The world is changing drastically and with
Globalisation, Liberalisation and the Internet acting as vital aides in bringing these drastic changes, the chances of employability and prospects of higher education have certainly gone high bringing rays of hope for so many youngsters and job seekers. India too is moving and revolving with the pace of western couture as far as the counselling websites and
start-up businesses in education sector are concerned but to be frank we are still trapped like sand in the sandglass and our educational transformation here in India is moving with the erosional rate of a river in its second course of action, i.e., quite less. Education begins with pre-determined syllabi in India (maybe in other parts of the world too) and as soon as the child comes out of the mother’s womb, family members thrust upon their desired courses and open out their orchestrated schemes designed for the child. This sudden attack comes as a
surgical strike as a mere reminder of what more is yet to come after the child reaches home from the well nursed beds of the hospital.
The story continues and stays in a limbo. The chimes of the clock herald every new hour, every new day and every new year but the essence of education has always been in suspicion in the manner it presently is working in India and especially our middle class societies. The colonial legacy can still be seen in the most coveted of all services-
The All India Services, the services that remain an ostensible part of British legacy and their charm comprises of escorted vehicles and the cavalcade you experience once you get elevated to that post. The one sided traditional mindset with which Indian society is working has brought resentment and has aggrieved the masses(students and youth) who toil harder and harder to make their mark on the sands of time.
The recent changes in RBI policy is a very big example wherein the parliament is now deciding to curtail the powers of the Governor of the RBI in terms of his veto in matters concerning decisions over bank rate fixation and other monetary measures. It amends the RBI act of 1934 . It is even hard to imagine this step took more than eight decades to surface out to be brought into action and such is the case with so many acts, bills, codes of conduct, rules, treaties and sections filed beautifully in the law books.
Education begins with a race and the sole thing here in India has become what Darwin truly remarked as the
survival of the fittest and such is the case today with students today. The subjects taught in the classrooms from grades sixth to tenth seem to develop an interdisciplinary approach towards things ranging from the
European history to discovering and knowing about the deepest gorges in Geography. Then begins the futility of
Civics and Politics wherein I can still recapture how my Civics teacher used to remark –“beta padhlo janne ke liye civics, asal me hota kuch aur hai”(Child, just study this stuff to have a knowledge of civics, in reality something else happens). The graceful penned chapters in
cursive and bold flashing the name of posts of
President and Governor with duties sketched so beautifully as if a person was glancing at some escutcheoned armour and plates in the British Museum. One would go to wonder once one reads the
duties of President and Governor and then to a sudden surprise the entire royalty comes to a flat end with the phrase-
“but the real powers are vested with the Prime Minister and the President is just the nominal head” and same goes with the ‘
Rajya Sabha’. Just relating as to how this syllabi affects us is the way in which it is projected. We live in utopian castles that are actually built on sand plinths and entablatures having soft colonnades with such content that keeps us in delusion away from the reality of the political world that is harsh and totally different. Nestled in such an environ with the protracted struggle between the government and private schools on along with the
superiority complex that prevails in the private school passouts thereby developing an
inferiority complex in the students wearing the badges of government schools, the differences in standards keeps the enmity between these two on. The vast changes in pedagogy and the manner in which extra-curricular activities are structured in private and government schools is of a great difference both in terms of quality and stewardship.
The mindset of Indian families is unpredictable and so is the pattern with the thing called
Competition. After passing out your grade tenth and witnessing the felicitations of those who made it into the merit list, suddenly those subjects covering polity, history and gorges lose their importance and become archaic paving way for PCM(Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) to come once again in vogue. The fight for this starts and
all eyes turn into cracking IITs and NITs with the legion of engineers getting ready and the other encampment comprises of students aiming (mostly forced to aim) to be doctors with the fight for the
MBBS and that too from
AIIMS and allied reputed colleges. The whole lot that is left in between who had aroused affinity towards History and Geography or Sociology during the early school years now rotates between the two career options of either being an
enthusiastic engineer or a dutiful doctor (a mere hoax) and lands in distress. Few succeed in reaching and being what they are by pursuing their courses of study in which they are interested in, defying all the troglodyte conventions and not submitting before the suzerainty of the ruling professional courses in vogue just because they are expected to generate employment and fill your wallets with raining dollars.
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The trend doesn’t stop here and those
archaic subjects resurrect and this time History, Geography and Polity and their allies become the backbone of all those
enthusiastic engineers and dutiful doctors who start circumambulating and visiting the IAS coaching centres and drench themselves in the preparatory mode of the much coveted civil services choosing mostly the non-science subjects as their optionals. The Hippocratic oaths and the bonds with the MNCs go away in trash and the lure of
societal respect, power and money with the guarded entourage attached as inherent perk with the civil services takes over everything. The
society now accepts and praises an engineer or a doctor clearing the civil services with non-science subjects – the very subjects they opposed their children to study in grades 11th and 12th as they had less market value and so called ‘scope’.
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The management guys passing out of IIMs aren’t far behind and after having a highly fuelled octane career in MNCs they too fall into the trap of the
lure of civil services. The fight continues and the mindset of the society needs to change. Every service one delivers by his/her capability is unique and
creating a hallowed status of civil services isn’t correct and branding IAS and IFS as hallowed figures is also not right. The society needs to understand the emotional, physical and mental challenges with which a student passes through and the phases of life he encounters during his/her college or professional life. ‘
WO’(they) in the title of this article is as expected the neighbours, the relatives, the society and the comparative indices having different parameters and clauses of comparison that emerge with the intellectual rights going to this “WO” section.
Despite all these problems we are living and functioning but the society needs to know the real state of each student and must give up comparing their wards with others. Someone has a Kipling hidden in him/her, someone has an Einstein. The situation of private engineering and medical colleges that are mushrooming quickly and promising fake underrated placements is really awful and needs to be brought under the legal action and governmental scanner to provide justice to those souls who are travelling in the college buses each day that too in uniforms for years just to find themselves filling a Bank PO/clerk form at the end of their courses. Let us not discriminate people on the basis of their marks and grades or subjects in graduation with the hashtag of professionalism attached to them. Let us learn to respect lives and people individually as ethics are an indelible part of our lives that can’t be ignored. Summing up with a meme that speaks a lot. “May we live in interesting times.”
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