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Indian System of Education Is Too Rigid and Traditional To Be Useful and Meaningful In the Changing Scenario

(Knowledge is a person’s best identity, (it) is the hidden wealth, (it) helps to provide means of pleasure, (it) provides fame and comfort/happiness. Knowledge is the teacher of teachers. On going to foreign country knowledge is like a friend. Knowledge is the greatest god/divinity. Knowledge is worshiped among kings, not wealth. A person without knowledge is like an animal)

It is clear from the English translation of the ‘Shaloka’ that education is the axis of human character and social order. Infact the most important function of education is to impart the genuine knowledge about life, existence and future. A student in real sense is the one who seeks the realities of life and universe. But the catastrophe is that the present education system aims only at upbringing a generation that fulfills the market and industrial needs.

It is grief-stricken that even after 61yrs of independence we are not free from the impact and influence of our colonial past. Our life and modes of govern education is modeled and designed to promote western thought process. Knowing English in written and spoken form is considered synonym to progress and modernism. India once a golden bird blows the trumpet of its glorious past and its contribution during the medieval past to mathematics, medicines, science & technology, astronomy, etc. But where is the glory gone now? The responsibility goes to the contemporary rigid and traditional education system.

Even today we follow the colonial model of education system given by Lord Macaulay which was designed with an objective to control every aspect of the economy to maximize extraction – with the help of a class of Indians who are Indian by blood and colour but British in their thoughts. This defective objective of education has led our students to torpidity, immobility and lack of responsibility towards the society. The objective have to be replaced with the objective to develop the human potential of every citizen in the broadest sense, so that the individual is the best to serve his own interests and the interests of the world he lives in. The alternate objective would require the liberalizing the education sector from government control.

India’s present economic position - its bridled successes and its myriad failures – are to great extent the result of its education system. India needs a huge force of innovators who could make it self reliant in every field. Though, we have few counted innovators like Mr. M. S. Swaminathan, Dr Varghese Kurien, Dr A. P. J. Kalam, etc, but they are not the products of this education system. This system did not teach how to become innovators or entrepreneurs or artists. If it had done so, they would have been uncountable in numbers. The youngsters in India do not have a vision to think beyond. That’s why the exceptional success of the few is undermined by the bleak failure of the education system as a whole. Let’s take the example of Hindi movie ‘Nayak’, the father of the heroine refuses to get her married to the hero because he is not a government servant. In short, the mindset of the middle-class needs to be changed because starting a business is seen as a failure in getting a job. The education system has to change the mindset and inspire the youth for the necessary courage and vision for entrepreneurship.

The most heart rending thing in the conventional education is that there is too much emphasis on facts and figures and not actually learning. It is well said, “If you study to remember, you will forget, but if you study to understand, you will remember.” A poor Indian child had a pile of books, parental and peer pressure, 25-30 chapters per subject by the end of the year for the final examination and ‘Memorize’ is the keyword for him. It is true that the Indian traditional education system tests the memory skills rather than the ‘application of concepts’ in real-life situation. It concentrates too much on the theoretical aspects of topics, rather than focusing on the practical knowledge. Thus, it is based on the concept of regurgitation and promotes ‘muggu’ style of learning. The purpose of education is to develop the young minds into beautiful brains. But, do the periodic and yearly examinations serve the purpose by judging the intellectual capability of students?

Education means the all round development of a child. It has four dimensions – development of body, the mind, the intellect and emotions. The traditional education system lays emphasis on physical and intellectual development and neglects the other two important aspects. Thus, the importance should also be given to the building of character and discipline. The present education system is also indifferent towards the refinement of outlook, behaviour and feelings. Hence, it must also focus on the refinement and must put stress on right behaviour, right feelings and right outlook. The former NCERT director Mr. J. S. Rajput’s recent statement supports this point of view, “Indian education system needs to be reformed so that it could incorporate culture-based education and link the younger generation with the older one”.

Indian education system is so rigid that it is full of innumerable pages of obsolete, outdated theories without innovation or any practical work. The eagerly awaited new textbooks have nothing new except beautiful cover pages. There is no standardized scope for co-curricular activities. Even if there are some, they are not carried out in true spirits. They are more a formality than a learning process. This results in a bunch of bored students who consider studies as an incurable disease and teachers who are casualty of disinterest and dissatisfaction.

The education system in other countries are based on the concept of application i.e. learn the concept and then apply it to a variety of situations, but the Indian system advocates - learn the concept, and then vomit it out on paper, and have no idea how to apply it. Our education system instead of striving to produce creative and intelligent youth who will take our country forward into the golden age, produces robots who posses startling capacity to store facts and giving them out at the pressing of the right button. Qualities like independent thinking, problem solving ability; leadership skills, initiatives and social competence fall by the wayside because achieving high grades is the only goal. The training starts from the school. A student is considered ideal if he sits quietly for hours with his eyes glued to the blackboard, never contradicting the teachers and does neat work. The reality is that academic brilliance is not a guarantee for the future success. It is often seen that an ‘average’ student reaches the echelon of success while a topper legs behind. The pressure that is exerted on the children to do well in the examination is somewhat pointless. But, it is a pity that parents and even educators run after the academic results.

The traditional education system is so rigid and authoritarian in nature that the individual is subsided and the group is considered supreme. The learner bows to the supremacy of the group and loses his individuality in the process, for e.g., the child in the Hindi movie, ‘Taare Zameen Par”. The slogan raised in the movie is apt “Every Child is Different’. This thought is to be incorporated in the education system and the education must be made child centered in the spirit and not in the words.

In the present world of technological advancement we need a student centered learning environment which promotes the learning of 21st century learning skills – critical thinking and problem solving, information technology application, communication, diversity, self direction, creativity, innovation and leadership. This is necessary because the students will face a global economy when they enter the workforce in the future. The present education system is too rigid and traditional to be useful in this changing scenario. It fails to assimilate the new trends in the world.

Thus it is clear that if the education system is to serve the needs of a developing nation the objective of the system will have to change. As the present structure cannot serve orthogonal sets of objectives, the whole system is needed to be redesigned. This can be done adhering to the philosophy of William Wordsworth, the great English poet:

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;
Or surely you'll grow double:
Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
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One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.
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Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
(from The Table Turned)