30 Days Blogging Challenge: Day 16 – My thoughts on education

Education is an important index of a country’s development. The quality and strength of human resources gives us an insight into the level of progress the society has achieved. Although literacy and education are two different realms, the system has somehow merged the two. Here lies the major problem.

The focus of the government has always been how many people know how to write their names rather than focusing on whether they know the alphabet. With the mission of making everyone literate, the government overlooked the basic foundation of education — learning.

Learning has taken a backseat in this mad rush for grades. In our system, we never value the aptitude. We just honour marks. Learning notes by heart has become the order of the day, to hell with clarity on concepts.

Ultimately what matters is your knowledge; your attendance in class being the least significant element of education. Passing a few tests and flaunting big degrees does not make a man. Look at Chetan Bhagat – an alumnus of IIT and IIM, yet with the intelligence of an animal-that-must-not-be-named.

Every system has flaws in it. Nothing is 100% perfect. Then why do we always keep on blaming the system for all wrongs in our lives knowing that it cannot be perfect? Well to begin with we all are part of the system, change should start with us, and the system will automatically change.

P.S. – Parts of this essay are copied from an earlier blog entry I had posted few years back.