It indeed goes without saying that the prevailing education system in India and abroad is no less than a terrifying labyrinth of sorts. It’s a confusing mix of never-ending catacombs and underpasses – with you in the middle of all of it. Those dark silhouettes of mathematics algorithms and applied linguistics and scientific theorems, much worse than your middle school expectations of high school and what comes after, appear to be closing in on you, giving you an only impetus to desperately commit to memory as many trigonometric theories and chemistry equations you possibly can to get you to pass that one important examination that’ll make dad ruffle the hair on your head and mum proudly chatter off about her smart young son . So you egg on, running through those tunnels as fast as you can, pretending your English is pretty enough to challenge Wren and Martin ( had they been around ) to a grammar contest, pocketing formulas and rote-learning a few history dates along the way. But then, you slip and trip somewhere along the way, and you’re lost in that knowledge spider web again, this time — you find you can’t get out.
Take what you’ve learned or memorized in your schooling years, for example. Everything’s just a blur now, isn’t it ? Little of what you were imparted by your teachers back then has remained intact in your head as actual retained knowledge, with practical understanding and application to real circumstances in the world outside. While you were taught animatedly about Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s childhood so you can make a 95/100 in that history examination, those who claim to know the best with regard to your education ( aka : the school board or education ministry that devises the syllabus in the first place ) chooses to ignore the relevance of Occidental-ism and philosophy in contributing towards intellectual thinking and questioning with regard to people, their behavior and culture. For example, in India, in their desperate pursuit to create and harbor scientific minds that go on to become big names in the field of technology and creation, the significance of developmental sciences is highly sidelined, with little or no teaching of any humanities-related subject in engineering colleges, for example — even the idea of introducing a subject in school along those lines would be scoffed at and shot down immediately by self-glorified experts who strongly believe in its unimportance. It essentially promotes intellectual stimulation by teaching them how to think by being more open to change and development – opening doors to a better understanding of our beings and existence that complements almost all other fields of study to achieve an overall rational and psychological development.
Education today is seen as merely a means to achieving a shallow end – money. A job. It’s a little something we’ve essentially got to endure and imbibe if we wish to make both ends meet. And sometimes, a poorly framed education system where students’ academic needs are grossly under-met comes into place where student learning is in fact negligible. Ever wondered why Indian students always seem to do better than their American counterparts on American soil? Despite all the flak that our education system faces for overburdening students, the fact still remains that it offers a more compact and comprehensive academic system for students to excel in, but of course in a world where excelling means mugging and rote-learning.
The Indian education system is indeed your recipe to success if education to you is that B.com or MBA degree you’ve been eyeing for the last few years now, or getting into that top engineering college with the toughest entrance exam you’re looking to crack. A holistic development of the mind whilst molding it to be more open to new ideas and theories of study is not what you should be vying for if you’re looking for education, because most often than not, that’s exactly what you’re not going to get. Ever pondered over why an Indian hasn’t been the inventor of that revolutionary innovation you heard about just last month, or the one two months before that ? It’s because once we’re done giving that one entrance examination that gets us through to our college of choice, everything learned is forgotten. Theories rote-learned so you remember it while writing the paper fade away even from the crevices in your head, and you are left with little actual knowledge per se to be able to create and innovate. In India, Math and science are taught in a set method of cramming to ensure you make a good grade in your paper, and that set method of teaching has time and again served to make the two subjects appear to be intimidating giants to most young school kids who shudder at the thought of writing a chemistry or mathematics paper because they’re perpetually unsure of what they’ve actually learned.
Persons with the authority and power to bring change have got to take a closer look at understanding what exactly it is that we ought to seek out of the system and educating our students for years and years through methods that leave them highly lethargic and uninterested. A method must be devised to ensure that the students’ minds are continuously challenged to think and question systems, organizations and behavior on a regular basis to generate and maintain interest in diverse fields of study.