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Thursday 29 September 2011

Samacheer Kalvi - Equal education utopia

Article moved to Guru Raj blog

The concept of Equal Education to all is definitely an utopian dream. It is also a useless goal. It is like everyone trying to be a part of every conversation on earth. Such equality is not necessary, not useful, not practical and total waste of energy in trying to plan and implement such a dream.

It is moreover, unfair to 90% of the people. One size fits all does not fit 90% of the people. The same goes for education.

There are differently abled children. They need different levels of education, speed of progress in education, etc. To survive in this world & to provide some service to fellow people (in order to earn for daily bread, shelter and clothing) different people need different skills.

We cannot have 1 billion prime ministers. We need all kinds of people performing different tasks working for a united mankind. For that, the belief has to be that many people are born with different skills. Those skills need to be honed by education - and for that we need different types of education. Moreover, there are slow learners, autistic children, dyslexic children, mentally retarded children and others who need special care and education at a more relaxed pace.

For these to be catered for, we need State board syllabus (easiest and simple base education) to Matriculation, to Anglo-Indian, to CBSE to ICSE boards of education, along with National Open School (more flexible for people who wish to take up other professions at early age, like sports / acting), International Baccalaureate (not to be confused by International school term, which is used intentionally to confuse & which usually follows CBSE / ICSE syllabus) and local language schools (most important, in my opinion).

Better still is the Gurukulam style of education where every child is given more focus (again not to be confused with modern Gurus "collecting" disciples).

One other drawback with equal education is that the brilliant students are dragged down to an average level, while the slow learners and others feel pressured and left out of "learning". We will spoil the children and reduce the chances of having great leaders, scientists, philosophers and other great people required for our country.

I hope, pray and request the appropriate authorities to not look into Equal education as a goal. We should look into strengthening the strong points & improving on the weaknesses we have in the different systems.

VRVD

1 comment:

  1. I fully subscribe to what you have put forth in toto. Kudos.

    ReplyDelete