It was a rainy August morning today, when I started from my
home towards the office. As usual the bus was late, thanks to their filthy
conditions and the crater-marked roads. Just when I thought I would be terribly
late for office, the bus arrived and I along with everyone in the line boarded the
bus cursing the local municipal corporation.
It was just another day until we got stuck in traffic. Traffic
snarls are common in India, especially in metros like Mumbai. After a lot of
honking and the bus muscling its way through the traffic, I happened to learn
the reason for the traffic – adhoc parking of the cars by the parents who came
in to drop their kiddos to school. God! I was like, if Dad dropped me to
school, it used to be one of the most privileged days, when the ride to school
on the scooter was super cool! I am sure most of you guys will also agree on the
fact that school days were the best days.
Certainly things have changed a lot over the last 12-15
years. The way a child was being brought up into a family and the kind of
education he received both at the family level and the school level was more natural
than how it is done today - synthetic. Earlier it was more of an orthodox kind
of teaching where a child was supposed to go through the grind of homework, a
lot of reading, writing, memorizing; where he or she was expected to be good at
every subject – be it Algebra or languages; or where the child was taught in a
more ideal way; ideal in the ‘purist’ sense of education. Of course, drawing
comparisons between how a child should be raised as a whole would not make any
sense since the concept of ‘family’ as an institution has gone a tremendous
change. However, the aim of education should not change, irrespective of the
changes in the surroundings – financially, academically or emotionally.
There is a reason for this though. The term ‘Education’ primarily
should focus on nurturing the child such that he or she should grow in all
directions – mentally, physically, socially, academically and behavior-wise. Ideally,
he or she should contribute back to the society in whatever way possible. When I
mention society, it can be the smallest unit also – the family. The problem
with today’s education system is that this motto of cultivating a student into
a responsible citizen of the Nation is lost totally. Education today has a very
simple formula –
Education for Money and Money for Education
Whatever level of education you consider – right from
getting admitted to a school or going for higher education courses with the
likes of IITs and IIMs, money has been a major factor to decide the quality of
education being imparted to the students. Conversely, it has also influenced
the student’s point of view towards looking at the education system. Let’s
focus our attention to the schooling period of a child, because they say that
the SSC and the HSC examinations are the turning points of a student’s career. A career where you can get a fat pay salary
and then get ‘settled’ in life. That is what is drilled in the minds of young
generation. Well nothing wrong in that, but again the purists argue back that, in
most cases the individual progresses only financially. The remaining faculties especially
the attitude to look back upon the society largely remains under developed.
While the present schooling system focuses more on the Methodist
style of teaching – complete with audio-visual aids, and other fancy ways, the
old school method of teaching was devised to let the child think individually
by stimulating the curiosity to know about things around. More focus was given
on getting the basics in line in whatever way. If multiplication tables were to
be taught, the students didn’t just memorize them, they learnt that multiplication
is simply cumulative addition of a particular number; when history was taught,
the whole scenario of Shivaji’s fight against the mighty Mughals came to life;
when Science was taught, the process of water evaporating into clouds and then
coming back to the Earth in the form of rain was understood by most of us as
the Water Cycle. Geography was imagining how the polar bears in Canada and Siberia
survived the cold temperatures of below 0 degrees. All this happened because of
the quality of teachers. It requires a lot of ability as a teacher, to bring
all these subjects to life in front of students. And when this happens, the aim
of getting marks for ranking #1 in exams vanishes. Education attains its true
meaning of imparting knowledge to students and the teacher in return gets a lot
of personal satisfaction. This kind of satisfaction, I’m sure, would be the
highest kind of satisfaction any job can offer and it peaks when such a student
attains excellence in a particular subject, then be it a 5th
standard school kid or a PhD guy. This kind of an attitude was very much
evident amongst the teachers of the old school line of thought than in their
newer counterparts.
It’s very difficult to state the qualities of an ideal
teacher, but there are a few which can be counted. An ideal teacher is the one
who takes care of the student mentally, emotionally and physically; who ensures
that the purest form of knowledge is imparted which will help the student to live
a healthy and prosperous life; the kind of knowledge which will make the
student a better decision maker; the one who shapes you minds to be responsible
citizens of the society; one who lifts the spirit of the student when he or she
fails but at the same time takes care that the student is not carried away by
the success achieved; one who enables the student to believe in their abilities
and finally the one who believes that teaching is not merely a profession but a
lifetime commitment to shape the young minds. As the Chinese say –
‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and
you feed him for a lifetime’.
Education, in its purest form is supposed to assist a person
take sensible decisions pertaining to his or her personal as well as social
life. We can safely say that we are educated only when as individuals; we can take
firm stands on any issues; when we can justify our stand with a logical and
valid reason – a reason which will have profound impact on our life as well as
the life of others.
When a child grows, he is getting educated continuously through
his or her surroundings – be it the family, the neighborhood, school, college,
workplace etc. and this learning continues till the end. At every stage of
life, some external agent keeps on shaping the mind of an individual. To start,
family is the first learning stage followed by school and college. This is the
formative period when the parents, teachers and friends play a vital role in
deciding the character of a person he or she is going to be in the future.
However, with the changing nature of the society, the family as a unit, the
commercialization of educational institutions and other such factors a mad
chaos has resulted. Amidst this chaos the true spirit of education has lost
forever. The urge to compete with the advanced nations and so to imitate the
Western education system has rendered a confused and chaotic state of education
here in India. With private schools mushrooming at every nook and corner of the
metros, they spend a lot on marketing their brand name in the form of colorful pamphlets
with morning newspapers. Huge donations are demanded to get the kid admitted. Upon
admission to the so-called best schools also, the kind of To-the-core teachers are
very rare. Except few cases, the same is the scenario in colleges and premier
educational institutions like the IITs and IIMs.
All this cacophony is present very much in every field – be it medical
colleges or pure sciences. Even in this way, if we are producing professionals
who are at par with their foreign counterparts, at an individual level, we are
not producing good citizens. Not many can contribute back to the society and
teaching is one of the noblest professions of giving back to the society. Although
attempts are now made to revive the teaching profession by introducing the 6th
Pay Commission, care should be taken that the true essence of education is not
lost. This realization should be the prerogative of the individual and not of some
third person.
An individual is the basic unit of the society. When an
individual is recognized as an educated individual by his degree certificates
and not by the strength of his or her character, we can never expect the
betterment of the society, especially when we are all going through these
turbulent times of corruption and crimes. Education is a process, if we start shaping
young minds now, only then we can at least expect a new generation of good
citizens. This process should be such that the purist ideas of education are
conveyed to the younger generation in ways which they understand the best. Only
by bridging this generation gap, I believe, we can have a right to demand
answers from the society.
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