In ancient times in India, students use to go to gurukuls where they stay with their teachers(guru) and study. Teacher give them lesson and practice work. There was no concept of home-work. Students need not to write something in their text books, rather they had to understand and memorise the concept. We can find countless references in our holi books and sacred literature, which says that students stayed with teacher for the duration of education. With the passage of time, our education system evolved the gurukuls converted into vidyalays (school), mahavidyalaya (college) and vishwavidyalaya (University).
School were started to give basic education, where teacher is appointed to teach. Group of teachers is headed by headmaster or principal. Principal or schools get directions from Block Education Officers appointed by government, who regulates the education system in his block. Each school has to follow the curricullum of some education board. While searching for some information I found the list of 42 Boards in India, that governs the basic education system. All educational boards have to follow the guidelines of NCERT i.e. National Council for Education Research and Training. This is one part of education system. Another part is higher education, students are required to enroll with university to continue their education after they complete first 12 years of education from some education board. They go to college to study and appear for university examination and collect their graduate then post graduate degrees. Those who still want to continue their study enroll for doctorate degree and some even go for Post-Doctoral. There are 568 universities in India delivering higher education to students in India. There are about 18 accreditation bodies in India that governs the higher education system. Not only this, we have a dedicated ministry known as education ministry headed by Education Minister in the centre, and similar structure in every state. In brief we have a well defined education system to give quality education to all the students of the country.
Isn't it unfortunate that inspite of such huge education system, students prefer to study abroad. After analysing the it is found that students who study abroad or in some premium institutes in India undoubtfully have better knowledge. Why is it so? Is it due to the intelligence level of students who get admission to such institutes? Or is there something in such institutes that is given to its students?I personally have seen the way students are taught in such institutes. If you ask me staff are putting in much more efforts in other institutes but output is still the same. Myself being a teacher I have seen that students who is comfortable in mugging up the concepts score more marks as compared to one who understands. This typically reminds me a scene from a bollywood movie “3 Idiots” where teacher asks a student to define “Machine”. In my view it is not the teachers who are not teaching or teaching wrong, neither it is students who are not learning or learning wrong but it is the irony of our education system. Teachers are forced to teach the facts of history. The syllabus is not updated regularly because the updation of syllabus is very long and tedious process which may take upto 5 years. Now suppose if today I suggest some change in the syllabus today, it will reflect after 5 years and by that time the importance of the concept is lost in history. We are still teaching, How to connect to internet using PSTN? Where everyone know that today we have lot of mobile connectivity options available. Unfortunately this is not available in any university's curricullum.
Secondly our evaluation system is wonderful. University appoint few professional (Who have been teaching for preety long time) to create a question paper, print and seal those papers in envelops, send it to examination centers. Now on the day of examination the sealed envelops are opened in tight security, secretly transferred over to invigilator, who distributes them among students and now students put their head as well as pen down for next 3 hours, without realizing the importance of the concept asked in paper. They answer what they mugged up in classes. And the most important, there are very few (almost neglegible) questions asked in such papers that evaluates analytical and understanding of the students. Its all what they practiced in classroom. And the output is our today's generation, millions of qualified youth is unemployed, and our educationists are planning to increase the duration of studies so that the growing graph of employed graduates can be delayed.
Now veiw the next phase, student has successfully graduated, now he expects a wonderful job but whenever there is a vacancy he has to go through selection test, another problem, now again he need training (lot of coaching instituted has mushroomed up to give training for such tests). Isn't it the
irony of our education system that after studying for more then 15 years one has to take the special training to get hired by some respectable organization on some respectable post.
We desperately need to review our education system, we can to expect our educationist to change the system overnight but our teachers has a big role to play. Our teachers must take initiative to improve the understanding and analytic skills of the students rather then finishing up the syllabus for univeristy examination, and motivate students in this domain. Students also must take guidence for thier seniors and teachers and practice on the application of the concepts rather then mugging up or cramming the concepts without understanding them. This is the only way out the improve the quality of education and build a better citizen for tomorrow.
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