Quality Education still Eludes School Students
The key
finding in a recent study that even top schools in major cities in India suffer
from the entrenched tendency to impart rote learning may have some shock value
to those who believe that private educational institutions place greater
emphasis on quality and holistic education.
However, for
those closely observing the school education scenario, it is a re-affirmation
of a bitter truth: schools in our country are, by and large, quite far from
seeing education as a process of learning with understanding, acquiring
knowledge through self-discovery and conceptualization; rather education remains
a mere transmission of information in a rigid classroom atmosphere, where the emphasis
is on memorization and the objective is to rush through a per-determined
syllabus and prepare children for examinations.
While on the
scholastic side the WIPRO-Educational Initiatives ‘Quality Education Study,’
which covered 89 schools, shows a fall in learning standards among students in
classes 4, 6, and 8 over the last five years, it also flags a disturbing
deficit of social sensitivity on the part of a sizable section of students.
Exploring
the mind of the young at a formative stage in this way, which some might
consider methodically challengeable, is a particularly valuable part of this
study. It will be a serious mistake to ignore the broad trend that indicates
misconceptions of early years being carried on to a higher age and the
possibility of these children imbibing biases they see in their family
atmosphere or social milieu.
Over the
years, there have been some serious efforts to put in place a national
curriculum framework. For instance, the Yash Pal Committee’s progressive report
of 1993, Learning without Burden, demonstrated how the curriculum load was a
burden on the child and highlighted the defects of the examination system.
Conceptual understanding is not encouraged anywhere near enough, and sport,
art, debate and cultural activity are kept at the distant periphery.
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