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Without entering our topic of ‘Where did we go wrong?’, let me point out some of the many flaws in the current educational system:
Give a man a fish and he will survive that day, teach him how to catch fishes and he will survive for his lifetime. I believe that if you teach a man skills, you enable him for a lifetime. Knowledge is largely forgotten after the semester exam is over. One of the biggest challenges a normal student experiences is surviving the semester. Still, year after year Indian students focus on cramming information. The best crammers are rewarded by the system. This is one of the fundamental flaws of our education system.
Lack of smart teachers are a big flaw. There are smart teachers but compared to the rest, their ratio seem to be very low.
The holy grail of this current education system is undoubtedly MARKS/GRADES. Schools, Colleges, Staffs, Teachers, Institutions, Fellow classmates, Society keep considering MARKS/GRADES as the holy-grail. A talented, self-thinking and innovators are often sidelined by class toppers.
One of the most idiotic flaws is that the system orders the teachers to tell the students that there is absolutely no way a man can rise in life without education. Its very funny to me. Whenever someone tells me this, i just laugh my socks off.
Teachers are used to teach the students “WHAT TO THINK” and not “HOW TO THINK”.
I will stop right here. There are many flaws in this idiotic system. The above are very few of them. So now lets get to the topic “Where did we go wrong?.”
Where did we go wrong?
Our education system rarely rewards what deserves highest academic accolades. Deviance is discouraged. Risk taking is mocked. Out of the box thinking is teased. Very few classmates encourage creative thinking. Following your inner voice is laughed at. Man, who are others to order you? Inner voice is not artificial, it is natural. Everyone has got a choice. Some people listen to their inner voice. Many don’t. Our testing and marking systems need to be built to recognize original contributions, in form of creativity, problem solving, valuable original research and innovation. If we could do this successfully Indian education system would have changed overnight. I want every single student to know that ‘Memorizing is no learning’; the biggest flaw in our education system is perhaps that it incentivizes memorizing above originality.
Where did we go wrong?
In high school, its the age and misguidance. Because it has been proven that societies without the concept of teenagers do not experience what we do: the rebellion, the uncertainty, the generation of ducklings struggling to either accept their ugliness as beauty or else become swans, we haven’t yet quite figured out which we ought to teach them. Its the age, and some of the parents, the ones who send their children off to school and then wash their hands of teaching their kids anything, such as how to be a functioning member of society, or even just a decent human being, and then when they get those calls home at night and when they hear that their son/daughter lacks something important, they cry asking themselves where did I go wrong?, which we know is far too little and far too late. That blend of increased hormones and decreased guidance, its no wonder high school is such a shit show now.
Where did we go wrong?
In university, its the institution. Its the students packed into a lecture hall with a professor at the front, worked out in the scientifically optimized ratio of one-hundred students to one teacher. It’s the business trade: cash and student in, debt and graduate out. When Pink Floyd said we don’t need no education, well, that is a double-negative, so we really do need school to get an education – just not the kind of school we have been getting. Am I right? And that is why we have disillusioned graduates with useless degrees.
Education is not just defined as school and textbooks and homework and tests.
Education is not just Kindergarten¦to PhD¦and done.
Education is not enclosed to the prison of any one building, is not the responsibility of the lecturer way up at the front of the class who keeps completing the portions in the given time without even bothering whether the students have understood it or not.
Where did we go wrong?
That is the exact question intellectual people ask themselves after seeing youngsters wasting their time on many stupid things. That is the exact question that arises in my mind. Maybe it is the time to answer our own question.
Where did we go wrong?
