EDUCATION : A COVID CATALYSED REVIEW

 The Unimaginable

Storage facilities overflowing, tankers, big and small unable to unload, oil has no takers and trades in the negative. As people shut themselves in, nations count and miscount their dead, diplomacy thick with accusations and counter accusations, economies bleed, businesses flounder and livelihoods vanish, mankind stares at endless uncertainty. We have even learnt to meet and greet from behind the masks.Mankind is now engaged in a strange battle for survival.

Speculations aside, nobody knows for certain what lies ahead. But everyone agrees that in the wake of the pandemic comes unprecedented fiscal chaos, large scale lay-offs and unemployment. World wars and cold wars, put together, couldn’t shake mankind the way corona did. Not many of us could have ever imagined our lives like this. Life with corona will be the ‘new normal’.

Ides of March and The New Normal

The ‘new normal’, everyone speaks about and presupposes with certainty, is “cause and effect’ determined. No soothsayer[1] to caution, the ‘Ides of March’ changed everything for the world. We came face to face with Covid and covidian terror has permeated all walks of life. Besides affliction and death, the most hard hitting covidian manifestation is unemployment. Road to economic recovery will be slow. 

Though establishments may not repopulate employee rolls to pre-covid levels, widespread outsourcing of micro-projects to individuals could happen. Entrepreneurial environment could bloom.The capable will grab and corner opportunities. 

Schooled to meet assembly line conformity and unable to adapt to the sudden shift, many will find themselves unemployed and unemployable. An education system that bulk-produced the ‘overqualified unemployable’ will soon saddle society with the jobless.

Nonlinear Minds

World over, the system of education , caters to demands of mass production. Traditional schooling conditions impressionable minds to think linearly. 

Over time, literacy has come to be known as knowledge and rating on parroted answers to oft repeated examination questions, abilities. Standard operating procedures assure expected outcomes. Experimentation and innovations unwelcome. Imaginative application could easily be reckoned as violation of entrenched methods and process. Deviations became risk laden and if unsuccessful, invited unbearable consequences.

Luckily for mankind, there were always unfettered nonlinear minds, that refused to be stifled by prescription syllabus and persevered to break the shackles of straight jacketed education. Information technology is the gift of such nonlinear minds. 

Nonlinear minds validate Moore’s law.  

Nonlinear minds set course for Future.

The Catalyst

What Covid did to Indian education nobody ever could.

Covid forced authorities to reconsider teaching methods. Children, irrespective of grades and classes, are now engaged with their teachers online. While online classes helped maintain teacher-taught contact, it inadvertently added an avoidable dimension to home-environment. Virtual schooling also denied children, ‘real’ opportunities to develop social skills, a double whammy further eroding throughput of an inefficient system. 

Though the current shift is incidental, cosmetic and temporary, Covid proved that the Indian education system can easily adapt to far-reaching changes if adequately stimulated. Bigger and better things are possible with the system. It took us Covid for the revelation.

Why Education?

Though evolving continuously, education has always been society-centric. The archaic education system is long overdue for reforms. Though, subject of research and intense debates, biases adding to ferocity, there can be no doubt on the fact that education must benefit the society at large. Irrespective of the time one lives in, society must pursue education as an activity to facilitate its survival and growth. Education therefore must focus on two basic aspects; ‘Value systems’ and ‘Capability building’.

Value Systems

Education must result in promoting peace, harmony, tolerance and ensure life with dignity. Value based education needs to be uniformly imparted and ingrained so as to build a just and humane society. Dignity of labour becomes ingrained.

Over time, what was once integral to the curriculum as ‘moral science’ vanished. When concern for fellow beings are not ingrained in children as an essential virtue, it eventually creates an indifferent intolerant society. Society stands to lose, short-term or long term.

Capability Building

The component meant to enable individuals and build capabilities should be imparted based on abilities and aptitude. This is where the current assembly line system, staring with kindergarten and unending even with post-graduation and doctorates grossly falls short, mostly with substandard products. Millions of over-qualified, unemployed and unemployable graduates bear testimony to the inadequacy of the current education system, one rendered meaningless by capitation and reservation-based admission.

Overqualified or Underemployed 

Possession of a minimum educational qualification is mandatory for securing a job. So, everybody strives to obtain whatever ‘degrees’ possible by whichever means possible. Since there is no upper limit of education stipulated for disqualification, it is not uncommon to find a postgraduate concierge or a clerk with doctorate. While no one can object to any one studying, as much as one wants, it should not be at the cost of the society. It is pertinent to understand that, for the society, creating an unemployable population or employing overqualified people is a negative investment. While basic education must be the fundamental right of every citizen, every citizen should not be forced to pursue higher education just for the sake of a job.

Competency Based Education

Since determining aptitude could easily become subjective and therefore prone to manipulation while being administered, primary and secondary level education must be made compulsory so that all members of the society can read, write and comprehend. Even today maximum number of jobs are such that it can easily and efficiently be done by those with secondary level education. Is there a need for an engineering graduate to man a machine or sell a policy? 

Denying eligibility to anyone with higher than required qualification to jobs will reduce pressure on avenues for higher education. Higher education must be competency-based because the society needs to invest in this category chart its way forward.  Curriculum at higher levels must also provide the flexibility of choice and timing to the one who pursues it, unlike the set piece combinations now in vogue.

Socio-political Compulsions

Political requirements would dictate differential treatment to those from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds. To fulfill such socio-political requirements, individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds could be educated at state expenses provided, they meet all parameters of competence. As such making education free and compulsory up to secondary levels would take care of lot of issues.

The future

Covid has forced us to review our education system. It and revealed to us that we can bring about changes if required. If a virus can impact us so much, sky is the limit for collective human will.

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[1] Soothsayer who warned Julius Caesar about the impending tragedy that would strike him on the ‘Ides of March’