Sa Vidya Ya Vimuktaye

“Sa vidya ya vimuktaye” (that which liberates us is education)

Education is not the knowledge of the world but the realization of the self. It is the freedom from the clutches of ignorance. It is that which illuminates the path of righteousness and rationality for us. It is said that education is a superior sentinel of one’s liberty than a standing army itself.  The ancient Indian system classifies a pupil as ‘dvija’ after his attainment of education. It implies ‘twice born’, as if in a new existence. That, is the strength of the education.

India has been the land of knowledge and wisdom from times immemorial. Our ancient scriptures have served as the repositories of our spiritual, philosophical, scientific, artistic and literary heritage. Ancient India saw the flourishing of education at Nalanda, Takshila, Ujjain, & Vikramshila Universities where various subjects like Art, Philosophy, Literature, Buddhism, Hinduism, Economics & Politics, Law, Medicine etc. were taught. The most eminent fact that surfaces is, that even women were regarded as capable and eligible to taste the fruit of education. In fact few of us are aware of the fact that many of the hymns in rig veda have been composed by some female sages.

In our life, our past mostly assumes the role of our shadow. But looking at the present educational scenario, we seem too distant from our past. It is as if, the shadow has silently left us in the hullabaloo of ignorance. The figures speak a sad story for the land of knowledge and wisdom.

Well, lets start from primary education. What prevents universalization of primary education is the low enrolment rate. Though, after the launch of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, we have improved the figures to 95%. Still, we have some 8million children who are not yet enrolled. But ensuring enrolment doesn’t complete the story. It certainly gets extended to the retention, which speaks a grim reality in the terms of high dropout rate.

Even after having achieved these two milestones, the next big task before us would be tackling the problem of teacher absenteeism and the quality of instruction imparted. The vacancies should urgently be filled up in terms of an acceptable student-teacher ratio and at the same time, the quality of education should never be compromised for quality. Also, appropriate training should be imparted to the teachers to help them realize the needs of the students because the aim of the education should be to make the students competent enough to face the challenges and to be able to afford a decent quality of life. Preferably, each school should have the teachers from the same region or community as that of the students enrolled so that they can empathize with their problems better.

Mid day meal program, which is the most important incentive for poor children to come to school, should be made free from pilferages and poor quality of food. These situations can be better monitored by regular auditing by PTAs, local populace etc. It is to be noted that while for the children of well-off families, it is the secondary incentives like praises, recognition for hard work and prizes that motivate the most, it is just the other way round for the poor. They value material incentives of immediate utility like food, cash etc. much more than their privileged counterparts. Therefore, any setback on that count in terms of irregular meal supply, poor quality food; acts as a major deterrent in keeping them motivated enough to attend the schools. Moreover, parents of such children should be awarded some financial incentive so that they may make up for the loss suffered for not having sent their children to work.

It is seen that while at the primary level, gender disparities may not be huge in terms of school performance; but the disparities between urban and rural children are quite enormous. There is a high need to focus on education in rural areas through proximity of schools to villages (which is being addressed through Education Guarantee Scheme of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan), adequate toilet facilities especially for girls, library and playground/ sports facilities. I recently went through a novel scheme implemented by a Bangalore based company Selco wherein children were given a solar LED lamp along with a battery. They can charge these batteries in the centralized solar charging system at their schools, so that they can use solar lamps back at home to study in the evening and night without any disturbance. Such, initiatives give a good boost to the morale of the students.

Also, it is seen that children from disadvantaged background suffer from learning and concentration problems owing to the restricted exposure to the diverse stimuli in the growing stages. On an advanced level, we can introduce a system of programmed learning for these children as it helps them attain self pacing and gives them graded exposure to education, in accordance with their own capabilities and flaws.

Next realm is that of secondary education. Secondary education serves as a bridge to prepare students to take the challenge of getting into the realm of higher education. It is in these growing years, that the paramount focus should be on building the spirit of inquisitiveness, infusing the acumen of challenging the existing notions and making them dream big.

Our current education system focuses more on private tuitions, mugging up of the subject matter without an in depth understanding and subsequent coaching to compete for admission to the elite educational institutions. Such a practice hampers the development of acumen for research and development and makes a person just good enough to handle the routine jobs only. Also, there has been a lot of focus on the marks a student obtains rather than getting a comprehensive understanding of the subject. True, children of today are burdened under the crumbling weight of books to emerge victorious in the competitive exams and hence, are not to be blamed for the faulty objective of their quest for knowledge.

One of the ways to tackle the menace is the popularization of non-conventional courses of higher education and awareness about the alternate career options (read: doctors and engineers are not the only career options to attain societal respect and decent living). There is a need to develop the mindset of investing one’s efforts in the field where one’s acumen lies. For that, we need proper counseling at the school level to help explore one’s latent potential for things unusual. Today is the age of information overload. We hardly need minds that can retain facts and information. Internet is brimming with more information than is required. What we require are the minds that have the capability to analyze. And only those minds can analyze that are truly absorbed in one’s area of interest.

The higher education system, too, charts an obscure path in our nation. Nobody in this world would doubt the acuity of an Indian mind. Ours are the most sought after professionals in the world. Our people adorn the respectable offices in so many international institutions of repute. Who would believe that we had just 20 universities and 500 colleges in India in 1947? Today we have over 300 Universities and 45,000 Colleges sprawling in even the remote towns of India. Ours is one of the largest educational systems of its kind in the world. We have given to the world great scientists and scholars like Aryabhata, C V Raman, Hargobind Khurana, Homi Bhaba, Amartya Sen etc, to name a few.

Today we have mesmerizing growth statistics. But the involvement of people at large in research and development is disheartening. Our students don’t want to opt for a career in research. One of the reasons could be the insubstantial amount of remuneration and respect that one gets for his involvement and contribution to the field of research. Same geniuses who are a neglected lot in India, when hired abroad make massive contributions to the scientific developments in that country. Though we have made institutions, only few of them have required infrastructure for facilitating research. And those who have it are poorly maintained.

Our PM had termed 11^th five year plan as India’s educational plan. At INR 2.70lakh crores, education constitutes 20% of the plan, representing a credible progress towards the target of 6% of GDP. Our investment in R&D amount to almost 0.9%of GDP. What we need today is the efficient utilization of these massive investments to create a capable human resource pool that is valued and possessed at every cost, through promising teaching, research and extension activities, so as to achieve our growing demands for thorough professionals. Also, we need to expand our scholarships base to reach out to the talented pool of inquisitive minds that don’t get an opportunity because of the resource constraints. Further, private sector can be roped in to establish their research labs in the institutes to work in collaboration with institutes in the respective fields. People who wish to contribute in philanthropic activities should be encouraged to establish educational institutes. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research presents a very good example of such a contribution.

In the fast changing domestic and global scenario, mere quantitative expansion will not deliver the desired results. For growth and investment to be meaningful, it has to be fruitful to the people. The purpose of the education lies in increasing productivity, developing social and national unity, modernizing the country and consolidating democracy. ‘When you swim on the surface’, said Swami Ramkrishna Paramhansa, ‘you get only cheap shells. To get pearls, you have to dive deep.’ Its time we dived deep to get the pearls of knowledge.