Revamping Education: An Alternative Perspective!

Revamping Education: An Alternative Perspective!

Education is preparation for life and work.

The biggest problem with education today is that we have no common understanding of education as to its roles and objectives in context of individual, family, community and State at large. Education and schools have become synonyms. While schools of course add to the education of a child, they do only for the part preparation for work.  Education as preparation for life does not happen and cannot happen within the school for 6 hours a day, almost 210 days a year. Since the life keeps happening every single moment, the education for life must also happen beyond 6 hours at school and religiously every day at every place. In the educational ecosystems, individual, family and community must be inter related in true sense so that the goal of individual and family merges with that of community and vice versa.

Here comes the most difficult of all questions; Whose responsibility is it to prepare the children for life?

Of course, parents to the larger part of it. Or can we say the community? Or both?

What if there is a shared understanding between parents, community and educators as to bigger purpose of education?

What if the community is involved and contributes to the meaningful interactions between parents and educators?

What if there is shared understanding between community and educators as to what concerns us today:

·        exploitation of nature, pollution,

·        greed, lust, violence, discrimination,

·        propaganda and indoctrination?

·         

What if community and parental engagement becomes a compulsory component of education at national level?

What if we plan to build the capacity of parents and the capacity of communities?

What if the State Policy mandates that all schools need to have a Family and Community Engagement Cell?

What if there is a Structured Curriculum for these Family and Community Engagement Cells whereby the parents are regularly updated about the:

·        growth and development stages of children,

·        realistic expectations matching to the context, age and stage

·        and issues which bother parents regarding children and how to resolve them?

·         

What if there is a syllabus of parenting to be covered by parents too along with the education of the children in the school?

What if there are specially trained educators to educate parents on parenting continuum and someone to hold hands?

What if we start from the scratch to rebuild a model where learning to live and learning to be is embedded along with learning to know and work?

While going through NPE draft 2019, nowhere did I find mention to such concepts in a clear cut policy framework so that they could be implemented effectively. The most important segment of stake holders; the community, from which the children come and go back to after completing education, has to be engaged through a planned and structured way. The parents, the largest segment of stake holders get no priority in terms of their real engagement in the scheme of education in the 21^st century. We talk of capacity building of teachers, why not of parents and community?

Few schools have started taking initiatives in this direction but that is a piecemeal approach. In order to bring about a paradigm shift in the people’s perception of education, to use it as a tool to realize the bigger goals along with utility goals the State has to take initiative. This is an area where a lot of research can be undertaken to establish correlation and frame policies accordingly.

I believe until we have plans to build common understanding of education, i.e. a Happy and Peaceful Co- existence, the so called Modern Education will serve only the purpose to prepare for work and not for life. What modern education has brought out is for everyone to see; commercialization of any & all aspects of life, growing inequalities and conflict with nature. Now is the time to ask questions like; are we happy people? Do we know how to live in harmony with people and nature? Is education today producing happy citizens and so on?

The goal of individual life, pure happy being added on to the education today will make all the difference to the education in the long run.

P.S.

In order to fully understand the issue, reading of the previous blog Education, The Bigger Purpose Lost!? https://growinupwithlife.blogspot.com/2020/06/educationthe-bigger-purpose-lost.htmllwill help.

The ideas are inspired by the reading of A March On Dry Grass by Mark R.Warren, Karen L Mapp.