Systemic reform in education need of the hour/On the eve of the week of Independence Day, I find it apt to focus on these issues.

Systemic reform in education need of the hour--Various other factors such as extracurricular activities, community service and project presentations are barely taken into account in the grading scheme of things or in the admission process.I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM INCLUDING OFFBEAT SUBJECTS AND ITS IMPORTANCE....WHICH INCLUDES SPORTS,ART,MUSIC,DANCE ETC AT LENGTH IN THIS BLOG WITH THE HEADING.."KAPIL SIBBAL KI DUURDRISHTI"...THOSE WERE MY ORIGINAL VIEWS AND IT INCLUDES WHAT ALL IS WRITTEN HERE,AND EDUCATION SINCE MY TIME!!!....VT)


Education in India is a conundrum. A few years back my cousin just completed her 12th standard and she had a percentage of 94.2; a percentage which is good enough in my books. She didn't make it to any top school; she had to settle for much less because there were tons of people with similar grades. The biggest questions I tend to have with our education system is

a) Why our education is such that it can allow one to score so well

b) Why does it care about only scoring so well? On the eve of the week of Independence Day, I find it apt to focus on these issues.

Firstly, the biggest issue is the nature of our secondary education system. The biggest issue in the entire secondary education system in this country is that it is incompetent in more ways than one. The system is mainly catered towards individuals who are quantitatively brilliant or people with the off the hand memory. It is catered towards the individual who recollects things instantly for repetitive questions rather than the individual who takes the time but answers more creatively. Ironically, even this approach (however flawed it may be) lacks educational depth and is not implemented properly.

Take the case of my cousin. She did get a good percentage but so what? Lots of her friends did get the same thing. In most cases (especially in the State board exams) it is easy to score near the 90 percentile level for almost anyone. From the 90 percentile level to the 100 percentile, the entire student strata cram in. In essence, the papers are not hard; it's just that the students need to be accurate in their recollection process. A person who misses out on a question or two gets affected in the percentage by a few percentages; that is equivalent to dooms day. Basically, what this does is not test your depth of knowledge in the subject, it tests how careful you are or how much you have mugged through your material given to you. Any system that allows a majority of its students to be around the 90 percentile area has something wrong about it since the definition of "meritorious" is almost equated to "mediocrity" since everyone is able to get around the same percentage (eg: around 94 to 99). The differentiating factor (5%) is not the depth of knowledge here but how accurately you blurted out what you mugged. In addition to this flawed implementation of the approach, the consequences of this obsession with the % numbers has created a wider impact.

The foundations of our secondary system is catered towards to the one who scores the most but not the one who is a well rounded personality. While this approach has set us on the path of being one of the leading technical brain hubs for the universe, it also underlines the ineptitude in broadening our education spectrum beyond the realms of numbers. Various other factors such as extracurricular activities, community service and project presentations are barely taken into account in the grading scheme of things or in the admission process. It is precisely these factors that would determine the effectiveness of an individual in the longer run while working in an organization in the future. It is precisely these qualities that Education needs to focus on since these are not mere numbers; these are values and principles that are at the core of a success of a student in his career and as well as in life.

Our education system has its own merits in terms of enhancing the memorizing capability and the ability to thrive under pressurized situations where performance at all cost is required. It has indeed produced world class engineers and doctors but the question is have all these people emerged due to the system or despite the system? More crucial question is what is the quality of the middle percentile of educational talent in the country leaving the top 10% and the bottom percent aside? The only way we can bride this inequality is when we have a broad based education system that can cater to a wider spectrum of subjects and to have a stringent exam model where it is harder to score a 90 plus percentage rather than having a million odd people scoring from 90 percent onwards.

It's not about the elite who enter the IIT's/IIM's. It's neither about the people who are at the end of the spectrum.

It's all about bridging the gap between the two ends of the spectrum with a more holistic and well rounded system; that's the biggest challenge for our education system.