Do we really need education reforms?

Rajendra — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:16:10 +0000

The recent Aamir Khan movie 3 Idiots, was said to have created new awareness about the mental pressure we are putting on our students. Which sometimes make them to commit even suicide. The movie advocates that we should reform our education system to give more independence to students, so that they can try reaching new horizons. But is our education system really that bad? OR the issues has something to do with us (the parents) also.

When we hear the news of suicides by students – when they fear failure in exams – then it is not the exam results, but the parents who are responsible for that. The parents put a lot of pressure on their kids that if you do not perform then you will be no one; and this pressure starts from pre-nursery classes.

Why this pressure is there? Because everyone of us wants to see our kids in either IIMs, IITs or Medical Colleges. It is us who do not accept if our child says that he wants to learn music OR play football, cricket or want to do his own business.

The education system may need some reforms with time, but it’s responsibility in student suicides is much less compared to parents expectations.

When blaming our educational institutions we should not forgot that it is this system, which has produced world’s largest number of Doctors, Engineers and Computer professionals.

But then we say that why we do not have inventors or great entrepreneurs. That is because we are too young country for that. We have just got independence 60 years back and we are still finding it hard to put a good system in place [thanks to our vision less leadership].

New inventions come to mind when we have time to think besides our daily needs. The life of an Indian middle class person exhausts in working hard to earn enough money for their survival. When do they get chance to think about innovation? Because if they do then they will have nothing to eat in the evening.

The largest number of our population are farmers and you must have heard news of their suicides every other day.

And we are comparing ourselves with world’s most developed and rich nations. Who have enough money and hence time to try for new innovations and they do not do suicide if that experiment goes bad. They just start another one.

We can not even dream of earning million dollars in our whole life and they spend millions of dollars to develop an idea without worrying whether it will work or not.

This is the difference which prevents us to think out of the box. This is why we tend to follow set paths which gives us at least some confidence that we will be able to earn a good regular income if we do this.

So the time will come when we will also have great innovations and ideas registered with Indian names, but we have to wait for that. We have to wait for right time to come. As they popularly say – “Rome was not built in a day.”

Parents evaluation on child nursery admission

Parents evaluation on child nursery admission

Rajendra — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:05:30 +0000

The private schools in India, and mostly in metro cities are increasingly making parents qualification a criterion for child admission in nursery classes. Today I came to know that some of then also organize a debate /group discussion between parents to evaluate their skills. Like they are going to teach the parents not their kids.

While I strongly condemn such practices, the government should take strongest actions against these schools, who have made nursery admission a joke. I do not know what they are trying to prove with all this. How a parent is going to prove that his son is the best candidate for the admission?? And for what?? A little kid who has just achieved merely 4 years of age. If a parent has studied in convent then only his child will be admitted and a person who studied in a government school due to any reason – can not get admission for his child in public school – no matter if he is living just beside the school and ready to sign the hefty checks that they(school) will take anyway.

This is the most shameful act on behalf of schools and should be stopped immediately. There should be absolutely no criteria for Nursery admission. It should be on first come first served basis – or based on the distance a child lives.

The fee is already so high that if a person is capable of paying Rs.3000 to 5000 per month then he/she must have good education or some other specialized skills. Let it be anything. Anyway they are already running school like businesses.

After so much hype in media, so much instructions by government and honorable supreme court; these businesses/shops are not listening. I hope that some day we will have a strong government which will force these so called schools to shut their businesses and do some other more profitable business.

Let those people run the school, who care for child education. Who themselves are capable of teaching honesty, hard work and values to our next generation and not depend on the parents education and living standards.