The mention of education is not new to Indian culture. It is prevalent since time immemorial – often quoted in our literature are references of Rishis Munis and also goddess Saraswati- goddess of learning. Ever advancing with time the education system in India has grown from big to huge; from vast to rigid.
In today’s context, government is constantly making an effort to increase the education standards in our country. Though a lot of stress is laid on literacy yet the consequences are just an iota. This raises the question; is the education system in India genuine?
The foremost topic of concern is “higher education”. The expenditure and efforts of the government have significantly risen; but they are mainly for primary education. Primary education is made mandatory for every child, but in felicitously there are no such stench provisions for higher education. We brag of having 70% population as literate but what is the standard of that literacy? What percentage of this population is at least 12th or 10th passed? What percentage of this population has a graduation or masters? The answers to these questions are abysmal.
The ever increasing population of our country is the root cause to this mess. Population increase has lead to capacity crunch. Although educational facilities have increased manifold, they fall short of demand for this large population. Consider the number of applications for professional courses there are sometimes more than 1000 applications per seat.
Recent modifications in the norms of CBSE (central board for secondary education) and also other boards have implemented grading system in place of marks to reduce the exam fear in students. Though it is appropriate to certain extent, but eventually when the child moves out of his cocoon he has to face the lethal blow of competition. An example is the cut-offs in good colleges in DU (Delhi university) the first cut-off in admission to undergraduate for some subjects had gone to 100% this year!!But what is the solution to this problem. For fulfilling the educational requirements of the second most populous nation of the world, mere classroom education is not enough. There are many places in India where a primary above school is still a dream. “E-learning” can be a boon in this context. Distant learning programs can serve as virtual classrooms. This concept of online teaching is quite prevalent in the West and the European countries but still has to be established in the Indian scenario.
