WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2024
Bryce D'Souza
In this article, I would like to talk about a subject that has daunted me for years of having gone through the ups and downs of my student life, right from school until college life. It is a subject that I often wanted to question, given how on its part, it plays quite a significant role in influencing how we live our lives the way we live it. There is no other broad and encompassing term to refer to this collection of mindsets and value systems communicated by the so-called: 'Education System' as it has come to be referred to increasingly in recent times.
As we all are aware about it, education or rather the 'educational system' is a way of communicating the 'value systems and ideals' of a set country as well as the culture that governs it. It serves as a way a particular community would identify itself with its heritage, lineage, history and the list goes on. The educational system of a country like India would in relative terms be different from the education system of the UK, United States, and other countries around the world a seemingly obvious fact we can take note of. Given the differences that exist in all these systems worldwide, there is one thing that no one can deny all of them are out there to 'socialise people' into the norms and value systems of a set culture, country and in that way, shape people and individuals in terms of how they see and believe in the things around them.
This to a certain level, marks a strong departure from merely being 'schools of thought' to 'institutions of socialisation' which given the current world we live in, serves to creating a sense of bias to the things we see around us and how we approach life.
Having said that, the flow of knowledge or information as we would have noticed often tends to be one-sided. The teacher or the educator is often viewed more as the person with the 'expertise' or an 'expert' in the subject, while the student is more of a person who is learning from this expert. From a broader perspective, we would come to the realisation that in real life, all of us are by nature humans learning at every moment, every second and more importantly through every experience. So essentially, learning is something that takes place almost daily and forms a part of our true nature as humans. Keeping this in mind, all of our experiences we have gone through in life, go about shaping who become in the end, and are together a key factor or a key determinant to influencing how we think and act in ways, not otherwise. We should also not forget that we live in the digital age, where almost everything is at our fingertips a privilege that very few in the past would have had given the level of developments as of those times.
Given the current situation and the circumstances that surround this, educational systems unfortunately have become more of 'authoritarian centres' sticking to a particular value system or mindset that governs it, which with of absolutely no doubt, is influenced with age and time. It is also sad to see that students have no choice, but to feed in these value systems and beliefs in their minds thereby promoting a culture of 'ignorance' which by virtue is one of the dangerous things to the society and the world around us.
There is therefore a need of the hour to restructure this very system so as to reflect the pertinent realities of the current era as well as meet up with the demands of the ever-changing society and the economy that governs it. A key success factor to this would be, to effectively transition learning from more of a one-way process to a two-way process. This would encourage the ‘younger generation of learners’ to be more expressive of their opinions on various subject matters of interest. This in turn would pave way for debate, which by far is one of the most effective ways of coming to a concrete understanding of the practical aspects of life.
Another point to be cognisant of, is that most often, the theories that we would have come across in the ‘Science’ and ‘Social Sciences’ disciplines, are actually the discoveries and findings of critical thinkers and minds in the respective fields. Through constant questioning and skeptical thinking, they were able to come to the current findings we know to this date and time. Therefore, by incorporating ‘deep thought and reasoning’, instead of mere ‘recollection of facts’, there is also lies a greater possibility of certain terms taking a completely different meaning, given the fast-changing world we live in; a classic example, the ever evolving ‘English language’.
To sum up, by going about with this whole exercise of restructuring the ‘education system’, not only do we make the systems cognisant of the reality we are living. On the contrary, it is a great effort made to bring a sense of realism in the way they communicate ideas and beliefs, and more importantly- inspire a new generation of thinkers and thought leaders, in the verge of changing the world and making a mark.
