Image by Ben Heine
In a country with a population of over 1,200 million people it
is astounding to hear from almost all employers, "We can't get the people
we need".
India has one of the youngest populations in the world, and this
represents a fantastic asset, if the people are productive. However a majority
of these young and middle aged people are currently unemployable. If this
situation is not corrected soon then India is indeed sitting on a gigantic
human resources time bomb.
Compared to earlier generations the opportunity to acquire
knowledge was a great boon for the preceding two generations, with literacy
rates and job skills being greatly enhanced.
To meet the growing demand
education institutions have mushroomed mainly owned and managed by politicians. With a focus only on maximization of short term profit most of these institutions are providing
education which is often hopelessly out of sync with current requirements of
employers and society in general.
Learning which should be an exciting phenomenon has become a
dreary and boring affair for students. So bad is the situation that the
students are forced to attend classes which they would prefer not sit in. The
system has come to represent a prison of sorts.
Indian educational institutes from school to universities have
mandated that every student must attend a minimum of 80% of all classes to be
eligible to be examined or tested at the end of each term.
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Why was the rule created and why is it sustained?
•
Parents do not have the time, energy or inclination to police or
engage their children, they expect the educational institute to do that.
The system keeps children somewhat occupied with each other if not with
their teachers and their subjects.
•
When education becomes a drudgery, because of overflowing
classrooms, poor quality of content, falling teaching standards, and
indifferent or overworked teachers, the children will rebel. The
education institutions see it as an opportunity to earn more fees by imposing
penalties, repetitive collections of fees from detained students, etc.
This makes everyone happy except the student, because they have
to endure, long boring sessions with drudgery. No prisoner is happy, even if
the attempts of teaching are claimed to be for the student's benefit.
"You can take the horse to the water but you cannot
make it drink", goes a well known saying. It is possible to force the
student to sit in a class but it is impossible to force them to learn.
You don't have to be a genius to know that any kind of forced action
always has unpleasant or problematic results.
Instead of treating the student as a lamp to be lit, our system
now considers them to be vessels to be filled.
The situation is indeed alarming but can still be rectified. We
need to restructure the way we ourselves and our children learn and acquire
skills more suited to meet the challenges of the 22nd century.
Readers are invited to respond with their thoughts and
suggestions.
