Dear Readers,
This week offered two opportunities to have a closer look into the status of Education in our state. First, Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, an eminent academic administrator and thinker of our nation, visited our University to deliver a lecture. He spoke about the challenges that the system of Higher Education has to face in our country. The problem of ensuring a holistic and inclusive education persists all across India and the gap between the educated and the uneducated citizens is ever widening.
Being an economist, he doled out tonnes of data and stats in his lecture and it was appalling to learn about some alarming information. The gender ratio is one statistic which is highly skewed in Rajasthan. As compared to the number of men enrolled in Higher Education institutions across the state, fewer number of women are enrolled in the same. This glaring gap assumes dangerous proportions when we take into account the urban-rural divide. The most disturbing fact is that even in the twenty first century, huge chunks of our citizenry is relatively isolated from the academic realm- the young people belonging to SC, ST, OBC and religious minorities sections.
The second event was when I was invited by Step By Step High School for conducting a workshop with students of class 11th and 12th enrolled in the Humanities stream. I lectured them about the significance of the Classics and about inculcating creativity and expression in the face of over-dominance of the popular media. I thoroughly enjoyed the session with the beaming students and it brought back memories from my school days when we were all so 'enthu' about opting Arts in 11th class in spite of scoring very well in the matriculate.
This school is one of the 'elite' rich private schools which caters to the narrow top bracket of our people. The masses study in very poor condition Government schools. In my opinion, if we want to bring in some qualitative changes, we need to update the system of teaching in such schools. Rather than painting just the exterior of the edifices, we should look for streamlining the entire organisation, no matter how Herculean this task may seem to be. One possible suggestion can be that University teachers and school teachers should mingle freely, work in unison and give up their false egos which prevents the realisation of the first two objectives. There should be a clear cut path for the ordinary students from the level of the primary right up till Research.......
