HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar’s announcement that the NCERT syllabus will be reduced by half from the 2019 academic session will bring in a sigh of relief to lakhs of students across the nation. But will it change anything in our education system except for reducing the book load? The need of the hour is a complete overhaul of our primary and secondary level of teaching and not such superficial changes.
For now it’s been a sorry state of affairs where students pass out from schools without even having elementary knowledge, like for example identifying states on the map of India. There are students who don’t even know the capital of the nation or the state they are living in. Studies are merely restricted to textbooks, and solving equations is the order of the day. Quality of education continues to remain a far cry while we hold on to a rigid teaching system which has been by and large static for over three decades. There have been perennial flaws in design of our education system that need to be rectified first. We talk of learning outcomes, but the basics have gone missing.
Government firstly needs to study the huge chasm between its schools and those run privately which have moved far ahead. While providing a competitive learning environment in terms of better infrastructure is a pre-requisite, technology should be introduced in a big way, more especially when education is not only restricted to books and where e-learning is available for the asking. It is a sorry state of affairs when government school children don’t even understand what a library is, in comparison to the private schools which are fast moving towards e-library and e-resources.
The problem in rural India is students have managed to tune themselves to technologies like cellphones, but have been lacking the basics of reading even simple texts. Most students are unable to apply basic skills to everyday tasks. There is a deficit when it comes to becoming productive members of the society. Government’s schooling system has failed to educate the children on practical learning skills and restricted them to a set of books which may not be relevant to their day-to-day lives or to their future careers. Children are left with no clue as to why they are learning what they are being taught. Education continues to be a mechanical process, where relevance is not explained. Solving equations and learning formulas is all aimed at clearing an exam.
The second biggest factor towards an educational change is the teachers. While there is a certain lack of passion in teachers, there are also no systems in place to upgrade them in a fast advancing world. Time to time training and resource development on the latest trends is paramount if government looks forward to them imparting quality education.
While a curriculum change has been thought of several times involving special commissions, nothing has fructified till now. Government should break new ground on education and think out of the box. Students should be made stakeholders and involved in framing the curriculum.
