School Education In Inidia

School Education In Inidia

This short write up is to open a though line and does not go into nitty-gritties. Thorough study is needed to list out specifics and actionable.

The most important problem of the current educational system in India including State syllabus, CBSE and ICSE is that the 10 years spent at school is total waste. All the Chemistry, Physics etc. that is learnt in the 10 years is neither useful in higher studies nor useful in real life. English is taught for 12 long years; 14 including KG also!!!

I have tried to open certain lines of thought based on my experience and observation as an educationist for 30 years.

1. Time Driven

The school education is bound to 10+ 2 years. It wrongly assumes that all Indians, irrespective of gender, intellectual ability, artistic ability, genetics etc. need to study minimum of 10 years. This should change. In ancient India we had a robust system where the Guru drove the duration depending the ability of the disciple. Depending on one's ability one could complete the education whenever the Guru and shishya feels that the learning is complete. It is desirable to go back to that system in India. Even if it is not possible to do that overnight, at least in a phased manner this should be possible. There were ridiculous litigations in the history of education in India, where an extra ordinary student had to get court's permission to get double or triple promotion! Why academic year should be Year at all? Why can't it be according to the ability of the student? It is just for sheer convenience of the system that the number of subjects, quantity of subjects blocks of times so fixed. This should change.

2. Science, Art and Language 

People generally tend to be either logical or emotional. Science is Logical and Arts are emotional. The logical type tend to learn science faster and the emotional type, arts. Generally in India the first 10 years give tremendous importance and stress on western science bifurcated into Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Botany and Zoology. Arts is not given any importance leave alone those science subjects too don't have any use or relevance in the learner's life after the 12th standard. That is if he does not choose pure science for higher studies.

In addition to Science, we teach one or more languages. Language learning should be partitioned into Language and Literature. This should be clearly understood and treated as such. For learning to communicate in a language effectively, it is not necessary to learn the literature in that language. eg. It is not necessary to learn Wordsworth, Shake Spear or Mark Twain to be able to excellently communicate in English. It is not necessary to learn Kabeer, Sachchidananda Vatsyayan or  Meera to be able to effectively communicate in Hindi. Currently in, CBSE or ICSE  (and State with English medium choice) syllabus, the medium of instruction is English from first standard onwards. Ironically English as a language is taught till 12th standard. There is serious contradiction here, that if the student has not learnt English even after 11 years of learning English as a subject and also learning all other subjects in English-medium, to necessitate teaching him English the 12th year too. This is because we confuse language and literature. The fact is that 6 months to 12 months are sufficient for anyone to learn any language in a full-time focussed learning so that one is able to read, write and communicate effectively. No literature absolutely. If this cannot be done in the 1st standard for whatever reason, still 12 years are not needed to learn the language. This need to be corrected. When this is corrected, learning subjects written in English becomes easy at least by the 3rd standard and English is no more needed to be studied as a subject. Also any number of languages can be taught after 8th standard if the student has an interest and ability. While at my 9th standard, I learnt Kannada reading, writing and speaking as a non-mother tongue with the help of  a book in 14 days! The only thing I needed was some correction in spoken language which I got from a  head-master friend of my father. Everyone may not have that flair. But 14 days is nowhere near 12 years!

3. More of True Indian History is needed.

I found that this problem is being aired by many intellectuals already, but am just referring to show the seriousness of this issue. Even up to the 70's and 80's the school curriculum was thin and children used to get a log of time to spend at home and play. They used to participate in the home needs. This used to help them imbibe the family and cultural values imbibed through generations. Today with heavier curriculum, heavier home-works, invasion of electronic media like TV, Mobile and Internet, children don't get time to imbibe values. All the things learnt at school are totally useless for their future social living. All that the electronic media imparts is foreign fantasies.  If not completely at least to a great extent this can be covered by proper social studies including true Indian History.

It is interesting to note here that most of luminaries with huge fan clubs are in the field of Art and science. That was not learnt by them at the schools. Children should be closely observed and evaluated to find their talents and at least by the 5th standard (10 years of age) they should be guided totally to their interest field.

It is contextual to note here that all the analysis we do in India uses western sciences like child psychology etc. One they are of recent origin and are very shallow in strength in the respective field. eg. it is not long back that a groups of psychologists came up with a discovery that it has reached dead end because mind cannot study itself! Instead we should use Indian Sasthras like Astrology, dharma shastra, etc. to do the job.