Education & System of Education

Nowadays everyone is talking about the biggest bollywood blockbuster movie of this season. Its a basically satire on our education system. Some people relate it with the higher education system in India with IITs at the summit.

Purpose of Education

Before education one is ignorant, after the education one is supposed to be wise, responsible,  high self-esteem and mature. If you have used the word education thinking its is same as literacy, then the above statement will be no more valid. Before literacy one is an ignorant, after that one is a literate ignorant who cant think beyond money.

If we look into the education system, its almost near perfect. But the purpose of this system is not being solved because it is unknown to all, teachers parents and students alike. Subjects are mere chapters to be mugged up to crack the exams just to show the superiority over other students. And everyone feels happy and proud about it. 

What I can't understand is that is the Education system is a failure or are the students and parents at fault for not making the use of the system in a proper manner?

 Pre-Schools/Schools:

• To learn basic knowledge about language, scinece and culture
  
• To becomes responsible citizen to the Nation and to the World at Large.
• To become a good human being and serve the soceity to the best of his/her abilities.
• To respect and love others and your environment and live in Harmony.

Colleges:

• To use the knowledge gained in a innovative and productive way so as to alleviate all or at least most of the problems that mankind is facing.

Professional Institutes/Research Institute:

• To be innovative, create new knowledge...have new vision and mission which will enhance the quality of Life of Mankind in general.
• To search and make an attempt to know more about the Universe at large, who we are ..our latent potentials..and what are our objective..or purpose in Life. Using Science to the extent possible.....No Religion of any kind.. Spiritualism devoid of any Religion is OK.

Some Facts:

Even after the 2008 addition of numerous IITs, we still have only 15,500 seats for undergrad studies in IITs. Compare that with just one state in South India, AP. AP has nearly 600 private engineering colleges today. I had done some back of envelope calculations sometimes back adding up private engineering seats of KA, AP, TN and MH, the four top states producing engineering graduates in India. It was a whopping 600,000 undergrad Engineering seats just from these four states. If you add up other states, like TN, I am fairly certain that India has a million engineering undergrad seats today. Majority of these are producing substandard graduates who are not readily 'employable'. I know the pain as I have done plenty of interviews over the years.

Elitism is good, it sets standards and it allows others to emulate.

India still has a long way to go to even get 100 colleges at world class level. Everything that counts can not be counted and reflected in the reports. IITs are the only brand presentable and recognised outside India and envied most back home. IT boom happened in India because of these so-called unpatriotic IITians. At present whatever little respect India has in the western world is mainly due to its contributions and achievements in the fields related to IT sector. We have to improve the infrastructure, including the quality of faculties and even that of Heads and Vice-Chancellors. Most of the money being spent for establishing new Institutions should actually go to existing Institutions to improve the working conditions and quality of the teachers and Scientists. Other wise, the country would drag on in a similar way as it did on the past boasting about numbers. 

I am happy to know that atleast some portion of my Tax money is being utilised to nurture such intellectuals otherwise that would also have been utilised to fund some politicians' foreign account . And I believe most of the Tax-payers are ready to get their funds utilised the former way. I must not forget to tell that most of the IITans and IIMites are not so called book-warmish otherwise they would not have survived the heat (Please Note : Most of the great business leaders are from IIT and IIM which cannot be denied).

Read more on higher education:
http://www.deeshaa.org/2007/04/30/the-indian-education-system-part-1/
Read all the 10 parts
http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/07/04/policy-brief-on-higher-education-in-india/
http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/06/09/mr-kapil-sibal-abolish-the-human-resources-development-ministry/
http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/06/05/education-and-corruption/
http://www.deeshaa.org/2009/05/31/lynching-is-too-good-for-them/