By Amar Yumnam
Education is the only sure means to escape from poverty for any individual. Education is the only means for a society to embark on a sustainable advancement path. Education is the only means for a society to score a comparative advantage over other competing societies. It is a sector in which no performance can be cheated. It is a sector in which none can cheat. It is a sector in which memorization cannot make a long term difference and leave the rest to luck. It is a sector in which if we leave everything to luck and leave the rest to luck and where lucky ones score, the future can be only gloom. It is unfear to comment on one’s own teachers. But it also remains the fact that as we proceed in our careers we do feel the lasting differential impact of the many teachers who were caretakers for our mental progression. In this feeling we also start appreciating the differential role our teachers had played in constructing what we are today twenty/thirty/forty years down the line. In this process, we feel perennially grateful and indebted to the teachers whose lessons become relevant and continually powerful with the progress of time. In the same process, we also feel that some teachers did not deliver what they were supposed to. History is cruel and very impartial in this assessment. I and many of my friends still pay the price of a very important teacher of mathematics who taught us the subject in a very mechanical way of calculations. I and many of my friends are still very grateful to another teacher of mathematics in our terminal classes towards matriculation whose teaching of the subject in a very logical way have served us over the years ever more meaningfully.
I have been brought back to this nostalgic understanding of my school days by some recent display of unfolding events in our land. In the absence of the modern development process, education is the only route which can ensure the future of our children. But it is exactly in this place that education happens to be the sector with the least application of mind. First, stories are already abound of the government appointing teachers for villages and schools where there are no school buildings and no schools in existence. In such cases, the villagers suggest the newly appointed teachers on their first visits to the places of appointment to reappear only when the information of the schools coming into existence reach them. In the face of such appointments and such suggestions, there is no instance of the new teachers endeavouring to create an atmosphere of a teaching and learning process in an innovative way. Secondly, there are many instances of teachers teaching their subjects in the vastly altered curriculum framework of the Central Board of Secondary Education through the same old mechanical way of delivery. These events establish that the so-called B.Ed. degree make very little difference to the effective delivery of the subjects one teaches. Further, in the vastly altered and fast changing world the so-called experience in teaching makes no difference.
While these weaknesses at the foundational level of education provision compromises the very future of our society, the even murkier fact is that these are features of our college and terminal education as well.
Education is never a static intervention to the development of a society. It should forever evolve, understand the needs of the society and lead it to further forward continuously. This is exactly where our education has failed. In the schools, the evolving global approach and scenario is one of developing and nurturing the logical capability of a child, and the old approach of mechanical understanding is long gone. This global approach is as well being adopted increasingly in this country as well. But in Manipur the competition is still founded on the old mechanical approach and the new approach has not sunk in the minds of the school education providers of the land. This is creating an as yet unappreciated gap between the capability of our otherwise brilliant children and the brilliant children of other competing regions around the world.
These weaknesses in the school level education continue in our college and terminal education portfolios as well. The preparedness of our school students to meaningfully absorb a truly modern college education is dubious. The readiness, orientation and capability of our college teachers to deliver a kind of education to our young generation in the colleges to prepare them to meaningfully understand a subject and appreciate them to coherently apply to our social problems are best not to talk about. These flaws get extended in our terminal education as well. The unpreparedness of the students is coupled by the lack of orientation and unpreparedness of the teachers in this level as well.
The upshot of my argument is that Manipur today needs a new debate and a new articulation on what we need, we want and our commitment to education individually and collectively. We have to reevaluate our approach and model of prevailing education scenario in the land. This evaluation has to cover from primary to the terminal level. This necessity is immediate and critical to the future of our society. We have to take a stand with no further delay of time and involvement for the uncertainly involved touches the future of every child and the preparedness of our society to compete with the rest of the world. Our action today would decide if we are a people who would like to survive with the head held high or otherwise.