Introduce reforms with well-qualified to do it
Education’s many new challenges! Education is a public cause!
Not a private profit! This is the School Journal’s motto!
But then there are many new challenges to education as a current ideal. There are practical issues and also theoretical and even philosophical issues. First the current issues. There are great many shortages in the education sector. There are no qualified teachers, you know in many areas like Maths and Science. In the UK they are looking for maths and science teachers. If you have the skills, you get the visas which are sought by Indians for all other jobs. So, there are education skills shortages you must know. Then there are shortages within India itself.
One top public school in India recently advertised for the headmaster’s job. The School advertised at huge costs in all Indian newspapers. Almost a whole year was wasted in the search for a qualified HM. But alas! Only two or three finally turned up! So, the Selection Board, very decoratively titled; panicked and then they wanted another search, after spending huge money on foreign recruiters!
Alas, there are not good graduates from any of the reputed colleges or elsewhere. One from such unheard places like Rohtak and some remote institutions are the ones that helped to send candidates. What is the message here? The message must be loud and clear!
India is not producing the required quantity of talents in a wide variety of fields! How can you become a first class nation with first class citizens. The corporate leaders gathered in Delhi and feted each other on the great strides they have made in economic growth. But do they think of the sectors outside their sphere of activity? We fear they don’t. So too others like politicians, social leaders or the cultural, religious and intellectual thinkers. There is a scarcity of talents in many critical areas, not to speak of education in particular.
Recently, there was this Kerala senior writer and intellectual in his own right, Paul Zacharia, the Malayalam writer and he spoke how the Indian media had destroyed the renaissance spirit in India.
May be this is an extreme view and in our view it is the moneyed class, it is the fund givers to the political parties and the new generation of politicians, selfish and unconcerned for the wider issues, it is this political and, if we can use such an expression, the capitalist class that are contributing to the rise of an authoritarian regime, authoritarian political culture, where the uneducated low caliber political worker calls the shots, the state machinery, the bureaucracy responds to the local police and the local goondas that runs the state.
Corruption is an area we avoid. Why, now, education itself has become the very corruption breeding sector, where you needn’t study, learn and work at all. You have the money, you get the degree you want! From an LKG admission to a medical degree!
Unless we, the thinking sections wake up, there is every likelihood of Indian society turning to submit itself to an authoritarian regime. No democracy. Not even the semblance of anti-corruption measures taken by the Communist leader XI. Yes, education may be a public cause. But it is has become a business and an exploitation of the helpless society! So, please take education seriously!