By: Aubaid Ahmed Akhoon
The current educational system is like a patient declining in health and does not produce the citizens required in the pragmatic world outside. On the contrary, it produces batches of the individuals that may be replete with information but are hollow when it comes to updated and usable knowledge. Looking at the lacunas imbedded in our educational system, one can only say that we need a complete overhauling.
The syllabus that we teach our children is obsolete and outdated. Thousands of students appear in various board and competitive exams and almost all of them secure positions and distinctions but tens and thousands of them fail to do something to be financially independent. No matter how many exams they pass and how many degrees they hold, they never get off the shoulders of their parents. They are unable to earn for themselves not because they aren’t well qualified but because they aren’t relevantly qualified.
More and more practical courses and vocational courses must be added to the syllabus as this shall help an individual to acquire what it takes to stay firm in today’s market driven economy. Institutions must stop producing an army of unemployed people every year end and rather design and curate courses that enable them to extent services even when they are still students. This way we will have skilful people, artists, artisans, craftsmen, technocrats, entrepreneurs as well as innovators coming out of our colleges and universities.
Given the huge graph of privatisation of education in Kashmir in recent past, majority of the children are still in government schools and until the staffs of govt schools is not updated and the institutes are not modernised, we still have a huge number of children who aren’t acclimatised with the basic of modern education. One cannot expect them to really compete in future unless they are extraordinary.
Apart from current courses there are areas like sports, arts, cinema, media, agriculture, environment, IT and unprecedented business areas that can be introduced early on. This was students would be more like trainees ready to get their hands on a job. Given the changing scenario of world economy and the expansion of businesses, our children need to update and move ahead alongwith the world rather than stay clogged in a system full of faults and very little or no chances of economic independence.
