Reforming education calls for clearly defining the purpose of education. I believe that critiquing the way we teach is dependent entirely on knowing ‘why we teach’. A time has come when this ‘why’ itself needs to be questioned and reinvented. In other words, what we need is not doing the ‘why’ better but in finding an entirely different ‘why’. This is because the old why is no longer relevant. Consequently, the very purpose of education needs to be rethought. Only then can education reform be revolutionised.
To achieve this, we need to start with the teachers. The shift in mindset that they need to adjust to is that modern technology has provided students and indeed, everyone with exceptional information at the touch of a button. Rather than feel upset with this development, which is unfortunately the case at present with most teachers, they need to learn how they might recraft their pedagogy from information dissemination to learning and processing of information.
If we fail to do this, we would continue to harbour irrelevant teachers and consequently, an archaic education system.
This imperative shift in pedagogy needs to recognise that today’s market place requires from its employees creative and critical thinking and in taking complex decisions. Indeed, even classrooms have started changing. I am not speaking only of the introduction of smart boards but the way modern classrooms are currently designed. Mobile and adjustable tables and seats have replaced the earlier fixed seats where students sat in a row and the teacher was the sage on the stage. Today’s classrooms are geared towards a teamwork and collaborative approach that is aimed at understanding problems before solving them. Students discuss with each other and the teacher acts as the facilitator.
This requires that education respond to the dynamic needs of a constantly evolving world. It needs to constantly evolve if it is to provide what evolving societies require. Yet, for decades, while India has dramatically changed in several fronts, our education system has remained more or less static. Efforts have been made to tinker with what already exists rather than envisage how it be changed in its entirety. What we need, in other words, is a revolution in education and not just reform.
One of India’s grand challenges is education. As our population grows, the aspiration for a better life would extend from urban to rural India. Indeed, it may well be argued that to empower India, education is the key. Without education, populations would continue to be subjugated and impoverished. Rural India would continue to live under a feudal scourge where the horrific nexus of local politicians, gangsters and the bureaucracy continues as contemporary reality. Rapid urbanisation would see migration of unskilled labour into cities and huge infrastructural demand would see their employment perpetuating substandard construction. Business and industry would never be 21st century because their workforce would be 19th century.
We are at the cusp of an impending disaster unless we revolutionise our education system; it needs to be a national imperative.
Authored by Amit Dasgupta, former Indian diplomat and currently the India country director at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.