Education entails gardening of a human being to make his life supportable with the attaining of proficiency and dexterity. It is the basic human necessity of human life in the present changing world and as a result, everyone is ardent to learn and educate himself, equip oneself with the knowledge to face the challenges of life. Everybody has now realized that only through the right type of education, distinctive and competent individuals and all-inclusive society can be created. To achieve better goals and better results, an idyllic system of education is needed to ensure an objective and all-encompassing training of mind, body and soul of our younger generation.
Nowadays, many nations of the world are inter-reliant. A happening in one part of the world has its natural and inescapable bearing in the other areas of the globe. This is not only true of natural catastrophes like spates, earthquakes, wars, famines and floods but also of educational networks. In other words, the edifying of educational system of one country positively or negatively influences the educational institutions and systems of others. It was the great Antoine Julian de Paris, the “father of comparative education” who started the study of equating the diverse educational systems of the world so that an understanding could be reached about the advances, changes, trends and glitches in the educational systems of various countries of the world. Could we compare our system of education with the systems of others and make a ensemble case for argument?
Right now, there has been a general feeling among the educationists, thinkers and leaders that we have a droopy system of education. This is a hard fact that the present predicament in our education is because of social growth and as a matter of fact, more and more people have way into the modern techniques of attaining knowledge and education. The increase in population and the simultaneous awareness among the masses has created an ever – widening gap between the opportunities and the seekers of learning. Perceptibly, there is a need fora far more broad development in the opportunities of education and training facilities, to ensure a proper balance. It is very unfeeling that more value is being attributed to quantity rather than to the quality. There has been a burgeon growth of institutions in the country and Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir to gratify the growing population of the aspiring youth but there has been also incredible decline in the excellence of education because less attention is given to career – oriented education. We need to pick up the idea or aptitude of a student towards his or her field of interest and guide in the same line and consequently, we will be able to produce the best bureaucrats, politicians, doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, scientists, and sportsmen. But here in our land, such a policy and planning of education is missing in the school education as well as in the higher education system. A student here is not provided proper counselling to choose his area of specialization. He wants some particular area of study to pursue but his teachers and parents propel upon him something else. If a contender of education desires to hunt a particular profession in his life, it is our duty to steer him or her properly towards that goal. But our institutions vacillate on this front and therefore, the confusing state of affairs in our institutions has not enabled us to produce the best teachers, doctors, engineers, civil servants and scientist. Or we can put across the hard fact that excepting a few or less, we have not been able to produce the distinctive and balanced personalities in our society. Weneed to mull over the fact that we need skilled workmen who are beneficial and profiting for the society which of course will increase our economical standards also.
“Our educational system requires comprehensive reform—spanning goals, curriculum, and regulations—to meet modern international standards. Broadening our perspective through exposure to global practices will help deliver the objective, career-oriented education our future generations need.”
Our educational standard may not be productive due to defective prospectus, syllabi and the method of examinations. All of these do not costume to the need of the student as well as to the society. There is a wide-ranging propensity with the school authorities to prescribe more and more books for various types of study to the young students. Everyone notes negatively on the sight of young school boys and girls carrying hulking load of books on their backs. We can not imagine advancing the process of gaining knowledge by prescribing lots of books for study with no time for these growing children. The process of learning should be an enjoyable occurrence, not an atrocious phenomenon which the students of today are strained to endure. Moreover, our policy on education only believes that students attend classes regularly, more and more children get admitted and there are less drop-out. In order to ensure regular attendance, several measures have been introduced, such as the mid-day meals and less failures up to class Eight. Again the stress is on the quantity and not on the quality. We have not been able to equip our schools and colleges fully in every field needed even in the 21st century and it can be seen that many schools in the Union Territory do not have proper accommodation and staff. The buildings of the schools are not well maintained and there are no facilities for human needs. There is no outside exposure of trainings to teaching faculty who could gain experience and transmit it the children of new era. So many schemes have been introduced and immense funds are being received from the centre and if these would be suitably utilized to improve infrastructure and other basic facilities of Institutions, the results would be better.
There is no certification that obtaining school or higher education is going to place one properly in today’s world of competition. Good grades, which by today’s standard is a signal for an educated individual, to get a good job but alone, good grades are completely in iquitous indication of how a person will perform under the pressure of the real world. Instead of looking at a person’s grades during an employment interview and deciding whether that person is eligible for a particular position, it ought to be examined whether the person is capable of taking any challenge. In order to find the real talent of a person, he may be allowed to know his position in the workplace. It is necessary that teachers are buoyant to challenge students to reach to their full potential, rather than least ability. Unfortunately, we believe in purging and tracking of all students to challenge, rather than just those who are gifted.
Our educational system is inadequate in meeting the standards whereas in other parts of the world, system of education has reached to advancement and henceforth, a theme for us to dwell. Our education system needs to develop a standard for goals, curriculum, or regulations and set its own targets and devour its own requirements. It is essential to broaden our outlook by exposure to new systems of education and provide objective and career- oriented education to our future generation.
(The author is a noted academic legend in Jammu & Kashmir. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
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