What is India heading to? It must be total anarchy or may be something worse. When confronted with the question of what I would like to change in the society if I could, I went over an awful lot of possibilities. I considered personal stuffs like changing my hairstyle to my stop biting my nails and universal stuffs like a world without boundaries (we ought to talk about that some time sooner). But then it struck me very of handedly that the one thing that must be changed in India is its Victorian ‘tailor made for slaves’ education system by our huge hearted well-wisher Lord Macaulay. But with all the crap that we are being fed in our schools now one has to ask themselves is it still called ‘education’ anymore.
I must be unfair in placing the
blame on Lord Macaulay; in fact I am wrong in doing so. His intension was not
to create the entrepreneurs scientists and thinkers who would one day propel
the nation to unprecedented heights but his was an even harder job. His job was
to create an educational system that would create enough donkeys who would work
on the largely underpaid and ‘sub-standard‘ jobs that they could just not watch
an English man do. And he was fair in churning out our matriculation system
that we still proudly uphold today. One cannot call them schools they must be
called cattle farms. He was a complete success in what he did, but we were the
real idiots who bought their sinister plot with not a thought going into it.
But, now our educational system
which, I was once a part of a few years back was indeed not all that bad. There
were some good things in it too like raisins in a cake. But now it’s just like
a nightmare gone horribly wrong. Each person adding his whims and fancies into
it doesn’t really give us a comprehensive and informed educational system. When
todays educationalist go on to the extent of defining a forest vaguely as ‘a
group of tree’ , the doubt starts arising in one’s mind whether they really are
educated enough to be called educationalist. I think they get some kind of
sadistic pleasure by ruining the life and dreams of today’s bright ones.
We need to revolutionize and
revitalize our educational system or at the very least make our ‘antique’
system catch up with the today. What the nation now needs are brilliant
entrepreneurs, stratergicians and researchers who would become the corner stone
of its continued success. When a nation such as ours finds itself in the middle
of a fast evolving world it need to put up its best face to be part of that
world and to continue being there we need educated and capable people’.
If one thing must change about
the mindset of the people then it must be this, the parents should stop
pursuing the career of their children. They should realize that they can’t live
their child’s life too. They should give their children a chance to live out
their dream. Children may not be best judges of things but they know their
hearts and their odds, if they believe they can succeed, shouldn’t they be
given a chance to try. If this one factor about our society does change, there
will be a reciprocating change in our educational system and a transformation
in it for the best. The only thing that drives entrepreneurship and research is
passion and its severe shortage is what the nation is suffering from, and why
is that? The simple answer is the overwhelming focus on a ‘safe career’ forced
upon today’s children.
Indeed our educational setup is plagued by a hoard of problems; the only reason for it can be the lack of timely changes that never happened. Now we are faced with a problem, whether to radically alter our system or slowly change it such that it can play catch up at the cost of valuable time. I incline towards a radical transformation, I believe a couple of unrest in the department will be all the resultant problems from such an action but it will produce the desired results in time. But I need not be the final say in that matter. It is a complicated and sensitive issue and requires an equally though-about and subtle solution. But one thing is sure, we have already reached the precipice now all we have is total oblivion or a resurrection and the choice is ours to act about.
