(Note: After you read the first paragraph, please stop and think whether you want to read further or not. If you happen to read even one line into the next para, I sincerely request you to go till the very end of this post and bear with me even if the reading becomes a tad bit boring in the middle.)
Many a times in life, one is faced with situations, which completely shake the very foundation on which one’s believes stand. It makes them lose complete faith in the entire system which runs it. I can feel myself being faced with a similar situation and this time it is the Indian Education System which has disillusioned me.
This declaration of mine might be received with a lot of disappointed sighs and nodding of heads from all those Blog Readers who had expected me to be disillusioned by something more worthy of disillusionment. I mean, The Indian education system is like this very old topic which is debated on, each year, around the month of april-may, when the admission fever is on an all time high and dies down as august approaches, taking down with it probably millions of aspirations, hard-earned money and a lot of criticism. Each year, these kind of topics get a lot of media attention and hype (creating hype is something that media has become extremely good at.), which include interviews of principals, and ministers, parents and students.
The principals of colleges are bound by the rules laid by the government (in case of govt colleges) or the trustees (in case of the private ones). The government (and the trustees) are hypnotized and kept in control by the ministers and other ‘influential’ people who, in turn, dance to the tune of money and status. The parents are bound by love for their children and a hope to help them in every possible way, so that they can kick start their carrier well, and of course, it is also slightly influenced by their neighbor’s or friend’s child’s performance :P The ones left are the students who are also now divided into three categories, from the previously defined two categories (thankz to the hon’ble minster Mr. Arjun Singh), and those three categories are- the ones who work their asses out and manage to get admission into a respectable college; the ones who may or may not have slogged but still get admission into respectable colleges because they (or rather their parents) have the moolah to shell out, and the third category is the now-even-more-popular-than-Shahrukh khan-category - the OBCs, who can get admission without working hard or shelling out a penny (if they want to) because the number of seats now reserved for them, must be leaving little scope for too many of them to be left disappointed.
Okay, for a moment, let us just forget the Quota crap and all the pre-admission turmoil. After one manages to get admission into a decent college, the question that arises is, how decent is the level of education going to be and how much future security lies in it? Today, I was going through some resumes for my uncle, who had asked me to sort out the candidates on the basis of their qualification into two groups- MBA and Engineering grads. Initially I did not give much thought to it. But when I started going through the resumes, I was really zapped reading the names of the colleges and universities. 80% institutes fell in the category of those of which I had never in my life heard of. I actually began to question the authenticity of the large number of so-called engineering institutes that have been mushrooming all over the place and an ever increasing number of students going in for such options. Do even half those people want to do engineering in the first place? Or have they been compelled by the employer’s preference towards engineering and MBA grads? And to tell you the truth, i was told point blank on my face that only those candidates who have passed out from "decent" colleges will be considered for the job. In such a case what about the other so-called engineering and MBA grads?
Its actually not funny how commercialized and expensive education has become. Get into this field and u get the Midas’ touch. Recently a friend of mine, who did not perform well academically, was trying the management quota way, to get into a college here. Before he and his parents entered the admission in charge’s room to discuss matters of give and take, they were scanned for hidden cameras and their cell phones were kept outside. Believe me; I was really shocked and slightly amused at how low the value of education had fallen. Had the lessons taught in the classrooms been something out of the world, then I would have understood all this hysteria. But, the tragedy here is that, the lessons taught in the colleges are also so vague and insufficient, that in most cases students take out side help (read tuitions, which is another booming industry) to pass even the university papers. The amount spent on tutoring the child before appearing for common entrance tests, needs a whole new post to be dedicated to it, in order to do justice to it. People who have got into jobs will very well be privy to the fact that classroom teaching is no where close to the actual practical work. When I think of the time I had gone through, before I finally got admission into my college, I still get the creeps. I still shudder at how crazy it all had been.
The Indian Education System has been SO badly raped, that it is gonna take ages to set it right. But there has to be a beginning somewhere. If our respectable Prime Minister would concentrate even an iota of what he is doing on the Nuclear Deal, on cleansing the educational system on India, then the Indians would definitely be a happier lot. As for me, I will get back to college next week, get up at 8 and attend classes( only physically), sit in the last bench and play hollywood-bolly-wood, or the name game; or better still, think about some cute guy, while the teacher rambles about some utterly unintelligible stuff and as of now, I can only shudder at how bad things are, rethink my reason for becoming an engineering student and for not getting into journalism (as I initially wanted to) and keep posting bout it hoping that at least 2 out of every 10 readers would have the patience to “read” me out.
