Education system in India

Our higher education system is widespread, and while the quality of it is very mixed, there are still a lot of people getting reasonable higher education.

In some fields, especially in technical education, the quality of what is offered is indeed fairly high. Against these "positives" stand the huge neglect of primary education and also secondary education, and of course - as already mentioned - the highly variable
quality of university education (some of it not worthy of that name).

The pitfalls of illiteracy include functional handicap, intellectual deprivation, and social disadvantage. When large groups are systematically neglected, like girls, especially from economic and social underdog families, the social penalties are gigantic.

The main causes of our uneven and highly unequal educational system are not technological underdevelopment but political and social neglect.

It is, of course, important for those who are masters of contemporary technology to take deep interest in removing the educational neglects that plague the country, but they have to look for the diverse ways and means of helping, rather than sticking only to their identities as "high technologists"!

Any sector that become as rapidly - and as convincingly - prosperous owes something to the rest of the society as well, but that is not the same thing as looking only to technology to solve all problems.

Technology can certainly help the spreading of education, for example in making the schooling of math easier and faster, and even in monitoring the attendance and accountability of teachers and of school officials , or in making communication of elementary math easier, but it is not the lack of a
"technological magic bullet" that is holding everything up.

The main "step" to take is to get on with it! The government has to speed things up. However, the government is not the only agency involved. Not only more money is needed in schooling - not just through raising salaries of teachers and officials - but also better organization of teaching and better practices (not minimal schooling with maximal private tuition!).

For this we need cooperation between many agencies: governments (at different levels), teachers' unions, parent-teacher committees, civil society in general.

We have gone into some of these issues in a few small reports of the Pratichi Trust - a small Trust that I was privileged to set up in 1999 with the help of my Nobel money, one in India and one in Bangladesh.

The Indian Trust is particularly involved in elementary schooling and elementary health care (the Bangladesh Pratichi Trust has tended to concentrate especially on gender equity, including the training of young women journalists from rural background).

Aside from policy revisions we have suggested, the Indian Trust organizes regular parent-teacher meetings at the state level (so far only in West Bengal though - we are still a small Trust), and we have also started arranging collaborative meetings with the teachers' unions to get their help in making the schools more effective and with greater accountability. The government does, of course, have a huge part to play, but other people and other organizations also have responsibility.

 

All of us believe education system in India is ailing and need serious consideration. What are we doing: blaming government, politicians, some x or some y? What is our contribution? Instead of blaming so and so, we need to work for up gradation of our nation's education.

I am not saying you can bring a drastic change but yes you can make difference in lives of few underprivileged.

Also I don't ask you to scarify your whole life for it. You have your own life and your own problems but I think us all can take at least a few hours a week for this cause instead lazing around.

We all should work for our nation. If we unite and work I am sure we will be ahead of every nation.

So friends let work and make India the future world leader.