Our education system is converting our talented youths into money minting machines, who spend the first half of their life studying with the sole aim of having a better life, and the other half working extra hard to buy bigger homes, have cars that lie in the next luxurious bracket, have an extra inch on their TVs, and get their hands on a newer version of smartphone. Spending time trying to uplift the society,helping those in need, bringing smile to a sad face, and rising up against injustice doesn’t seem to be an archaic dream.
Throughout the word, especially after the industrial revolution, education has been commercialised in order to cater to the needs of the corporate world. The goal of education has changed since then, and has turned materialistic in nature. Our Education system is not designed to create better human beings, does not emphasise on the ability to think freely, and produces an intellectual class, but to produce a large hardworking workforce. The absence of any moral education in our country is producing an educated high earning class that is willing to do whatever it takes to earn an extra buck, which explains the extremely high level of corruption in the society.
While the developed world has a policy of inclusive learning, a quality infrastructure that promotes research mentality in students, the same cannot be said about the developing world. The quality of institutions of higher learning is no secret, and our reliance on percentages as the sole parameter of judging a student’s capability, besides making a student learn things that most probably are not going to be of any use in future, learning from the notes provided by the teacher is a worrisome trend.
The wild rush to grab a seat in engineering and MBA, in order to have a job abroad is causing a brain drain, and the best minds of the country usually leave for a better life in the developed world and never return. Human resource plays a very important role in the development process, and the government needs better planning to ensure that the highly educated stay in the country. The highly educated usually don’t get the accolades they deserve and the education sector fails to pay the same amount of money as other sectors do to hire the best minds, denying students a chance to learn from the best.
In an era of continuous advancement in all walks of life, the emphasis should be on research and development, which is possible only when an education system instils a sense of joy in a student, something that the current system miserably fails at. A student is usually forced to pursue a course he/she has no interest in, which in turn takes away the interest from education of any sort. A student should be encouraged to pursue education in his/her field of interest and original ideas respected and honoured. Determining a student’s area of interest and giving direction to the student’s talent should be one of the primary responsibilities of a teacher.
Education in India needs a major overhaul, with a stress on moral and logical learning right from the primary level, and should instil a sense of joy in a kid right from the beginning.