The Indian Education System

I know it's been a long time since i posted something and most importantly, this is my first blog of 2021 which excites me so much as I'm writing this . I hope you had a great start with 2021 and have a manageable year and life ahead 😊

So before we dive into today's blog let me apprise to you a few shockingly disappointing facts which will automatically make you realise the aspect that we are going to talk about, today.

So to start with , do you know?

Fact 1) The no. of engineers that India produces annually is equal to the total human population of Switzerland and yet Switzerland is on the top when it comes to research and innovation (obviously above india as well )

Fact 2) The republic of India after independence has produced 0 Noble laureates in science .

In case you're wondering, USA has produced 100+ till date .

Fact 3) According to a report by the ASER ( annual status of education report) 83% of the educated Indians are unemployed .

You must have understood it by now ,

But just incase you didn't , the root cause of this is the EDUCATION SYSTEM OF INDIA established by the British ofcourse.

So, allow me to ask you a very essential question,

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM OF INDIA ?

Now, you could be pragmatic and give the most boring response and say " It is to be educated so that I can get a job after which I'll have the best feasible financial security , I'll have a good spouse and then (obviously as the cycle goes ) we'll have genetically perfect progenies (children) and then I'll put them into the education system and the process continues...

So in short , our education system is to propagate our species right ?

Doesn't seem very attractive when I put it like that does it ?

Anyhow, it is what it is.

When we ask people what education is or why it's important , the most common answer we get is - " It is to create the best minds in their respective fields"

Well, this is not far from the truth . This makes me recall this qoute that I once came through which said " THE BEST IN INDIA WILL ALWAYS BE THE BEST IN THE WORLD WHEN IT COMES TO EDUCATION"

Makes us so proud to hear this , doesn't it?

But then, think about it the best people in our country who have achieved things , be it athletes , noble laureates even in education .

They are the best DESPITE the education system and NOT BECAUSE OF it !

And trust me you could think of any name and this would apply for most of them .

Alright, Let's now talk about it's ORIGINS .

When did the education system came into being?

In the early 1800's when industrial revolution was in full swing and Britishers had just started business in India , they noticed that they were having the same problem a lot of married and/or unmarried couples do 😅 ie. lack of communication . To tackle this , they consulted Thomas Babington Macaulay and asked him to visit India and look into the matter and come up with educational measures to teach indians and enable them to communicate in English .

And yes, not to forget the fact that Macaulay and his fellows thought of India as a country filled with disease and filth . After a lot of effort, Macaulay agreed and came to India and said the following and I qoute ,

After all the disagreement and debates , Macaulay finally managed to work things out and thus came into existence what we know as English Education Act of 1835

Macaulay believed in an education system which is utilitarian as Britishers needed clerks who would just sit at their desk and be told what to do without getting 100% creative ,this sounds familiar thinking about our school /college life doesn't it ?

To get to the point of the indian education system,

Let's take a look at a few myths and drawbacks associated with this education system .

To be practical, even a 5 year old ios is considered outdated these days then how is an education system so old still applicable ?

English in india has transformed into a class rather than being just a language, people who don't know how to comprehend in English are considered to have poor communication skills.

No such priority is given to our own natural language or what we call 'MATRUBHASHA' like Hindi and Sanskrit . Most of the students who score 95% (or near ) marks in Sanskrit cannot speak it well and the same applies to Hindi.

People are forgetting their own roots and practices.

Students get marks for learning and mugging up everything and not really for understanding.

Basic history books are replaced with heavy uneccesary books containing all the world's history.

In today's era , we can find anything and everything on platforms like google , what is the need to learn things then ?

MYTH 1) THE ALMIGHTY SYLLABUS

A same set of syllabus is instilled for everyone. There are no other options as such apart from Science , commerce and Arts (let's not talk about the stigma with students who chose this )

In the Ancient times , even Dronacharya didn't teach the exact same things to all the Pandavas .

Even he taught them skills based on their abilities and parameters and dynamics.

Now what I don't get is ,which aspect of my real life requires me to know this that {(a+b)^2= a^2 + b^2 +2ab }

To be honest, i didn't find a single use of this until I started researching for this blog .

MYTH 2) ART IS NOT IMPORTANT

we all can see this evidently that CREATIVITY is not an important part of our education system.students don't know what it is or what they can be creative in .

we are simply not allowed to make mistakes in this education system.

MYTH 3) DISCIPLINE REQUIRES PUNISHMENT

There was a man WENDELL JOHNSON who conducted a study in 1939, USA , which came to be know as the 'Monster study ' .

What he did was, he met 22 orphan children - divided them into 2 groups of 11 each . He gave postive reinforcement in speech therapy to the first group. He would always compliment them , praised them , and rewarded them .

Meanwhile , he gave negative reinforcement in speech therapy to the second group.

He made fun of them, he belittle them and punished them for their mistakes.

But after some time, the children of the second group not only did not improve on their speech problems , they even created new ones which lasted their whole life . Hence the term monster study was given .So, this is somewhat similar to the situation of our education system , how it treats students is why they're not allowed to make mistakes and only work for competing.

There was this wonderful man SOCRATES

who said that we should always question everything inwardly and outwardly . And for this he was obviously troubled and executed because authority doesn't like too many questions which then was the East India company.

I also believe that there is nothing such as a silly question, there definitely are silly intentions but not silly questions which brings me back to my earlier asked question .

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM OF INDIA?

To be honest, I'm not sure of the answer.

But maybe by this blog I've helped you and helped myself in the process to come closer to the answer.

BUT WHAT I DO KNOW IS THAT THIS SYSTEM CERTAINLY DOESN'T HELP THE STUDENTS.

lastly, we all are familiar that there might be a new and updated education policy in the near future which is a ray of hope for us .

But on the higher stats, for the betterment of the entire system , there is going to be a lot of effort from all of us , someone else is not going to do it.

But we all want a better future .

And as they say , all is well that ends well.

Thankyou if you were still reading it out till the end .

It took a lot of effort and hardwork in writing this blog(not bragging about it😅) , so i really hope you like it .

Thankyou

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