If the government really wants to do something for the people to ensure a better future, it has to focus its energies on education sector. The recent controversy surrounding NEET has come as a big shocker for the millions of students. While the issue is being dealt with the concerned agencies, the controversy itself puts a huge question mark on our education system. People expect the current government to do the needful and provide justice and ensure that in future all the examination processes are fool-proof and students’ futures are not put to harm. However, here in these columns, the focus is on the education sector as a whole.
Majority of the Indian students study in government run schools but the fact of the matter is that most of the times, private schools outshine these schools though the reality in Kashmir is that these private school, unlike government schools don’t have many trained teachers available and whatever the teaching staff they have, they are all under-paid.
The dynamics and settings of both schools and classrooms have changed a great deal world over. During the yesteryears, it was more or less a one-way communication, top-down model that would be followed inside schools and classrooms with teacher at the apex and students in the bottom. But today the same has been replaced with two-way linear models of communication wherein teacher is at the best only a participant observer in class-room activity. He/she is a friend and a facilitator in a teaching-learning process which has to be mutually enthusing, enriching, interesting and fulfilling for both – the teacher as well as the students.
Western world has proved the success of this linear model beyond doubt. We see the education system thriving there and this is one of the reasons for them having left the global south or the third world way behind on the educational super-highway. There is nothing wrong in emulating any concept or model, irrespective of its origin, if it is worthy of copying for the larger interests and benefits of the society, much like the way we copy modern medical and diagnostic techniques of the West to help the ailing people in this part of the world. So if we have to bring in better and scientific pedagogical concepts into our school system and in our class-rooms, it is the teachers who will have to be willing to change and adapt to the newer concepts first. They will have to give up the ‘my way or the highway’ rigidity of a traditional teacher and be flexible to changes that hold big promise for the society and the nation.
