Our education policy must be designed to bring out the best in our children and to fully utilise their abundant creative energies. For this, it is imperative that Hindi and other vernacular languages are increasingly brought into the fold of higher learning
In a lecture a few years ago, Jeffrey Sachs, well known American thinker, identified education and healthcare as the highest priority areas for the developing countries. India is no exception, even though we may have fared a lot better than most others.
We cannot optimise our huge demographic dividend unless we were to completely overhaul our education policy at all levels. The policy enunciated under Macaulay’s watch was essentially designed to produce English educated clerks — “a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions ...’’ in Macaulay’s own words — who would be loyal to the colonial power and serve its functional needs.
They were indoctrinated into denigrating our own rich culture, which laid the basis of underscoring English superiority. Macaulay justified introduction of English as the medium of instruction by arguing somewhat arrogantly that Indians could not “be educated by means of their mother tongue.” Creative ideas which could even remotely challenge the established authority were obviously not encouraged. Unfortunately, our education policy has remained largely unchanged after our Independence.
let us look at the system which is followed even in our best schools. Curriculum is too cumbersome and the kids are overloaded with large amounts of homework.
Several teachers have an essentially negative disposition due to their own frustrations in life — and they spend all their energies in finding faults with the students’ work rather than ever encouraging them for their efforts. Exactly the reverse is the case with the American school system. To make the matters worse, there is unwarranted emphasis on perfection; small kids are expected to write well composed, grammatically correct answers in their exam papers in order to get high scores. To achieve this, teachers routinely supply model answers in advance as part of class work and children are expected to just cram the entire answers and reproduce them verbatim in their answer sheets. Not that our kids are not capable of articulation on their own based on their own grasp of the subject, but pitifully our system is obsessed with exam score as the sole measure of the students’ capability. Not surprisingly therefore there are numerous instances of our scholars at higher levels getting caught of plagiarism which is a serious offence in the West and could result in a scholar’s dismissal from his institution, but in our country we are guilty of inculcating the habit right from the childhood.
Our education policy must be designed to bring out the best in our children and to fully utilise their abundant creative energies. For this, it is imperative that Hindi and other vernacular languages are increasingly brought into the fold of higher learning.
We must build the confidence and pride of our young people in expressing themselves even at the national stage in their own mother tongue for the most optimal output. Knowledge of English is useful in today’s globalised environment but it certainly does not help us to have an inferiority complex about our own languages.
It is the age of technology and we must make full use of the new advances. It stands to reason that our education policy encourages the use of computers, laptops and cellphones. In any event, our kids are already quite familiar with these gadgets; isn’t it a common sight in every home for parents to summon their small kids when they encounter problems in use of these gadgetsIJ
The digital platform, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks about, must begin in our schools and our education policy must leverage this strength of our younger generation rather than continuing to insist on archaic practices.
Memorising long passages may have had its relevance in the ancient times when oral tradition was the norm but I fail to understand its relative utility in the present times when unimaginable amount of information is available on a tiny cellphone — only a click away. Storage of information therefore is not as important today as its retrieval.
We have machines to store the information for us and human interface is important in being able to access that information most effectively — fast and to the point.
Evaluation of the performance and capability of our kids in schools and colleges should be based on this approach and I therefore strongly recommend adoption of open book policy in the examinations. Students should also be allowed the use of computers with internet access. My friends in the education field tell me that only those students who have a good grasp of the subject would be able to fare well in such a system.
We pride ourselves on our world class institutions. But what is the State of affairs in those institutionsIJ Years ago when my daughters were studying in a premier Delhi University college, I was appalled to find that the computer lab was not functional and the teachers were absent from their assigned lectures only to encourage students to enrol for private tuitions from them to complete the course work. Conditions in many other colleges unfortunately may not be very different. Fact of the matter is that, save a few exceptions, reputed colleges continue to score well on the ranking charts solely because of the calibre of the students entering those institutions and not because of the teaching and guidance provided there.
In any case, the pertinent point is how much they are contributing to our growth and development. Brain drain is a serious problem; several of our young graduates, passing out from these good colleges including IITs, migrate to the West in search of greener pastures, denying the country any dividend from the investment made by it in the education of the individuals concerned by way of massive Government grants and subsidies to these institutions. This anomaly needs to be rectified.
And what about the value system and the extra-curricular activities on which there used to be so much of emphasis in our times. It is important to work on developing well-rounded personalities of our students for them to do well in life and our education policy must facilitate that.
Entry of private sector in the education field has made it possible for more students to access the higher education facilities. Its participation should be strengthened but rigorous monitoring of standards by the regulatory authorities is necessary to make sure that unsuspecting young people are not cheated by money sharks.
We can then become a centre of learning for foreign students from our neighbourhood as well as other developing countries. Even if the tuition fees are kept at moderate levels it would become an important source of revenue for us as for other countries.
There is need to substantially enhance the Government’s budgetary outlay for primary and secondary education in order to eliminate illiteracy and spread the benefits of our economic growth amongst our people in a more inclusive manner. However, in so far as tertiary-level institutions are concerned, the Government grants could be gradually reduced and the tuition fees at universities and colleges allowed to go up and reach market driven levels with Government grants thus saved to be disbursed to deserving students through bursaries and scholarships which take into account both merit and means.
Colleges themselves could be authorised to grant partial or full waivers of tuition fees, as in the Western universities, to attract bright students in order to maintain the requisite academic standards.
We are in a competitive but interconnected world and must adopt global best practices with suitable modifications. Only then would we be able to meet the challenges of tomorrow and hold our head high in the international community.
(The writer is a retired IFS officer. His last assignment was as Indian High Commissioner to South Africa. He also served as Director General of Indian Council for Cultural Affairs)
