By Tinky Ningombam
The last time I mentioned the current form of school education in my piece, I must have stirred a couple of strings here and there. Well, you get to know. Either when your friends give a nod when you walk into a room or through the increasing amount of pokes you get on Facebook. Social media is something that has changed our lives immensely, especially the kids. When I was growing up, I never thought that I would become a PR professional. It took me years to tell my folks what I do. To complicate the matter, now I manage Social Media and Digital PR. My mother thinks I lie to her when I am on Facebook and working. The last resort is of making a PowerPoint presentation to her the next time round to explain it.
But coming back to the point, I believe I raised an important issue about school kids not getting the right sort of education, I did some research of my own and found some stark changes in the ways of how other places have started looking into schooling kids. Lack of infrastructure, poor funding, education policies aside, we still have to look at how we actually think of school education.
It is only when we come out to a bigger world, as adults that we realize the importance of the school.
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next. “ Abraham Lincoln
The need for extracurricular activities
What do you look at when you decide a school for your kid? Fees? Teachers? Alumni ? Grade records?
With the new CCE system, the students are supposed to be assessed on co-scholastic areas like arts, sports, music, etc. That is the only good part of the system as we already know what a 80:20 ratio on external assessment and internal assessment has been interpreted as. I wonder how many schools have actually introduced new curriculums for these assessments or if the grades are tampered. If not so, how good is the inspection process.
I believe a lot of young students cannot pursue their interests or hobbies as we say or don’t know their full creative ability because they do not have the means to understand their creativity. Our miniscule science exhibitions, dance competitions and singing competitions aside, we do not even have an idea of how talented our young kids are or if they can be trained. Except for boys who might try playing sports or learning to play the guitar on the streets or bmxing in bumpy roads, our schools fail miserably in providing a resourceful outlet for creative minds.
But why did we not emphasize on extra-curricular activities when we were in our high schools? This is a constant question that I ask everyone. When we were in school, we had a PE class which was more like a slow form of aerobics that we did with our leather shoes and skirts, we had an SUPW class where we learnt how to stitch. There was no space for us to create, invent something or formulate something new. How will we improve as a generation where everyone is run-off-the-mill? Why did not we have an environment club that volunteered to educate other people? Why did not we have “Know your culture” class, for the lack of a better name? All we had was a basket ball, a TT table and maybe an Arts class where kids drew sceneries.
Why good teachers are important
Teaching is an art and a great teacher is one that helps the kid develop an open mind. Teachers are the only other people who get to spend time with your kids irrespective whether they are in school or the numerous coaching classes. And because they are always considered by kids as knowledgeable and experienced, they become role models.
A lot of the good things that I learnt in life was because of my teachers. From some who hardly even spoke to me. I used to admire the way they used to speak in English, how they would know everything, how they would teach me how to express myself. A lot of times, teachers are under-rated. They work in horrible payscales, they have to shuffle through back-to-back classes and we still expect them to understand and handle the naughtiest of kids. But I absolutely hate that fact that most teachers believe in corporal punishment thinking that terror can change a naughty kid. When I was young, I met some terrifying teachers; they used to carry a long cane and I got hit on the hand every once in a while. The hurt and humiliation kind of remained ingrained in me for a long time and then I accepted it as normal. When we did role playing for a teacher, we used to carry around a stick and walk around and pick on more meek kids, kids who have been humiliated before by teachers for being “slow”. So we started being bullies or again being bullied by kids better than us. There are a lot of things that we teach or learn without us knowing it consiously. And teachers should realize that they have a bigger role to play once they don the hat of a guru.
More choices means more learning
Students have the largest role to play when it comes to being receptive. But they need to be motivated to be inquisitive and open minded. The new generation kids have internet access at the age of 10, they play online games and they start reading e-books. While all this is happening on the one hand, we still follow primitive teaching methods and curriculum.
Today, we live in a world of specializations and that is what most of the new education hot spots are recognizing. Since a long time ago, in the US especially, they give various classes or courses for different subjects. For instance, if History, English, Math and Science are made compulsory, they would be divided into courses I,II, III etc. as per the difficulty levels so that your kids can opt for classes according to their liking of their specific subject. I understand this is a long step further to our current system of education where we are even struggling to get right teachers or the right text books in some cases. But we have to also understand that we need to know what every kid can understand as per their requirements rather than ridiculing them or harassing them for getting low marks in something that they might probably never need to learn. I hated algebra, i can say this now, i had to give an exam on it and was judged on it and still will be for the rest of my life. There are a lot of things that we memorize and give exams for , things that i never have had use of till date. But while we are creating doctors and engineers, what are we training the rest of the kids for? I call them the collateral damage, the variables. Nondescript.
Now I may get naysayers who can say that we cannot customize curriculum according to every kid. But if we can introduce a new curriculum for Meetei Script which we have wonderfully done, we can build curriculums that is inclusive of Manipur History, Politics, Moral Education, Indigenous Arts, New Technology and what not? If they cannot be graded then introduce them through youth clubs, school clubs, extra-scholastic , wherever that the students understand the world around them and not be dictated with something that a genius can score maximum marks in. Hey I might score a 100 % in online gaming, I might still score 0 in computer programming.
Knowledge comes from various avenues
The education system is a booming industry for a developing country like India. And with increasing population and less government jobs, we see professional courses on a rise as well. Education like anything in the world is business. The more simplified our careers were back in the day, the more simple was the education. Our life in the world needed researchers who have better IQ to become think-thanks, engineers to build , doctors to treat, soldiers to fight, politicians to rule, businessmen to trade, farmers to produce food, craftsmen to create etc.
But now the world has advanced and we are expanding in the realm of knowledge, be it R&D, production, human resource or technology. We have started to create new age services such as customer care, image consulting, asset management, career consulting etc. We have to be aware of the enormous possibilities of the new world business models and enterprise. If we need to create interesting jobs, we need to first create the foundations for education. Why wait till you are 40 to teach someone who can learn the same when they are 18?
