“Not getting our schools to shape students into good citizens is inexcusable... systemic apathy for values in education can be quietly laced with poison”
~ Anurag Behar (CEO, Azim Premji found.) in one of his Mint columns
“It is salutary to remember that the word ‘taliban’ means student.” writes Anurag Behar in his Mint column. Taliban when heard, directs our mind to the guys robed in black with covered faces and brown AK-47s, standing in packs on Toyota pickup trucks, riding on dusty roads tormenting the citizens. But, terrorism is not what I am talking about, it is the etymology of ‘taliban’ that I am referring to here. ‘Taliban’ means ‘students’ in the Pashto language. Student, a sect which is the most essential block of civilization, are one of the most misheard and heavily misguided ones in our society. Students in their growing age, acquire values and knowledge from their surroundings, small bits of instances have the power to influence their minds for lifetime. So, in an unknown way, we deal with a very sensitive and receptive audience every day.
In India, education has been the most looked-down-upon field. Our country’s present pitiable educational system has been a source of continuous mockery around the world and a matter of shame and agitation for us. Rhetoric focusing on changes in our education system, directed as an inspiration and command for the government, has been a purple prose now, laborious and time-consuming, rather irrelevant. Whether it’s the policy-makers’ desertion of their responsibilities or lack of basic enlightenment, or it’s the innate faults in the mental wiring of the public who doesn’t ask for content-rich and value-laden education, the ones at major loss are the students.
Indian schools, and education system as a whole, does not rank in top rows of world’s best education systems. Let alone the top rows, we aren’t even interested in the medium flanks of these tables. We rank good when counted from the bottom-side of the table, and that’s how it is depicted to the public, upside-down, as to careen away the upheavals for betterment of education from the public and protesters.
We all know the ruth our schools and its students in villages face. Absence of education-inspiring facilities like fans, lights, and table-chairs deprive the fun and ease of studying from the students. Actually, students can compromise these basic facilities if they are imparted with true and timely education, for which they travel kilometres. But, true and timely education is a delicacy, of which these students are deprived of. Often, teachers remain absent in schools despite of getting paid (their real reason to take this govt. job), and when present, no significant change takes place, because our schools have grossly under-qualified teachers. Not teachers actually, they are highly under-qualified graduates, who have completed their colleges in need of a degree so that they can apply for such care-free govt. jobs and fulfil their lust for relaxation and free-money. “Accurate data is unavailable, but some estimates suggest that over 50% of middle and high school classes in India are taught math by teachers who have themselves not studied it beyond high school, leave aside being trained as math teachers”, points Anurag Behar further in his column. Not only maths, but almost every subject in the curriculum is being taught by incompetent and crammed-previous-night teachers. The ones who themselves aren’t qualified in their subject and have passed their academics with a laborious drag, are handed down the responsibilities of being Socrates & Plato in a room full of naive and ignorant Romans. Oh, I am sorry, they might not even know who Socrates, Plato and Romans were, my mistake! The people who attend colleges to earn acquire degrees, and are blank slates after 3-4 years of academic ‘detour’, apply for jobs in one of the noblest and extremely responsible jobs – teaching. How can one expect these detour-taken ‘eggheads’ to instil good-thoughts and values in blooming and blushing future generations of ours? So, the problem lies with the misuse of these teaching jobs. If freshly graduated or experienced people, reflect on their real abilities and decide not to enter the teaching profession, it would do more good to our rosy receptive students and their futures plus the fate of our country. Just a small decision of not being a bad-teacher, can save many families and an entire nation to get into backlog for years to come. Being hard is not my motive, but teaching is a noble profession, and it isn’t everyone’s cup of tea or coffee (whatever you prefer).
Indian schools love STEM subjects. It’s a cult among students, of pursuing fields related to these fixed subject streams. Anything other than these ‘mainstream’ subjects, like arts, literature, commerce, sports, research fields, and any other idiosyncratic career fields are considered untouchable, and anyone who pursues them is looked down upon by his/her peers. Students in India have never been taught to look sideways; students have been trained to look straight in a predisposed direction by parents and teachers. Indian students have been made to wear blinkers on their eyes, which helps them to just look at stem-related fields.
When there will be only a handful of fields for students to choose (though forcefully), there will be heavy traffic and not all would be privileged to pass the bottleneck by tearing the traffic. Some flow through and some miss by a whisker. The ones who miss are crushed under the social stigma – under-performing and lacking behind the peers. Sometimes the pressure is so mountainous that it forces students to end their lives :(
When in a society, rosy and bubbling children end their lives due to academic pressure or any pressure, then it is a time for serious introspection. Teachers and parents need to strengthen an ‘unblinkering’ mindset in children. Children need to get assured that they can tread in any field they love, and their parents and society would not judge them in adverse manners. Only when our education system, parents and teachers will provide total freedom plus ‘support’ to children in whatever field they’re interested in, we will see significant slump in suicide rates. No child ever should die of societal pressure. This too should be a target for govt., siding with growing economy and tackling climate changes, etc.
Anurag Behar inscribes ‘three deeply inter-related dimensions of learning at schools.’ i.e., the first is the content knowledge of subjects. Second, capacities and skills like critical thinking, communication etc. And third, are values, dispositions and beliefs. ‘Much of what people think about schools arises from their beliefs on the relative importance of these dimensions’, furthers Anurag Behar.
The orthodox colonial education system has moulded us to think schools as a medium for content knowledge and subject teachings only, the first dimension. Our present education system which was primitively designed during colonial rule had only one motif – to produce factory workers who just work as said and doesn’t ask anything or rebel against. Today, most schools are built on these orthodox and out-dated colonial principles, thus, churning out factory workers, and not thinkers, artists, experts, scientists and leaders. Nowadays, with changing times and geographies, many schools have felt the need of propping up students with various skills, extra-curricular activities and critical thinking, apart from the normal STEM. How much of these skills are implanted in students and who teaches them in which type of ways is a matter of scepticism because we still lack to produce world-class intellectuals. But, it’s still great that some schools did take an initiative to teach students something more than just content. Indian schools primarily focus on first two dimensions of learning, the third dimension is completely disregarded from the students’ lives. Students should be instilled with good values and morals which can help them take appropriate decisions in life in accordance to their freedom, and if failed in doing so, would have wisdom and cemented optimism which will help them recover and grow in life. Third dimension presses on the importance of teaching integrity to students. Students when taught to live by good, universal values and ethics, are destined to become great citizens and great humans. Teaching integrity means to teach students to be the same person privately, publicly and personally. But, the truth is that we lack such pedagogues in large numbers, who can influence and build a whole generation of virtuous and trust-worthy citizens. Anurag Behar describes this concept of skipping the third values and ethics-laden dimension of schools to be myopic and inimical to our future.
Myopic, because it looks at the immediate gains of teaching content-based academics and not teaching values to students. Indian education system has made the grades and marks of supreme importance in students’ heads. Studying just to score good marks has become visceral to students.
Inimical, because not infusing children with good values and a natural inclination to social responsibilities, sets our society on a backlog for next 50-60 years. Raising a generation numb to societal problems and reckless towards global changes is like axing one’s own leg. With one generation not taught values and principles, we risk next generations to be the same. We don’t want generations to get inflamed by trivial political warfare, we don’t want next generations to get befuddled by few capitalists and fall into their ludicrous business strategies, we don’t want generations to neglect each other’s ideas, we want our future generations to be socially responsible, more tolerable, empathetic towards each others, and happier and content than their ancestors. For growing such generations, we direly need responsible and qualified schools, which can teach students in all the three dimensions of learning. We need schools which focus on growing each and every child in academics plus extra-curricular activities.
India today has immense shortage of good thinkers, scientists, experts, authors, leaders, activists and other blossoming creative entities. India and Indians need to throw its present colonial education system which has done gargantuan harms to our society and nation, and build a new 360 degree course which would focus on developing a child in life’s all dimensions. We need robust academics and non-academics, so that every child who has swam from that education pool, makes every other Indian proud while standing in UN or on Olympics pedestal.
Till that pool builds, thorough inspection and background-check of the environment and quality of the academia should be the homework of the parents. After the parenting, what a child learns mostly from is the schooling. So, it’s parents’ homework to find an able school for their children.
Children have very sensitive minds and hearts which are very receptive to external stimulus. If suppressed or not left free, it can rust out the fire in their young minds. Rekindling this fire can be a hard task if not taken care of in their early stages. It should be the duty of non-student sect of the society, to take care of students and forge children-friendly environment which inspires and educates them and not kill them. Hope our schools also introduce the ‘third dimension’ comprised of values and ethics, in syllabuses of their ‘minds’. We need to change our present bad-values culture which careens off our students from enlightenment and education. On present system Anurag Behar says, ‘all educational situations are suffused with values, and too often with the undesirable that perpetuate cleavages in society of gender, caste, class, and religion, and amplify maladies such as superstition, callous individualism, and virulent tribalism.’ Govt. and schools should chalk out a robust education system which includes all the ‘three dimensions of learning’ drawn by Anurag Behar.
Meanwhile, ‘padhoge likhoge to banoge nawab, kheloge kudoge to hoge kharab’, this couplet should be thrown out of the window.
Author: Rushang Shah
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