Education – to what purpose?

Education is the key to the empowerment of peoples and nations. It is the single most important factor in the healthy development of a society. Yet, today it stands straitjacketed in marks and percentages and in diplomas and degrees Good education has to be a holistic effort at building better human beings, richer cultural and social exchanges among people and more tolerant communities and countries. It has to be a judicious mix of knowledge of useful subject matter along with sound ethical values. The pattern of education has to be so designed that, besides adding to the academic status of children and enabling them to seek a good livelihood, it also helps broaden their vision making them think and act rationally and logically.

At first glance, it is apparent that our education system needs a complete overhaul. Our school curriculum is bursting at its seams with a plethora of unimportant and irrelevant lessons, often beyond the reckoning of the children who are forced to study it. For instance, of what importance is it to know the weight of the earth (in the primary section) if a child does not know that water conducts electricity and he shouldn’t touch an open electrical wire, or step on water where such a wire lies. How many children are taught the dangers of playing with fire? In short, the most elementary lessons in science are completely overlooked except in as much as they have to learn it by rote to pass an examination.

The existing method of learning largely from text books and “guides” emphasizes the futility of a system that at no point seems to develop in children an inquiring mind, encourage creativity in their thought process or help to exploit latent talents that do not necessarily fit into this knowledge juggernaut called the syllabus.

It is indeed a sign of the times that parents are either mute spectators or active participants in this system and are as responsible as the educationists, teachers and professors who have built it. This is a planned pattern of education that leaves little room for intelligent discussion, for forays into the natural habitats of flora and fauna where children can “see” the printed word translate into reality. Parents, in my opinion, are often willing accomplices in this grand effort at perpetuating a system that they believe ensures their children a good degree, excellent job prospects either in India or abroad and a high rating in the marriage market.

Education, however, has to be an exhilarating experience – an experience that children would want to have and school going would become “mandatory” for children by their own definition and not because the constitution guarantees it for them. That children commit suicide because they do not gain admission in a particular school or when they fail an exam is only a further pointer to this meaningless institutional teaching system




Where do ethics and values find a place in this jungle of text book information? It may not find favour with many to include compulsory lessons for children on how to conduct themselves in the home, at school and in the outside world, to inculcate in them the feeling of oneness in a multicultural, multiethnic society where they do not get intolerant of other religions, cultures and regions in their own country and those of the world outside.

There is also a basic lack of respect for elders and feelings of consideration and sympathy for and empathy with the disadvantaged sections of society. More often than not children are encouraged to garner as many qualifications as they possibly can but few teachers and parents teach them to adopt the right means to attain their goals in life. That means are more important than ends is a lesson Mahatma Gandhi reiterated throughout his life and we are woefully failing to do just that.

On an optimistic note, I believe that all is not lost and we can evolve a new system of learning where, besides the ubiquitous textbook, the classroom becomes a platform for expressing new thoughts and ideas and education also becomes an exciting adventure outside the four walls of a room. Schools should become a forum for teaching a multitude of important values that need to be instilled early in young minds, where teachers will lead by example and marks are converted into grades to act as mere pointers of the proficiency of students in particular subjects but will not become the starting point of an anxiety ridden quest for a good and productive future and not least of all a life and death matter.