12.2.10

Education in India - Which direction are we going?

Educated society has to be the forbearer of a state’s development; this is a basic fact that has been widely recognized by all the ideologies of the world. Yet we fail to recognize this and have encouraged the commercialization of this system. At this stage the class division in the people has successfully infected the students too. Now in this country we have innumerous International schools which become affordable to a very small percentage of people, followed by privately owned public schools, central board schools, state board schools etc. At the end before we start pulling out the hair on professional courses the children are already divided on terms of quality education bought with money. The naturally there is an incline for parents to abandon small schools and move their children to a much greener looking pastures. Even teachers, faculties, management try to move to a well paid institute rather than spending the time in a village school with broken benches.
 The controversial educational bill put up by the first government of Kerala was a landmark move towards normalization of the educational system to make it immune to the fancies of various economic classes, but the wide opposition from the vested parties led to the failure of its implementation and ultimately the dismissal of the government. The bill was aimed to make a standard structure of syllabus, pay system to teachers, and facility. This was the brain child of the educationalist Joseph Mundasserry who proposed this bill to cure the gross imbalance in the distribution of education that already prevailed in the country.
The majority of the public who understand the importance of education never tried to realize the wedge being created in the society while being a partner in the same crime. Public is not visualizing the picture of development from an unbiased point of view, we are not realizing that what we see as development is nothing but a hernia.

No comments: