By Shivani Singh:
“If you turn your eyes for a moment to yonder east you will see a great country rising from its death like slumber of ages and exerting its best powers to move onwards on the path of true enlightenment and reform. And that country is India.”
I am firmly convinced that the Indian system of education is not inferior to any other education system.
The primary goal of education is to create humans who are capable of doing new things and not of simply repeating what other generations have already done and this is what the Indian system of education has been doing since time immemorial. Institutions like Nalanda had been a major seat of learning and even today institutions like IIMs, IITs are world famous.
Take for instance NDTV Scholar Hunt destination UK, a popular show on television, elite professors of leading universities like Sheffield, Warwick and Cardiff had come to India to select students, because they are aware of the high standards of educational skills here. The top positions in NASA or wherever you look at are acquired by Indians and this is because the Indian system of educational provides to create global citizens, whose so-called “knowledge” does not only comprise of rigid old facts but also of ethos and values.
Even the American President Roosevelt once said about education in his country “A man who has never been to school may steal from a freight car but if he has the university education he may steal the whole rail road.” People may extol the virtues of the western education system but are they aware that the very system they idolize has one of the highest drop-out rates in the world? The recent reforms that our education system is under-taking are enormous with more emphasis on practical knowledge and application of the knowledge in everyday life. Our education minister, Mr. Kapil Sibal, is doing wonders to the education system by enriching the existing values in Indian Education and doing away with some which have become redundant.
Why is it that the foreign firms jostle among themselves to capture our best? Why is it that in spite of having an “MIT” US still wants to sanction an additional 1500 HB1 visas? The answer is self-evident and I’ll say that the Indian system of education if not the best is at least at par with its competitors.