Has our education system let us down?

Education is the use of the diversity of potentials to create a historical precedent in the field of exploration and enrichment of a human resource imbued with power and currents of development. The educational organization of a country must guarantee the overall development of a person. It must guarantee real management and the use of human resources. India is considered one of the youngest nations with around 65% of its population under the age of 35. Apart from all these potential human resources, it failed to convert talent into capability. The process of making products from talent is so flawed that 83% of our engineers are unemployable. The overall unemployment rate has climbed to 8% lately.
Our archaic system of education lacks spark and firepower due to its theoretical nature with minimal scope for practical learning or learning life skills. Creative learning, thinking and problem solving have taken a back seat and are tied to a specific curriculum. Our primary education is a complete mess. From the start, we teach our students that money brings success and happiness – good or bad is not the issue here, but we do teach them how to earn that. We work to earn money to get rich, but the rich spend that money to do the work. This complete paradox is bizarre, but we live with the same notion and communicate it to our students. If we go with the common perception that money brings happiness, but do we have this stable system that teaches our students how finances are handled. A maximum percentage of our population lacks financial literacy although everyone wants to be rich. The skill set is lacking because our education system does not deem it necessary to teach the value of financial literacy i.e. effective decisions with all financial resources/potentials.
The talent of our potential superstars (students) is wasted when they reach an age where emotional health plays a vital role. They cannot handle emotional stress nor do they know how to. Our education system is failing to address the problem to guide students on how to take care of their emotional health or how to deal with emotions. In some cases, the inability to manage emotions becomes deadly, especially for our student fraternity where the suicide rate has reached 8.2%, which means that some 12,526 cases of death by suicide were reported in 2020. This means more than one death per hour due to suicide. Failure is not accepted. In fact, the meaning of failure is not known to them because our system does not accept it as a vital subject to teach. We have plans for our success, but we miss them if we don’t achieve them the first time or the second. We don’t know what the backup plans are, the schools don’t teach them. The result is that our students don’t want to take any risks. Their growth is blocked and the courage of start-ups is thin. Hence, J and K still being the emerging state as far as start-up index is concerned and India as a whole ranks in the mid-sixties among 130 countries, although having huge potential for entrepreneurship in due to its huge size and population.
Our education system has no firepower to push students out of their comfort zone. The theoretical setup minimizes their growth as creators or problem solvers. Our brain follows particular patterns that become our habits. Our primary education system teaches us to be theoretical gurus who have an everlasting impact on our students. The consequence of such a process is that we have not produced any (indigenous) Nobel laureates in independent India. There is no program defining habits or changing habits. The science of morals is still unknown to our system. Who will teach our students this degree is just a piece of paper, but the growth is determined by your skills that you need to learn in school. The salary you get from any organization does not depend on the degree, but on the quality of work you offer. Everyone accumulates information to get high marks, but forgets that marks do not determine success, but imagination and skills. The problem with our education system is that it teaches students to digest information but never prepares them for the future based on technical and soft skills. Our students are unemployed with higher degrees and become a burden on a society because they are unable to contribute to the economy of their family or their nation. The fact is that only 10% of the wealthy Indian population contributes to the economy of the country and 90% of the people struggle with unemployment, work, money and poverty.
Our system has hindered growth and prevented people from thinking creatively. The system has been more of a curse than a boon to society. India produces a Swiss of engineers per year, but ranks far behind in the Quality of Education Index (QEI), while Switzerland more often tops the list. Our system still treats students only for a clerical mindset, which was proposed about 200 years ago by Thomos Babington Macaulay who is considered the main responsible for introducing the western education system in India. They needed people who can sit on the desk from dawn to dusk, will work for them for a few dollars, can’t question, and can’t be creative. Our system is still colonized by a systematic imitation of Western theory where students turn out to be stomachs of content and data that have been sought after and leave no room for individual initiative and effort. We will not simply be what they say “beautiful in color and archaic in taste”. We are kind of stuck in the same educational process where students graduate but lack creativity and problem solving attitude. The state apparatus should facilitate a research-based collaboration of the intelligentsia to establish fair and equitable standards, modeled on universalism, objectivity and rationality.
We certainly need a strong curriculum that has the potential to reverse the situation where research and innovation are in the driver’s seat; creativity and other soft skills are guaranteed and hard skills are given fair value, but not all. Our educational system should draw a dividing line between success and failure. It must build the universal framework of values ​​and habits for our future generation.

Email:—-tariqmaqbool15@gmail.com