The Need to Change Indian Education

THE NEED TO CHANGE INDIAN EDUCATION

Education is perhaps the most important factor in a country’s development. By education,I do not mean remembering all the facts of a book or knowing all the mathematical formulas and equations. By education,I mean the overall skill-set development of a student, including learning about the world with basic knowledge about most of the important topics, which includes their course-based book,worldaffairs, politics,sports, climate change, etc.

In India,from the time we enter the world of our schooling system till perhaps class 10th(11th and 12th is more centred towards their streams),we are at max given one period for Group Discussions and General Knowledge per week.That too in most of the cases,the GK period being a fluke as we just being given a list of chapters and questions and are being told to remember them by heart not knowing the context behind the facts.

Lemme explain this with an example:

For a student in class 5⁄6 he/she will get this kind of questions after the 2024 US Presidential Elections:

Who is going to be the Vice President of the United States after the 2024 Presidential Elections?

Answer:JD Vance

We would be told to learn this question without being told anything about the election in the US.Most of the students would not know how the elections are conducted there and which leader belongs to which party but would just write an answer in the exam which would fetch him/her marks but would not test his/her knowledge.

Another example of a question in my school in class 8:

Which city of India is called the Manchester of India?

(a) Jamshedpur (b) Ahmedabad (c) Nagpur (d) Udaipur

We were given a fact and were told to learn that the answer is Ahmedabad.We were not at all told about the reason which is textile industries.This basic context must be given to almost everyone but just because of our rigid pattern, we were not given any idea about the background.

Not just the fact that the Indian Education System takes General Studies for granted but also we are told to write the exact answers from our textbook for a subject like Political Science where we have to criticise and praise the qualities and loopholes of the system.

I myself being a student of class 9 would like to present one of my experiences of this:

Question-Write two demerits of electoral competition.(2 marks)

What I wrote-

Point 1-Exactly from NCERT(1 mark given)

Point 2-Overspending on Elections:During the 2019 General Elections,the spending limit per constituency was 54-70 Lakhs.However by a report from Association of Democratic Reforms,almost every major political party spent above the limit.This gives bigger parties an upper hand over smaller parties and independents.

Logically this point is correct with a reliable source mentioned as the basis of the data making it factually correct as well.When I asked the teacher why I was not given any marks for the 2nd point,I was given the logic that since the point was not present in the NCERT hence you will only get marks for the first point.He said,”You will not get marks in boards if you write such answers in boards.”So what I can conclude from this statement is that the Education System and its marking scheme is too rigid and the system is fundamentally wrong.Would that be a correct conclusion to make? As a student who is interested in General Knowledge, what I think is that we need to change the thought process in schools by not only just integrating General Topics as an important aspect of education but also by accepting creative answers of students especially when they are factually correct.Not giving then marks for their right answers,just demoralises them.