Let me cut to the chase. Our surreal Goa gets a lot of flak: our pillaged ore is substandard, the soil lacks the optimal nutrients, we as a people are sinfully tolerant, the list snakes on. But what gets my goat is seeing the Indian and the self – serving local govt view our gen-next as a negligible asset to social capital. The youth is written off, with Parrikar allotting just 3℅ of the GDP for education of youngsters who are surrounded and blissfully so, by tourist – centric imported hedonism. In August, the paper printed an article that had me riveted; a committee of 6 experts was constituted to revamp Goa’s 40 year old education system. I was elated: Students the world over are judged by factors like test scores and creativity, a detailed google search on the best education constructs revealed information that I hope the committee is aware of and if not, will incorporate the same.
Singapore aced the reading, math and science testing despite having a rather sizeable population. Blessed with upright and transparency – leaning visionaries, Singapore uses innovative technology to make kids long to come to school and actually text their questions to teachers during class. Countries like Finland and the Netherlands took mentoring their students light years ahead of the curve followed by the wealthiest nations. The Dutch, who are consistently breaking new ground by thinking out of the box, also put emphasis on cutting edge teaching aids. Being the third most preferred country to do business with, their students are groomed from lower grades for the stringent admission protocols to the many specialised tiers of higher education.
The Finns recruit only the cream of the crop to be their teachers, affording them the respect and benefits that doctors elsewhere would be entitled to. Kids are grouped according to aptitude rather than being brainwashed en masse to mug science, math and language skills.
Japan, after losing an estimated 220,000 citizens at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its thirst for war, created the benchmark of insightful education and this is the route Goa absolutely has to take.
The founder of Shantiniketan and Visva-bharathi University, the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s forgotten philosophy, “Relationship of nature with man” is worth a detailed study as well. Fr Pio Furtado of the Society of Pilar adopted this methodology as principal of Miracles High School, Sanguem and the future alumni of this school are guaranteed to be world changers in due time.
I was fortunate to have steadfast mentors in my life; I firmly believe our benevolent Goa can and should be providing the least fortunate of our citizens with the same.
“I am an optimist but an impatient optimist. The world is getting better but not fast enough and it is not getting better for everyone” – Bill Gates.
