Education is a continuous process!
America is undergoing peculiar distortions in its national outlook!
It is tie Indians build an Indian education brand!
Education is no more an ideal and an imaginative field.
Yes, you need ideas and philosophies. Every thinker is an educator. This is history. Rousseau started out as an art it rather bluntly, vagabond! But then, what happened?
Rousseau ended up as an educator! Can this happen in India? Never and ever!
Why?
We are a traditional country. We are an old country. Old civlisation. Highly hierarchical society and culture. So, on these lines once you start thinking, you get a series of new thoughts and new insights. Education impinges on every point of the compass.
But this side of education is only one aspect of the education dimension.
There is now a totally different dimension to the education perspective.
There is the history. If you look at the history of education and societies and the economies. The sciences and the technologies.
Today, we live in a totally different sort of society and life and lifestyles.
This is the new technology that impacts our lives almost 24/7!
Yes, we are now tied or wedded, as you like to the Internet. Mobile and other technologies connect us to the Internet all through the day and night, all through our waking life.
What does the coming of the IT technologies mean to our day to day life?
What Internet means to our education processes. To impart education to the largest segment of people. As per the latest education survey released by the education ministry, the 25 or odd factors that make up the education index, the education measurement index, we see the tiny island of Lakshadweep scores first!
Fine, next comes Puducherry.
Third comes Tamil Nadu, The fifth rank is held by Karnataka. The 25 parameters include so many different measurements. Cess to education today is helped and handed by many factors. For girl child there are special hindrances. So on and so forth.
The point is that we have to ensure so many viewpoints in our conception of what makes for a good education. Education must help to reach the noble goals like equality, equity and also access to health, jobs, security and many such things.
In India, in the last 67 years of freedom we have reached a very highly sensitive stage. There is now so much progress.
There is any number of progressive legislations on education. The latest is the Free and compulsory education for the most deprived sections of society. So, we are at present faced with implementation of some of these progressive legislations.
The very beginning of education process, the admissions to the LKG and UKG is itself had taken some peculiar dimensions.
Before January schools are supposed to start admissions. But they started right away a few months before the healthy deadline. Likewise, the well-off schools are to give admission to 25 % of the students from deprived backgrounds.
Here too there is a great deal of awareness. So we have to push and further push the boundaries of equity and justice to all. On this score we are not doing badly.
Where we have to move forward is the quality and access to still a more deprived sections. There is going to be any time new inequalities and inequities.
As societies advance, more people want to enter the education stream there would be challenges. Now, there is an international comparison of school education patterns. The Finns did score the first rank in the secondary education and the Americans and UK children as no more scoring on such subjects like maths, sciences and engineering.
So, this side of the education scoring is going to dominate the days to come.
America is now undergoing a peculiar distortions in its national outlook.
Can one country choose to remain an exceptional country?
American exceptionalism has produced some ugly results. See what has happened to the Indo-American diplomatic ruptures?
America is undergoing a great deal of self-doubt. Its economy is in crisis.
There is joblessness that hurts a great deal of the underprivileged.
The Americans always boasted about a very high standard of living. They had everything as they wanted. The big cars, the big homes and big planes etc.
Now, there is this economic crisis, this slodown, the Americans became confused and they are behaving in this manner?
Is this the way a developed country behaves with its foreign diplomats?
What is this uncivilised conduct? This handcuffinf? This strip search? This one hundred other bad behaviours?
Surely, America’s foreign friends would carry back a bad message. Today, Japan and China, why India are all emerging from their shadows. The visiting Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, had spoken about American troops brutalities so harshly, so movingly, how children, whole families are attacked for the search for one Taliban?
The visit Egyptian foreign minister has spoken about the need for exploring alternative options to American arms!
So, many countries look to India, Japan, China and why not others too.
There is going to be a rush to Indian universities in the near future. India seems to be best bet for many countries who don’t find any more the American values, the Yankee values so attractive, so civilised.
So, Indian education, Indian IT must come forward to accelerate education access.
There are so many education start-ups in the IT-education segment.
There is a need for a great deal of innovative solutions. To make education affordable, cheap and also very competitive.
Our schools must be modernised, Internet savvy, must go for a broad-based curriculum. So too out universities. Our benchmark must be international comparisons. We have so much to catch. Education expansion, spread and also healthcare, child care etc.
Indians need not just crave for an American degree. You can still come back and contribute to the growth of the Indian brand!