SCHOOL EDUCATION

 THE  SCHOOL   EDUCATION  CONUNDRUM

Dr. T. Rama Prasad

‘PAY  WHAT  YOU  CAN’  Clinic

http://drtramaprasad.blogspot.com/2017/06/pay-what-you-can-clinic.html

PERUNDURAI,   Erode Dt., TN, India

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Former Medical Superintendent (Special),  RTS & IRT Perundurai Medical College

and Research Centre,  Perundurai

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                             Website: www.rama-scribbles.com                                          Facebook:  T. Rama Prasad                           

                             Blog: https://drtramaprasad.blogspot.com                                Twitter:  @DrRamaprasadt

                             E-mail: drtramaprasad@gmail.com                                      WhatsApp:  +91 98427 20393

School education in India is one of the most difficult conundrums.  At State and national levels, many quality improvement strategies have been conceived and implemented which didn’t yield expected results. Revolving around “Annual Status of Education Report (ASER)” took us nowhere. By and large, we have an institutionalised and highly regimented type of education in the conventional mould that suppresses innovation, creativity, enthusiasm and risk-taking ability. Creativity quotient gets blurred due to the Indian education's centralised regimen of defining what and how a student must learn. And, the history of Indian education is replete with incidents of ignominy ... various malpractices in examinations including copying, influencing, corruption, etc. The latest (March 2018) jolt is that of the question papers leak of the CBSE examinations. Some say that these are all usual practices, everyone does it in all the fields ... so what's the big deal ?  Yes, Australians did it in the cricket field (Captain Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft - 'sandpapergate ball tampering' - March 2018. And, ‘NEET’ is making an entry, and it is to be seen how it changes the scenario.  

ROTE  LEARNING

School education,  in India,  has mostly become an exercise of training students to  memorise subjects and parrot back information under duress at theoretical examinations to achieve stellar results, often at the cost of true education. The plague of rote learning devoid of understanding leads to a disconnect between education and life. Scoring high marks at the school leaving examination has become the barometer of high intellect.  The ‘only marks’ criteria of our system to select candidates for higher education is the cause for the malady.  The system produces ‘centums’ sans sense.  And, centums have become common in subjects other than maths and science too.

Some universities like the Delhi University announced cut-off marks for certain courses at 100% !  The proverbial copros hits the fan !  Pundits wear hair shirts and sing the dirge of academics ! One scores a centum in English but can’t write or speak a few sentences in English correctly. 

However, some of our schools having  affiliation to CISCE / ICSE & ISC, CBSE, IGCSE, etc. seem to be of good standards having a comprehensive syllabus and an activity-based system of learning and teaching, with personalised supervision.   

On the whole, the scenario is a sea of mediocrity with a few islands of excellence.  It would be a Herculean task to clean the Augean stables of school education.  Also read the ‘Scribblings’ under the headings  “VALUE OF OUR DEGREES”,  “Dr. Peon, Phd”  and  “MODERN  PARENTS  &  TRENDY  CHILDREN” on this blog.

OVERLOADED  SYLLABUS

No doubt, the present generation of school students have information on subjects equal to what college students of previous generations had, thanks to the mind-boggling and excessively detailed syllabi.  Here is a sample question from a maths sample paper of Class XI.  “Prove that the coefficient of x in the expansion of (1+x) is twice the coefficient of x in the expansion of (1+ x).

Or, evaluate: ( a + √a – 1) + (a –√a – 1).”  Some symbols are missing in this question which this computer itself could not exactly copy.  Is this complex mathematical knowledge at school level with differential equations necessary or useful for most of the students for further studies or life ? Should we have a theory-oriented syllabus for brainy students and a practical-oriented one for work-loving pupils ?  Read  http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-educationplus/the-dropout-conundrum/article8265001.ece  . 

AMUSING

 And here is the question posed at the ‘Physical Education Exam’ for Class IX students at Chacha Nehru Hindi High School in Bhiwandi suburb of Mumbai (2016):  “Who is Virat Kohli’s girlfriend ?”  So,  it matters a lot in the classroom !!!  Funnily, the examiner included the name of “Anushka Sharma” (who parted ways with Kohli months ago) in the multiple choices !!!

DESIRABLE  PERSPECTIVES

A student who ‘reprints’ information best on paper and scores ‘centums’ need not be a person with good knowledge and wisdom to learn life skills and problem solving. To inculcate creative thinking processes in children, some schools provide new perspectives through ‘lateral thinking skills’ using ‘thought cube’, ‘thought abstract’, ‘language drill’, ‘Active Teaching Images’ courses (www.pearsoned.co.in), etc.  They encourage the young mind to ‘think outside the box’ and go beyond the obvious and the known.  Even this is within the boundaries of ‘assembly-line production’ / ‘factory-school production’ of ‘merit’.

 The child must be made to earn confidence cognitively through constructing her/his own justifications.  To achieve this, our pedagogy has to learn to respect the child as a person, not as an object to be cut and fashioned to fit into the teachers’ ideology and parental aspirations.  This is possible only when the pre-service and in-service ‘education’ of the teachers is thoroughly overhauled to be in tune with ‘real education’ resting on  foundations of being human and participating in democratic life. 

A recent (2016) nationwide study by ‘Chrysalis’ with a specific focus on CBSE schools revealed that only two per cent of teachers are aware of the actual purpose of ‘assignments’ (‘assessments’) which is to help children learn, not to judge their performance as in tests (examinations).  The very purpose of bringing in the ‘Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE)’ to bring down the number of tests (to make education more ‘child-centric’ than ‘exam-centric’) is defeated.  The overall findings of the three-year survey is to be tabled before the Ministry of Human Resouce Development by the first quarter of 2017.  Massive changes are to be made to repair the old malfunctioning educational system in the country;  mere modifications or cosmetic changes would not lead to radical progress.

“Every  child  is  a  genius  ONLY  to  be

converted  into  an  idiot  in  school.”

--- Noble Laureate  Alexis Carrel

WHAT  SCHOOLS. ARE. THESE ?

Empty edifices with no human core ?  A seven-year-old child was allegedly murdered and probably sexually abused at the Ryan International School in Gurgaon (2017).  Within a few days from this incidence, a five-year-old girl was raped in a Delhi school and an eleven-year-old girl was made to stand in the boys' washroom as a punishment for not wearing a proper uniform.  These are not the only such cases.  There are plenty across the country.  The social depravity seems to run deep and wide.  Court-monitored CBI probes may follow, but they are not sufficient to stem the rot.

MARKS-ORIENTED   SCHOOLS  &  COLLEGES

Our examination system has long been a serious bone of contention.  In the process of proving ‘excellence’ in producing ‘toppers’ at the ‘Plus 2’ school level,  a different kind of schools which intensively focus only on scoring ‘super high’ marks have evolved charging Rs. 4 lakhs for the last two years of study  --  like the 'Corporate Schools & Colleges or ‘Super Schools & Colleges’ as they have come to be known.  Are we producing robots without mind ?  Are we pumping in information without insight, and thus reducing students to mere production units coming out of a conveyer belt with little or no room for holistic development ?  Just run on profit motives and chasing rankings ?

STRESS,  DEATHS and SUICIDES

The resultant stress lead to widespread student suicides - almost one death every other day in some regions.  Fifty students were reported to have committed suicide in just two months (2017) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone, due to 18-hour-a-day  gruelling pressure and harassment at private colleges and hostels.  To know about the conflict of interests which smacks of confusion at best and confusion at worst read http://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2017/oct/23/student-suicides-andhra-the-new-kota-as-corporate-colleges-tighten-the-squeeze-1680227.html .  An 18-year-old girl, Jasleen Kaur, from Hyderabad allegedly  committed suicide on June 5, 2018 by jumping from the 10th floor of a commercial complex purportedly as she was upset over her performance in NEET examination.  One more girl, Pradeepa,  allegedly committed suicide on June 4, 2018 after failing to clear the NEET (TNIE, June 6, 2018).  

YES, stress kills. two fathers (aged 47 & 49) who accompanied their children to NEET examination centres met with sudden death around the time of the examination on May 6, 2018 (TNIE, 07.05.2018). More commonly, stress shortens lifespan slowly by damaging systems in the body over a long period of time. Nothing is more needed than the serenity that a tranquil mind provides in today’s frenetic consumerist age of intense stress, consumer-oriented economic expectations, urban lifestyles, high academic expectations, insufficient family support structure, long working hours and fierce competition. Stress kills – kills the ‘real’ quality of life. Modern society lives in stress and in the hypocrisy of ‘unreal’ good quality of life. People love to pretend that their life is exciting.  We seem to be manufacturing a brand of a mentally deranged and depressed school and college products.

To read a very memorable article related to this subject, click on: 

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/unable-to-just-be-looking-back-on-a-lived-life/article27698371.ece    

(The Hindu, June 9, 2019).  A real life story with a telling argument against a certain Indian scenario of life, art and education. "... No one stresses the importance of happiness, equanimity, self-confidence, sensitivity to nature.  Only 96% (marks) counts. Sad indeed, isn't it ?"  ...  after reading this article,  one would realise how sad our situation is.  And the pity is that most of us are forced to undergo this due to the prevailing circumstances.  Circumstances -- created by need or greed ?  Societal compulsions ?  Material mindset makes the circumstances a compelling need.

In contrast, children in some of the developed countries carry less baggage of books and are less forced to memorise,  less punished  and less stressed.  Everyday,  they look forward to go to school without being goaded.  The system is such that it is a pleasure for them to learn more and more voluntarily with an enquiring mind.  Credit scoring is given for knowledge and skills in games and sports;  voluntary observation and learning in institutions or factories;  voluntary social service, etc.  They come out with creative and innovative thinking, not just with text book information stored in the brain and a certificate in the hand to testify that. 

BAD   ECONOMIC   COMPULSIONS

The craze for marks and wealthy careers has a bearing on the general socio-economic level of the country. When the socio-economic level is low, it is natural that people crave for economic security and the struggle starts from the kindergarten level, and finally when one becomes a professional the priorities would necessarily be for personal financial stability rather than professional ethics, values or service.  Deplorably, this trend has crept into the ‘noble profession’, the medical field, also.

‘FIVE-STAR’  EDUCATION

The general impression in our country is that ‘five-star’ comforts, sophisticated facilities and high fees in educational institutions mean high quality of education.  Some of such establishments boast of having centrally air-conditioned ambience, multi-continental cuisine, 24 hours hot water supply, cable TV connected ‘home theatres’, broad-band connectivity, western-style accommodation, five-hole golf course – the list is endless. 

These students often come out with an air of arrogance, ego, pride, superiority complex, indiscipline, undesirable snobbery, needless elitism, conspicuous consumption and insensitivity to the plight of the down-trodden and disadvantaged.  Culture and character take the back seat.  Idiots come to the fore.  Some degree of comfort and convenience is necessary for living and learning, but going overboard to uber-luxury is detrimental.  The westernization has influenced not only in external things like attire and communication but also in the way of thinking.  Respect for elders, concern for the family system, and caring for values, ethics, ideals, sentiments and morals are on the decline.  Too much of goodness is bad.

What a contrast with the relatively recent Tagore’s Shanti Niketan and our ancient ‘gurukul’ system where ‘sishyas’ (students) lived a simple and tough life -- sharing the home of ‘guru’(teacher);  doing all the household chores including cooking for him; sleeping on floors (not spring-loaded  ergonomically designed ‘intelligent’ mattresses as in ‘five-star’ institutions) !  Do the ‘intelligent’ (as advertised) mattresses infuse intelligence into the hard heads that seek the softest feather-filled pillows ? 

     Indian mind, because of the colonial experience, regards modernisation and westernisation as one and the same.  Japan and China had no such colonial influence and as such excelled in modernisation without losing their cultural identity.  While modernisation took place, Japan followed the Neponisation route while China embraced capitalism – yet, both didn’t lose their identities.  Without losing our cultural ethos and heritage,  we should be able to imbibe the best modernisation practices of the West.

                  The younger generation may not know that we have a glorious past, with awesome achievements by our forefathers, near and remote.  We are heirs to the rich Indian culture, values, morals and aesthetics.  Most of our schools do not teach these qualities but concentrate on examination-result-oriented schemes.  Most of the young get guidance for values, morals and lifestyle from the ubiquitous television and the cellphones,  not from teachers or parents who are too busy with their struggle to reach their goals.  The Western/American ‘way of life’ has jeopardised the lives of 850 million Indian citizens who are young or very young, most of them below 16 years of age.  They are growing up, unable to be handled by their parents.

Son:   What is marriage, dad ?

Dad:  Marriage is just an adventure of adopting a grown up girl who can no more be

           handled by her parents !          

 

THIS  IS  AN  ABRIDGED  TEXT  OF  MY  ‘SCRIBBLING’.      FULL  TEXT  WOULD  BE  POSTED  LATER.   --  T. Rama Prasad