It is a fact that education has not been in focus in political discourse.
I’m 21, and I have yet to see an election cycle where education is the main political party agenda. This is true of all political parties, possibly except for Aam Admi Party in Delhi. I am sure we’ve come a long way since independence, but I think just mere improvements is not enough. We need a major revolution in education.
I firmly believe that the 21st century will be India’s, but we need to invest in our youth, especially in education, for that to happen. Manish does a great job of outlining the problems in the current way education is being handled around the country and offers some objective solutions through the Delhi-model.
Just teaching children to read and write and score marks in exams is not enough. We need to ask what kind of education, what do we want to educate children, what end, etc. The current education system has worked out very well for about 5% of people, but we should remember that we are a country of a billion people. 95% of children not getting world-class education means millions of visionaries being left out of our education system.
Numerous laws have been made, arms have been deployed, and technology has been applied to end terrorism, but we never ask if education can be used to stop it?
“Not living in the present is the biggest reason for our worries and failures.” This is so true. The current education system is to blame for this. It focuses excessively on the competition with peers. Someone will always be better than you, that’s a fact. Whatever you can do well, they can do that three times better.
So, the better way would be to teach kids to look at their past selves and think about how far they’ve come. This would enable them to be better human beings, and in turn, reduce the cut-throat competition that exists in the current model. I won’t elaborate on the proposed and tried solutions to many of the problems. You should read the book. You should be able to read it in about three hours, tops.
There are two aims of education: making people learn the ability to live happily and help others live happily.
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