Educational Scenario
In the present scenario, it becomes essential for us to take a review of the content and delivery of education in our schools today.
If school is seen as a place where the child learns to build skills to survive in this society, then we are committing a fallacy of ‘circular reasoning’ if we up the standards in the school so as to make somebody be better than the rest then, this will become a vicious cycle of increasing the standards, and thereby no body in the long run will be benefited by the increased standard of education.
It is convenient to think that continuous improvement of standards (kaizen) is good for the student as well for the society, but, it is also worth reconsidering this stand.
Please think through the following too, now on this continuous improvement, is the result because of which SSLC equivalent to K 10 which was considered good enough to get a decent job some years back as now become equivalent to just being literate. This therefore as forced people to go for more, and this more is now a never ending addition of degrees and diplomas, this labyrinth has been much more complicated by the advent of privatisation because of which, the quality difference is not perceivable in the nomenclature of the degrees too. For example an MBA from such and such university is not considered equivalent to a MA from some other university. So, this is like the person watching a game from the stadium standing up for a better view, and therefore the person who is in the next row too is forced to stand up and this goes on, resulting in the whole stadium watching the game standing. So, this will make seats redundant, in which case we will see schools becoming redundant in few years.
So, education as a tool for competitive advantage is a fallacy.
Techno, episteme and Sophia
Techno, the act of acquiring skills is the starting point of the educational system, the skills shall include, the ability to write, read and arithmetic, with this the skills that need to be added will include, sports skills like handling the racquet, kicking the foot ball, hand and eye coordination and skills of a little broader applications like, carpentry, mechanical and the like.
In this part our schools concentrate on the first three naming it as 3 R’s and leaves the rest for the child to pick by himself, but one can also observe that the space for the rest is slowly being eaten by the first 3 R’s.
Episteme is the knowledge part of education that is the most important skill, which involves the reasoning ability and the ability to conceptually think and connect things. This is the one which suffers the most because of the competitiveness, as the direction of education is mark oriented it suffers from the same ills as the society suffers from the commercialisation. If, we answer the question as to why we educate in terms of the results achieved then, we are indirectly creating an environment of competition and stress, this kills the basic human nature and therefore triggers all such activities leading to war, chaos and environmental degradation. In making a student understand a concept, we concentrate more on how that should be presented rather on how that has to be understood, the inability of evaluating the process results in the birth of such methods which are attempted to make believe understanding through made up presentations.
Sophie, the ultimate success should depend on the translation of this society to a more peaceful and matured one, with the co-existence of this Homo sapiens to lead a life of contentment and bliss. This society which will be peaceful will therefore lead us to such exploration culminating in such knowledge which are primordial in nature, we could then focus our energy on such value based questions like the meaning of our existence as a race in this third rock, the existence or the non-existence of a super natural power above us, which some people claim to be God, the nature of our consciousness, the presence or absence of energy beyond the physical existence, and reincarnation if any and the like
This process of the transformation of our Educational system from what it is today, to what we have developed ideally will involve changes which will not limit itself to Education alone. It has to pervade into almost all other human endeavours.
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