Based on an exclusive talk with Dr. Sunita Gandhi, the educationist of the year 2015.
Whether it is the low hike in the education budget accounting to a squeezed fiscal space for social sectors as education hinted by finance minister Mr. Jaitley or CBSE cutting short its syllabus to 50% in the name of syllabus revision, the entire education sector has a number of challenging questions to be answered. Education in India, indeed, needs to be turned upside down!
Where we are heading with education and what we are providing to our innocent kids it needs to be evaluated.
Assessment Culture Leading to Depression
The major sector where our Modern Indian Education System is majorly dismantled is the assessment culture taking over the learning culture. Examinations were originally designed for self-assessment; primarily to judge that how much one has retained and how much more one has to be worked on! But today, the exams are conducted to announce a child’s complete “failure” or “success”, inturn de-motivating him forever. A child fears his result day because either he is passed or he is failed! That’s it. And with this very early in life the child discovers that he is not good enough! We ingest this feeling of incompetency in them.
“Children don’t learn much about their performance and scope of betterment but they learn whether they are good enough in relation to others”
Devashree, a student of class 7th, who usually was scolded by parents and teachers to underperform in exams, now shows a boost of confidence and, thus, a positive performance in academics! How? Soon after the first chapter in the subject “history” was completed her teacher conducted a quick oral test for the chapter. When she could answer most of the questions asked in the instant test, she herself was overwhelmed, as if some miracle has happened. Her teacher also reported a tremendous improvement in her performance by such instant feedbacks as compared to the conventional half yearly examination processes!
“Researches have proved that Instant Feedbacks have the highest outcome on the student’s performance”,
Test the “TEST’S” Validity
A mother seems distressed when she finds her son Ashank by-hearting 5-liner answers for his 3rd class half-yearly examinations. She being a mother expresses her deep sense of worry as to why her son and many kids alike him are being literally tortured for something like this, which has zero relevance in their future and development!
Tests remain no more scientific today. A typical teacher takes questions from the text book itself and ends up forming the entire 70 no. question paper in the examination. This leads to an automatic default system where students practice just mugging up the entire text book. But, what is the use of things mugged up which one can easily find in academic books.
“The validity and reliability of the tests designed and marking scheme adopted by teachers are a big question mark today!”
“Marks” as Status Symbol
It is awful, how the marks obtained by the child has become a status quotient for parents; a prestige issue. Children are continuously bullied by their teachers and even parents for constantly competing to others and either maintain the top positions in the merit list or still strive for better grades. A student with 95% marks today is a failure! Universities like DU and others want 100% marks even for their entrance examinations.
“Around 80% of students are not feeling good about their academic performance and those on the top are at even greater pressure to maintain their position”.
ROTTON CONTENT
“Curriculum itself is highly in sensible today”
The academic content today is full of facts which literally need not to be by-hearted. We need to prepare a child for his better life as a good individual (with good decision making skills) and just not an encyclopedia!
“Lot of information in the text book is not necessary and doesn’t allow for creativity and discovery.” Unfortunately “the books and content is highly “teacher centric”.
Replacing the bookish world
“Infact, realizing their huge responsibility teachers need to encourage the child to feel capable of doing things. What we breathe into their soul about their capacity is what matters a lot!”
Holding a text book in hands and dictating is an old method of teaching which was used in eras when books were not available in plenty and the students used to take copious notes of the teacher’s dictation. But unfortunately, today when every child has his own book in his hands, we still work with the same old mentality. Infact, “how many teachers can survive teaching without these text books and then what is the value addition of a teacher as a facilitate of learning?”
“There is a dire need of a climate change for teachers and they too need to be motivated today”.
IMPERICAL METHODS OF TEACHING
“Learning should be deeper and permanent than wider and shallow”
How many of us have turned the pages of the NCERT books of our children? One can easily find many topics that are repeated in the progressive classes. Say animals are taught in 6, 7, and even in 8th also. Similarly, “sangya” in Hindi is taught over and over for years at different levels. This repetitive teaching is called spiral teaching!
“Take a longer time and teach better, at the first place itself”.
Process of Perfection
WARM UP (generating the curiosity in kids through activities; learning out of the box thinking and creativity)
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
DRAMATIC PRESENTATION (for easy retention)
ACCELERATED LEARNING AND CONTROL OF ERROR (on-going assessment or formative assessment)
RAP UP (written work and exercises)
“Productive Failure Questions in warm up activities might seem very horrendous for a class 4 student in the beginning but when he is able to solve it at the end of the activity he feels very empowered! Kind of a magic! Thus, a feeling of accomplishment should be ingested every single day!”-Dr. Gandhi
REPLICaTING FINLAND
Finland implemented some major educational reforms around 40 years ago. Since then, it has changed the western grade-oriented education system to a more lenient and comprehensive school system with no grading system for first nine years. The country has a 100 percent literacy rate and spends around 2100 euros (1,51,390 rupees) per capita for education. That means it has improved over times and has done miracles. Making education as it’s priority is perhaps the major reason behind the splendorous change in its system.
Moreover, teachers in Finland are ones from the creame. Any of the post graduates there just cannot be a teacher. It has a tough and highly competitive process. Also, teaching as a profession is the highest respected job there, as are administrative jobs here in India.
That had happened even in India in Gurukul System of Education and is missing now.
“We have to rethink the whole thing all over again. We just can’t continue in this manner”
“Education is preparation for life”
“We have to get back and realize why we are educating at the first place”
The basic essence of education is missing. Now-a-days, it is wrongly associated with money. But then was money the ultimate goal of education? No. It wasn’t.
Education is Preparation For Life, where one prepares for life skills, developing decision making ability to judge what is right and wrong.
“A child should be educated in such a way that when stuck with three career choices he may develop a good judgment sense and choose the right one, not on the basis of money but as a whole; let money be the by-product of your work, service being the prime.”
Preparing for Life:
Universal Values
Global Understanding
Excellence in All
Service to Humanity
BOOST to look beyond books
In many countries music is taught since prep. A child, when gets acknowledged and appreciated for his innate talents, shows the zeal and enthusiasm in academics too! He finds himself worthy. And, actually, researches prove that music is deeply connected with subjects like mathematics and physics. Moreover, students active in extra-curricular activities like dance, music, acting, theatre, and poetry seem to be even more active in their academic and personal life.
EDUCATION HAS TO BE MADE A PRIORITY
“Lot of people are concerned about education but they are not anxious to fix it. Concern does not translate into action”
After ‘Make in India’, ‘Study in India’ campaigns are all buzzing in the Modi government. Many of us speak about the crawling education in the country. Some of us even come down on roads raising campaigns against the system! But is that helping anyway?
Farmers can be provided hike in subsidy but education remains as trivial as to attain no attention. To scrutinize and audit the schools, not a single committee has been formulated till date. There is no check, no accountability over the educational institutions at all!
Moreover, Public Private Partnership (PPP) is missing in this sector! Thus, there is a dire need to eliminate the existing lethargy from the system first.
“Since employees in private sector are willing to dispose off their duties sincerely and are ready to spare their time in service to the nation, unlike public sector unfortunately, the two shall be jointly made to work for max outcomes. And instead of drifting towards private institutions we have to make situations better at our government schools itself!
“Curriculum reduction would do nothing; a complete change in the curriculum is needed!”
THE PRESSURIZING PARENTS
While travelling in a metro, Sonali and Alka, two engineering graduates, find their comfortable pass time in a cool chit-chat over a not so-cool topic! Their chats when heard reveal a serious question to a sensible listener. Both seemed so much blue over a single topic i.e. the increasing pressure from their parents over their placements and initial earnings. And how their mothers, on one hand, keep blabbering about their false packages to relatives and narrating them, on the other, with the stories of their uncle’s son getting high initial packages! The environment between the two was so heavy that any responsible person would be compelled to just un-board the metro at the next stop skipping the situation and the question at large!
Could you feel that to what extent our youth is depressed and sad?
INTRODUCTION OF VEDAS AND UPANISHADS FOR ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT
We are missing the ethical element in our education system. Education has become more money oriented than life oriented.“Values” in education are missing.
By introducing British Education System in India, which has turned to be a horrendous nightmare for the present day kids, Britishers have paralyzed our educational system then in 18th century. The results of the introduction of that parasitic system can be seen even now and that too more severely!
“To retain the ethics and moral values in education, introduction of small-small parts of Vedas and Upanishads in compulsory education would be an extreme help”.
CAN WE REALIZE NOW?
ARE STUDENTS FAILING OR THE SYSTEM?
IDIOT’S SCHOOL EXISTS
Who would ever forget the technical school of Phunsuk Wangdu akka Amir Khan in 3 Idiots! While most of the tourists flood at the Lotud Druk School in Ladakh where the shooting was done, the real school of Sonam Wangchuk is missed by many travellers. Interestingly, the school accepts only the students who are failed by the conventional academic system. Here the students are taught in a different manner considering their visual, auditory and motor skills. The moment you enter you would not find the students with books in their hands but experimenting with the things of their choice.
Some facts REVEALING TRUTH
There is a school in Ladakh which admits only failures! The real school of Sonam Wangchuk AKA Phunsuk Wangdu from 3 idiotscreates genius out of failures.
Students interested in an engineering career – 20% from UK; 30% from USA; 80% from India- the highest in the world.
6,214 engineering and technology institutions in India
2.9 million students are enrolledfor engineering courses in India.
1.5 million engineers are released into the job market every year.
And still the dismal state of higher education in India ensures that they simply do not have adequate skills to be employed.
Nepal has reported a good amount of success after switching to mother tongue education since 2015.
Finland is the happiest country in the world as per the World Happiness Report 2018, and coincidently it has the best education system also!
India is at 113th position in the world happiness index; and 92 in education!
With Japan and Korea the biggest exporters of Cars and TVs, India remains biggest exporter of “humans”!
The Financial budget for fiscal 2018 indicated less than 4% hike in the budgetary allocation for education.
At least 35 million children aged 6 – 14 years do not attend school.
53% of girls in the age group of 5 to 9 years are illiterate.
ndia has one of the lowest higher education enrollment ratio of 11 per cent. In the US it is 83 per cent.
Shortage of teachers was endemic with even the IITs reporting a 20 to 30 per cent shortfall in faculty.
On an average most Indian universities revise their curricula only once in five to 10 years but even then they get defeated in both letter and spirit.
20 Kids kill themselves everyday over academic pressure
A recent study found that in rural north India on an average day, there is no teaching activity in about half” of the primary schools
India, in contrast, accounts for less than 3 per cent of research papers published and in terms of citations barely 1 per cent, wherin USA leads.
INDIA IS NOWHERE
Early Childhood Enrollment
1. UK -100
2. France – 99.5
3. Israel – 99
4. Belgium – 98
5. Denmark – 97.5
Primary Levels
1. Singapore – 597
2. South Korea – 595
3. Japan – 573
4. Hong Kong – 569
5. China – 568
Secondary Levels
1. Singapore – 603
2. South Korea – 574
3. China – 573
4. Japan – 572
5. Taiwan – 564
High School Graduation Rate
1. Finland – 99
2. Japan – 98
3. Russia – 98
4. New Zealand – 95
5. Netherlands – 93
College Graduation Rate
1. China – 90
2. Hong Kong – 89
3. South Korea – 70
4. Canada – 61
5. Japan – 60
Safe Schools
1. Luxembourg – 15
2. Finland – 14
3. Estonia – 14
4. Switzerland – 14
5. Slovenia – 14
Primary Completion Rates
1. Israel – 108
2. Mexico – 104
3. Sweden – 103
4. New Zealand – 103
5. Portugal – 103
Secondary Completion Rates
1. Estonia – 113
2. South Korea – 108
3. Ireland – 108
4. Sweden – 105
5. Israel – 105
Are you happy with the education system as a whole?
14% Yes 86% No
Are you satisfied with the content of your kid’s curriculum?
49% Yes 51% No
Have you ever been demanded of a donation from your kid’s school?
32% Yes 68% No
CBSE’s move to cut short syllabus to 50% is right or wrong?
53% Right47% Wrong
Do you feel education has become over costly today?
69% Yes 31% No
Is your child under academic pressure
62% Yes 38% No
Have private tutions become necessary for your kids?
54% Yes 46% No
What is the goal of education? Money? Career? A good life?
38% Money 37% Career 25% A Good Life