Those pointing out its root cause to be lying in higher education system perhaps ignore that the need of innovation needs to be sowed in the primary and secondary-level education. This does not happen in the existing system.
On one hand, there is a policy of not failing students and promoting them till Standard VIII even if they perform below par (part of the plan of the Right to Education Act of 2009). Students thus promoted cannot even write three-digit numbers, leave alone adding or subtracting them. Five years after the implementation of the RTE Act 2009, the fact that only an average of 48 per cent of Class V children in India can read a Class II level text, as per a survey conducted recently, is a worrying sign of the abject failure of the Indian education policy. In fact, our school children are said to be faring very poorly when it comes to skills in reading, writing, mathematics and science. Globally, we now stand 62nd on this measure, well behind even Jordan and Armenia.
Take for instance in India where students study in English-medium schools and whom every one places on a higher pedestal. As English is not their mother tongue, much of their energy is wasted in understanding the subject and then mugging up answers and rewriting at home what their teachers wrote on the blackboard or dictated to them. When they reach Standard X, they are advised by their teachers not to write even a single word from outside the textbook in the Board examination, lest a paper examiner fails to understand and gives them poor marks.
Some schools may boast of the assignment projects given to students. In a majority of cases, the projects are done by parents, neighbours or tutors because the children simply have no energy to do them. Innovation starts with out-of-the-box thinking, so teachers need to be trained to inspire students not only to think but to think differently.
When these students reach the graduate or post-graduate levels, search engines on the Internet further reduce their thinking and the capacity to apply their minds to their subjects. Type the topic of the assignment and copy-paste the content – the assignment is ready within minutes. Even here, cases of en masse coping through pen drives abound. How can you expect any innovation from such lazy and mediocre students and the teachers who allow such unethical practices under their nose?
Experts in the field of education are of the opinion that bad teachers and lazy students coupled with unethical grade inflation in school and college results is the primary cause for the abysmal and failing standards of education in India. More and more students are getting higher and higher marks, but the standard of education is going in the opposite direction. Over the years, our students are getting better and better grades on paper, but this has in no way helped to push up our knowledge levels.
The principal reason for grade inflation in school result is the way teachers have traded in their sense of responsibility for comfort. Consequently, question papers have become more and more objective and the right answers are actually screaming in your face. At times, it comes down to the presence of a certain word, or sentence, in an answer for a student to max the question. So, it would be a fallacy to even imagine that India is intellectually rising because our school grades are getting better every year.
It is not as if such an affliction only attacks schools. Even colleges and other institutions of higher education including universities happily inflate grades. While at one end, higher education institution cutoffs keep going up, our international standing in science, technology and innovation keeps going down. In other words, scoring high marks does not necessarily mean learning well, at least in India.
According to the 2014 Global Innovation Index, 81 per cent of patent applications are from China, the United States of America (USA), Japan, South Korea and the European Union (EU). While America leads in computer systems, South Korea has emerged as the new kid on the block. It has overwhelmed all of Europe and ranks second to the USA in this high-tech sphere.
In fact, in terms of patent applications, India cannot match up to any of the world leaders in the field. Curiously enough patents submitted by Indians abroad are more in number than those that originate in our country. Our famed IITs do not figure among the top 300 institutions of higher education in the world. There is so much pressure in India to win a place in these engineering colleges, so much envy against those who make the grade, yet globally these institutions are minor players. This, once again, shows that the standard of our education here is abysmally poor.
Experts point out that outdated syllabi and methods of teaching have gripped our education system, and that there is only lip service towards changing them. Managements of engineering and management institutions only bother about attracting students and making money, but they are least bothered about creating innovative minds passionate about creativity. These institutions would have done well to conduct surveys among their alumni on the gaps they experienced in their learning in colleges and the actual demands at the workplace. Industry and academics must figure out how to educate for the modern workplace.
Fast-changing technology will always create gaps in academics and practice in industry, however, there should be a continuous endeavor to bridge this gap by holding a regular dialogue between the two and evolving ways for mutual exchange of knowledge. There can be no substitute for a sincere effort towards this end, experts insist.
(The writer is a freelance journalist)
