As per Wikipedia - Education is the process of
facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, Skills, Values, Beliefs and habits. Educational
methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training and research.
However, the sole purpose of education
shifted (at-least in India) to examinations and getting marks. The
over-obsessed society built this as the foundation of education – so much so
the children in formative years and further are pressured to focus on examinations and
passing them.
This goes in the genetic system of the
whole education processes and systems – by the time students are in high school
they have minimum 5-6 times examinations over a time of 180 study days in a year. There
is no focus on learning and enjoying the learning and assimilating it to bring
meaning to application of learning in real life. There are pre-boards (2-3
times) and final exams and many tests before the “monstrous board exams”. The
phobia of this gets ingrained in each child, parents, family, teachers, schools
and society and everyone is just obsessed by ensuring the kids get “good marks”
in these examinations.
There are instances where kids start
hating subjects like Math, history and many other, just because the way they are taught
and tested. The whole focus is on remembering and answering the questions in a
set-pattern; rather than actually enjoying the knowledge and learning for life.
Most of the assessments are focused on rote-answers
and any individual creativity in answers is not appreciated or encouraged.
Neither the teachers, parents and the education community is groomed to identify and build focus
on originality and innovation.
In real sense if the sole purpose in
India is to pass exams – then there is no need of schools as you can easily
pass examinations by studying through google, Khan Academy etc. If the purpose is
to get knowledge, then there is so much available online that one can not learn
that in whole life.
The real role of schools, to build
future youth, who is not only remembering but also capable, is getting lost – due to this obsession with exams. There is hardly
any initiative on building life skills and making them capable and
self-confident. More to blame are the parents who pressurize the schools to focus on getting good marks. The whole system creates "robotic kids" - who can just write in the exams of whatever they rote.
The countries and societies where
Education is considered as number one (like Finland) look at education in a
totally different way of building higher order skills in kids, so that they not
only get the knowledge but also build their focus on their own identified passion –
where failure is not bad and is a way of improving self.
In real sense – what we need is a “transformation”
– in form of Surgical action on education by totally revamping the way we
teach; the way we assess and the way we identify potential of each child and
help him & her to build that potential than army of engineers and doctors
(more than 50% are not even worth employing).
It will take at-least a generation to
actually see the results once the surgery is completed. For that we have to
move out Education out of Political system and build education through
future-minded educators and innovators.
Otherwise it will remain same – as it
has remained for last 40-50 years; where we still teach things which hardly has
any relevance in real life.
Even the top rated colleges in India
are teaching without revamping their curriculum for last 30 years.
It looks that no one “really cares”
about real changes in education – because if the people are more self-esteemed then
they will not follow ideologies of the political systems and leaders. So they really need
scared and fearful people who will always be worried about assessments.
This is so much evident in most of the
organizations in the country – where you find feared and scared individuals
working and following orders – just to get higher rating (marks) in the annual assessments
(where more than 80% of the people conducting assessments do not even have
capabilities to conduct proper assessments and understand the real meaning of
feedback is for improving oneself).
You can read more at http://hackeducation.com/2015/04/25/factory-model
