Thursday, June 27, 2019

Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'Give more importance to Merit' that was published in Newsband


Give more importance to Merit
Dramatic changes have happened in the last twenty-five years. Changes have taken place economically socially, strategic demands, many other. Certainly the country has moved much further. Into a 2 trillion economy moving towards a five trillion economy. Also a digitalized society is around the corner.
The draft National Education Policy was released by the government recently. Existing education system is big victim of lethargic and non committed execution of prescribed provisions. Need is to have high integrity in all processes at every level. Governance in education needs to be made merit driven and of high integrity.
The policy advocates the closure of rural primary schools where there are about dozen students and one teacher, without appreciating the higher ratio of students and teachers. The school complex that the policy talks about is an Utopian idea, If it is executed the small children of rural and the oppressed classes of the society will be deprived of education, as transport cost to the 'complex-schools' will be unbearable to the poor families. You cannot make primary education world-class and it is not required also. The primary education is introductory in nature to create an aptitude for learning further, which can be supplemented by ICT, at a lesser cost. The government should not close down rural primary schools creating a situation of illiteracy and ignorance in the deprived communities. Instead, the school teachers must be used for counselling the uneducated rural folk and help them to reach out the government schemes to them through the advancement of IT.
In the interior villages of India, where only a single teacher is posted in primary schools, the teacher doesn't stay in that area and doesn't attend punctually every day.  This aspect of teacher's absence and measures to prevent it are not covered in the draft education policy.
The policy makers have a closed mind, biased, in place of exploring details in policy and changes it will bring vis a vis current system. They are more interested in dividing entire process into welfare of dalits and obc, a narrow mind. In India we have reached to a level where we end up everything into a caste based system, rotten minds which need refreshers course first, otherwise very soon they will take India back to medieval age.
In reality, education, is only for employment. Government does well to calculate global employment avenues. Budgetary allocations might be initially enhanced adequately for education that might be recovered when the beneficiaries become earners. Even private educational enterprises might be involved because scholarships or educational loans could make way for poor but talented students to study in them. While the real issue is life, we seem to insist only on language.
The aim of the government in addition to facilitating elementary education for every strata of the society should also to be ascertain the developments a merit based qualified people holding knowledge in their specific fields. India lacks a lot in this where the whim to join a college depends on just to get through to a high grossing job without basics of what it demands and the ability to get there is nullified by inappropriate reservations.
All are not created equal. Everyone is created unique. The differences are real readily verifiable. Over generalization to deal with this inherent difference in the name of science and research (both are human mediated) is hazardous, however politically expedient and 'correct'. Challenge is to master the art of understanding these inherent differences and make everyone happy in blossoming into self-assured, clear minded with big picture role playing mindset and capabilities.
Indian education need radical changes, presentation layer to be improved. We only put them in school, only memorize and write exams - not spend time for critical development of child.

No comments:

Post a Comment