Some thoughts on education

Even when one is thinking of education as being no more than a teaching-learning exercise, there is a great deal about the wonderful experience that passes our understanding. One of the most common illusions that we labour under is that the most valuable and enduring part of our education is formal education that is imparted to us in schools, colleges and universities. In fact, there is a rather deeply entrenched attitude of regarding a person as totally uneducated if he or she has not been through college and university. My own experience is that I have got to know and admire a number of self-educated people who have never been through college and university, but are better educated individuals than a large number of people who have impressive academic degrees but have failed to become educated in the true sense of the term. This brings us to a proper appreciation of the word ‘educated’ which has more to do with an individual’s value system than the number of letters behind his me on his visiting card. And that is why the ability to appreciate the importance of informal or non-formal education is so important to our understanding and appreciation of what true education is all about. 

My own school education came to an end in 1950. This was followed by six years of college and university education for which no one had prepared me by word or deed. Obviously, I cannot have any valid reasons for complaint, because my contemporaries must have had similar experiences. But one major difference was that most of them had their fathers to guide them. I was rather unfortute in having lost my father at the age of five years and a month. It is not an exaggeration to say that I had no one to guide me in decisions about my education that I had to take on my own. And when I went to Baras Hindu University after doing my Intermediate in Science (I.Sc.) from Cotton College, no one accompanied me. I went to BHU all alone and took some right decisions as well as some wrong ones without the benefit of any guidance. The reason for mentioning all this is not just to indicate what could happen to someone pursuing higher education without the benefit of any guidance, but what could happen without the kind of guidance in academic matters that most young people are fortute to have from their elders. And yet, we can never really be sure that such guidance is bound to confer great benefits in a fast changing world in which we are all strangers in one sense of the word or another. In fact, things are bound to be more and more difficult in a milieu where everything changes must faster than we are prepared for. One must also contend with the fact that in most advanced countries, parents generally take responsibility for the education of their children only up to the secondary level. Thereafter, the decisions about what kind of academic courses students wish to pursue are their own. So is the responsibility of securing scholarships for their proposed courses of study. In most European countries, higher education is paid for by the government in all cases where the applicant for scholarship is deemed to be qualified for higher studies.

The entire attitude to education in India appears to have undergone a sea change—mainly for the worse—during the last 50 years or so. There has been such a massive increase in the number of students at all levels of study that the consequent dilution of the available resources has become an inescapable fact of life. No wonder, we have  maged to reduce much of our endeavours relating to education to meaningless rituals where unreliable examitions and a piece of paper called a degree or a diploma or a certificate is all that one has to show as proof of having gone through college and university. The kind of changes that true education brings about in the persolity and attitudes of an educated individual are often totally missing. One expects an educated person to be more ratiol, more honest, more logical (rather than emotiol) about one’s approach to issues, more considerate of other people’s rights and aspirations, more careful about keeping one’s word and one’s commitments about time and certainly more compassiote in one’s approach to problems and issues. This is by no means a comprehensive assessment of what true education does to an individual, but the aforesaid does delineate some of the important behavioural changes that one expects true education to bring about in an individual. Unfortutely, much of this does not happen in the process of education that we have in India today. And this is true of even many expensive schools that charge very substantial tuition fees every month. Even if we confine our assessment of present-day education in India to just the teaching-learning equation, there is much that is amiss even in such a restricted assessment. As I said on an earlier occasion, in my school days in the 1940s, the teacher had a predomint role in the teaching-learning equation. In other words, the teacher did much more than the learner was expected to do. Today, many teachers are content to set projects for their students. Quite often, students have to spend long hours completing a project with little help from the teacher. Even in school, many teachers are content to read out from the textbook with practically no explations being offered. I am also aware of teachers who are angry with students who ask inconvenient but very pertinent questions on science, mathematics, history, geography or language. This is often an indication of the teacher not being well prepared for what he/she is required to teach. This never happened in the Assamese-medium government school that I attended. Our teachers were always very well prepared and dedicated to both their subjects and their students. Since testing is so closely related to the teaching-learning process, the most important rule about testing that teachers must always keep in mind is that one can test only what has been taught. And since mere reading aloud from the textbook to students does not constitute teaching per se (this is something students can do on their own), there are occasions when a teacher forfeits the right to test a part of the syllabus that should have been taught but was only read out to the students but not actually taught. How many teachers of our very expensive private schools are prepared to accept such aberrations with the grace and humility of truly educated persons? 

However, there are other hurdles to a smooth and efficient execution of the teaching-learning exercise that neither teachers nor students are responsible for. These hurdles are created by administrators who are directly or indirectly responsible for the training and recruitment of teachers. We now have a case of a school having no teacher for Mathematics for a whole year. We are aware of how our administrators have failed us in matters like planning for the requirements of power, water and healthcare of a rapidly growing population. It is an accepted fact that the population of Assam has grown at a faster rate than the tiol average. We have seen how the failure to plan for the needs of power, water and healthcare has affected the people of the State. Something similar has happened even in respect of planning for education in the State. We cannot have education without teachers, and qualified teachers cannot be had for the asking. We have to have planners keeping a tab on how many teachers are required for a rapidly growing population. Quite obviously, our planners spared no thought for our tomorrows. They ignored their responsibilities about planning for competent teachers (like the ones they themselves had) for the coming generations, just as they ignored their responsibilities in respect of the need for power, water and healthcare. We have a case of the bureaucrats of Assam failing the people completely in virtually all facets of development. The majority of them are being seen as no more than time servers far more keen on deputations to New Delhi than on serving the people of the State. When their performance is properly assessed, they will be judged by the people as being far more irresponsible than our politicians. Education being low down on their list of priorities, the State can expect nothing from our bureaucrats in respect of education. The people of Assam must wake up to two urgent requirements for the State: of ensuring that true education gets the importance it deserves and that our bureaucrats wake up to their responsibilities to the State (especially in respect of education) that have long been sadly neglected.