Just another brick in the wall....

This post is sort of in continuation to the last one, albeit on a very different topic. Edward Luce, author of IN SPITE OF THE GODS (about the rise of India) argues that India has two distinct growth rates due to its skewed education outlook. The budget for higher education is equal to or more than the budget for primary education. So say many others, chiding our abysmal literacy rates. Has anyone stopped to think whether education is actually upto any standard for the future.

I will quote two sources here: Alvin Toffler & Sir Ken Robinson, the first being a futurist & the second being an educationist.

Toffler discusses the idea behind the current education system. Before middle ages, most professions were either hereditary or learnt through an existing practitioner. There wasn't a formal education system. With the advent of mechanization & industrialization, the need for people involved in rote tasks increased. The requirement was for hands & not the brain, the skill being largely mechanical. Those who could apply their brains shrewdly climbed the industrial hierarchy, while others languished on factory floors. Hence an education system was created to cater to the industrial needs: kids were taught importance of time & punctuality, given rote tasks for improvisation& the like. However, the world is changing rapidly, and we are back to multi-tasking since each person is a walking organization now. SoHos are changing the way we work, & in spite of having a great amount of automation, we are required to have varied skill sets for changing demands. 

Sir Ken takes the argument further by saying that the industrial school system was meant to prohibit creating in order to amplify repetitive skills. Hence the school system concentrates on developing the brain & hands while the lower half of the body is left out. He emphasizes the importance of multi-tasking to creativity & varied knowledge to problem solving. The more we concentrate our knowledge & narrow our spectrum, the more unaware we are of the impacts in other fields. As a result, our solutions are half-baked or require large amounts of co-operative activity, which is quite time consuming. 

The idea behind education should be to nurture one's creativity, encourage problem solving & out-of-the-box thinking, instead of being given repetitive no-brainers. So the question we, as Indians, should be asking ourselves is not how much to give to whom, but whether to give anything to these ruins of the past? They have no future to nurture us or our next progeny; they are OBSOLETE.....

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