Though we live in a land where free and compulsory education has become a fundamental right, and in a land where books are everything, whether you love them or not you are forced to develop a sort of love with them, where kids are trained to be bookish and expected to be book worms, we too have our own expectations towards our system of education. I believe these expectations are never ending! Dictionary meaning for ‘education’ is the process of teaching or learning. I thought, it shouldn’t be ‘or’, instead it should be ‘and’. Education ,the so called ‘process’ never gets full filled when its two main aspects ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ are strong enough.
We can very well take pride of the fact that the World’s superior power’s president Barack Obama glorified the Indian system of education. But then, there is some obstacle lying behind, which prevents us or perhaps which doesn’t allow us to excel in this entire process. As an individual I have my own expectations. We are in such a World where a kindergarten child is expected to be thorough with all fruits,vegetables,flowers and the list goes on….So, the environment around us expects us to be aware of everything ,even as a child and it is also done! But does this process continue? The answer will be ‘no’ in almost all the cases. Children are children irrespective of their intellectual capacity and they expect to be spoon-fed. This is done, but not up to the mark.
Let me be precise. There are many publications which publishes books for school children. That too from this year equitable standard of education is said to be extended to all classes in our state. Whatever be the case, do all the teachers in our schools stress upon the ‘activity’ given in the middle and at the end of each lesson? Do they ever bother to give some glimpse of information regarding the URL at the end of each lesson in their history books? Not many of them.
In a class of fifty students or so, you cannot expect every one of them to be self-interested and to go through and dig out all these so called ‘extras’. Another saddening situation is that moral science and environmental science are just added to the list of sciences to cause head ache! What is the point in this? Moral science is to help an individual become a complete human and environmental science is to make the students aware about their surroundings. But are these two aspects satisfied? That remains a question mark.
‘Self evaluation’. I believe this means evaluating one self. What is the point to finish the lesson in a hotchpotch way and to 'dictate' the answers for those questions under 'self-evaluation' in the class? Let all these be on one side. Let me come to the other side. The Hindu’s Newspaper in Education’ (NIE) is an excellent process which have been adapted and successfully run in many schools. I hope this would continue in all schools.
Next thing is, Education is a triangular process involving parents, teachers and students. Only when everyone involved here executes their role perfectly, a complete human could be produced, as education’s main motto is to do that! When a person recruited to work for an Information Technology organisation and a civil service aspirant are tested on their personality why can’t a teacher be? Teachers are supposed to be patient and they are expected to handle the situations wisely. So why can’t there be a personality test for teachers?
Finally, I conclude this hoping an optimistic answer would solve all the above question marks and that is my expectation on education!
