we have now. The prime aim of the British was to not let Indians think openly which could have potentially led to freedom, however this happened anyway thanks to Gandhi, but how does this system of rote learning still exist, 75 years after the Brits have left? Your grandparents or their parents are known as the silent generation or the baby boomers, the India that they received after the British left was torn into pieces, to provide for their families, Indian men and women started studying engineering, medicine, law, and mostly for clerical jobs but what really improves a country’s GDP is business and very few people actually considered taking up something as risky as business post independence in India and this is the main reason why your cannot blame our ancestors, but it's the year 2021 now, why do most indian parents still stick to the same format that we started to follow 75 years back? Simple answer, it was passed on through the generations and nobody questioned it.
The current scenario
You probably know this as well as I do if not better but the real question is, are people actually learning what they want to learn? Sure, all the boards in the country offer multiple streams but aren't there quite a lot of people forced into it because of pressure. I consider pressure to be of two types, one is where your guardian or parent forces you to do something and you have no choice but to do it, the second and the more vicious one is quite complicated, imagine you’re a 15 year old, you tell people around you that you want to pursue a particular career, of course this doesn’t apply to all cases but people around you will probably tell you not to do it with their limited knowledge in the particular subject, when this happens over a period of time you realise there is only 2 or 3 jobs that is socially acceptable even though it's not true and you being a 15 year old definitely cannot be blamed because you were indirectly being manipulated by your surroundings, this is the reason why quite a portion of students tend to drop out from college after a while, it took them all that time to realise that’s not what they wanted to do and they understood the difference between the society’s want and their want.
The future
To be completely honest, I genuinely think the situation is getting better thanks to globalisation, with different international boards that have much better assessment patterns coming to India , it does make the situation better but to think practically here, not everybody can afford to study under an international board, the real change will start to come in as the national and state boards start to adopt the features of International boards and while I’m writing this article, the national board that I study under has actually started implementing better methods and I genuinely hope it gets better.
NOTE: Everything that has been mentioned above is what a 17 year olds thought about the board he is studying under is , I’m refraining from giving any advice here because I believe I do not have the eligibility for it yet but as for myself I will always strive to learn something that I want to if my environment permits me to because after all I believe passion fuels purpose.
(An update on this article will be published soon on how you should pursue what interests you.)
What kind of changes in our current education system do you think can elevate it to the next level apart from an international board because then it would just be doing what other countries are doing right now. What do you think can take it beyond that?
ReplyDeleteAlso, well written man, Totally agree with this.
Thankyou for the kind words. First of all let me start by saying that education is the key here, no matter whatever method of teaching comes in,the student must be genuinely interested to learn and without it there's no point. Coming to the portion about emulating other boards,I genuinely think it's something that could be practiced without,maybe not entirely copy but take what's best of it. Elevating it to the next level is going to be hard, a complete change is required, from forming new textbooka to having additional subject to new assessment patterns,the list is endless but I don't think we really need that atleast for now.
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