Education is the key to any society’s progress and prosperity. Education is indeed the magic wand that not only allows access to various levers of power but also teaches how to work with these levers. No doubt if one opts to count the things that differentiate rich from poor, advanced from backward, healthy from the diseased…, it is indeed the access to the avenues of education and to all others spheres and vistas that come with it – progress and development. Today whatever ills are plaguing the poor, underdeveloped countries are in some way or the other direct fallout of the peoples’ limited access to the education. What has been the major contributing factor in development of the developed countries and people is that they were able to invest in vital sector of education well in time. One could certainly say without any fear of being disputed that the developmental lag of the third world countries is in essence the educational lag they have suffered.
Now have a cursory look at the education sector in Jammu and Kashmir. Look at the sad reality that so many schools are without proper buildings and other infrastructure. If there are no roof-tops on some buildings there are others which are without walls and blackboards too. While there are schools without teachers there are yet others where there are teachers with only a small number of children to come and study. In comparison, private schools have better infrastructure and have thus been attracting more and more students and have now become money minting machines. And the sad reality is that the government schools lack attention. If the government of the day is interested in better future of J&K, it has to invest in education sector.
Though a lot is being claimed by the government of the day, little is being done on the ground. The Chief Minister had reportedly said that government officers should admit their children in government schools. For sloganeering, it sounds music to the air but fact of the matter is that such a thing has never happened earlier not would happen in the future. Instead of throwing out catchy phrases, what the people expect from the government is a serious though to modernize the school. We talk about e-governance but our schools lack basic computer labs. How many schools have been equipped with computers and, if there is any, what about the internet connection. Forget about computers, the most of the schools don’t have proper lavatories.
Government should take the education sector seriously and have a special budgetary allocation for the said department. Infrastructure development should be the priority and along with it, teachers’ training should be a regular feature. For providing good education, we need to have good teachers. Undoubtedly we have very learned and highly educated teachers in education department but government should ensure that they undergo regular training courses to update themselves with ever changing technology.