Education in India- Reforming the System

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About the Book Although Education is the most vital and potent instrument for development, individual and social progress, it has not received in India due attention for quite some time. That is why illiteracy and poverty are widespread.

This naturally calls for a realistic and critical analysis of our system of education, policy-thrusts, schemes, and priority areas of education in the country. We should examine and evaluate various elements and aspects of education in the light of past experience, recent trends and realities of life. The prime objective should be to ascertain what possibly can be done with what we have, how the system can be vitally improved or transformed.

The present book Education in India: Reforming the System attempts to examine the various aspects of reforming the educational system in India.

Preface Although education is the most vital and potent Instrument for development, individual and social progress. It has not received in India due attention for quite some time. That is why illiteracy and poverty are widespread. As Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee once candidly observed, the primary education hasn't got the priority it deserves in the last fifty years, the country can't excel with half of its population being illiterate: "We are all to blame for it and we need to sort it out. As the Public Report on Basic Education in India (OUP, 1999), makes it abundantly clear, the situation is particularly shocking at the micro-level. In other sectors, too, the picture is by no means encouraging.

This naturally calls for a realistic and critical analysis of our system of education, policy-thrusts, schemes, and priority areas of education in the country. We should examine and evaluate various elements and aspects of education in the light of past experience, recent trends and realities of life. The prime objective should be to ascertain what possibly can be done with what we have, how the system can be vitally improved or transformed. The present book is an attempt in this direction.

The introductory chapter sketches some features of our society, the Gandhian philosophy on education, and relevant items of education agenda for the next century. Then, it focuses on major topics in education-teachers, education management, higher education, mass education, students' issues, and the examination pattern. Thereafter. the search-light is turned inward. concentrating on specific themes of motifs.

Introduction Education seeks to develop latent faculties of an individual through different procedures and processes. Its basic objective is self-fulfillment and improvement of others. The latter aspect is a by-product, the essential target being self-refinement. This process works speedily at earlier stages when many forms maximum impressions, and he tends to lose its impact and intensity as he grows up. Wordsworth therefore believes that "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." and laments the slow disappearance of this "celestial light": "Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy."

The process is hastened by the corrupting environment and all-around examples of bad conduct. India figures third in the list of most corrupt countries in the world, preceding only China and Pakistan. It is irrelevant for the common man to learn that it is a "global phenomenon." Moreover, it is the extent that counts and affects life seriously. The atmosphere of rampant corruption serves to weaken the fabric of society, its "larger self" or the "best self". The English poet refers to the loss of divinity in man: "At length the Man perceives it die away. And fade into the light of common day."

The entire system of education should be an attempt to prevent the loss, to reverse the process and resurrect the creative spirit. This is neither easy nor achievable in a short period. The dramatic gimmics or showy measures-introduction of value education, moral education, model codes of conduct, concept of a "clean" man, and so on.-have little effect on the perturbed psyche of the youth.

**Contents and Sample Pages**