Our education system prepares us for livelihood and leaves us completely unprepared for life. This requires immediate shift.
Albert Einstein has been reported to have said -
" Education is what remains once we have forgotten all that we learnt at the school."
Do we remember much of geography lessons we learnt or the spooky fractions we calculated ?
How much of what we were taught at school helped us in life ?
Why few subjects are chosen over others - say why not enough importance to given to dance, music, art at most schools ?
Why is extra importance laid on Mathematics, Commerce and Sciences ?
Why subjects like "Relationships", "Confidence" , "Love" , "Sex" , and a wide range of others just not present at schools ?
Why are grades , certificates, degree, colleges so hyped up ?
Why is our society full of examples where failures at schools succeed in life and the toppers usually are found struggling ?
I think this is because we educate for livelihood, neglecting the need to be educated for life.
Everywhere we go we will find educated adults, well settled but completely clueless about how to live life. They live a mundane life, quite miserable and confused with few weekends and a yearly vacation. Their are billions of people who've received what we consider as "good education" but they seem to be completely lost in life. They don't know how to live, how to relate, what to do and what not to.
One may question but is all this responsibility of schools and education ? Yes ! if not schools then who ? The parents of children hardly ever understand their kid well enough and the relationship (except in case of few lucky ones) is quite complicated to allow any kind of true learning and sharing. School is the place where they should learn about all that is important. Right now, school is teaching all that just not important.
We need to change the roles of schools from hubs for labor production for industry to centre for development of sensible human beings. We need to shift role of teachers from information transfer officer to experience sharing mentor. This requires a huge paradigm shift but few simple things would help us get started :-
1.) Parents should become sensitive and not push the kid to top or to excel. Let them be, let them grow at their own pace. Intelligent parents should have no expectations from their children, they should rather act as friend who shares their life experiences instead of passing their beliefs and conditioning.
2.) Schools should get away with all kinds of tests that requires grading, labeling or typecasting individuals. We can find better ways of achieving the goals that these things intend to achieve.
3.) Teachers should not try to teach but rather inspire through the way they live their lives and how they challenge the student's intellect. They should shift focus from teaching subjects to facilitating kid's growth.
4.) Subjects like dance, art, music, bird watching, insect study, spirituality etc. should be given equal weightage if a student exhibits interest and potential.
5.) Regular discussions, conversations should be carried on real life issues to understand students and address the challenges they face. For e.g. when kids are entering teenage focus of education should be on subjects like love, sex, AIDS, desires, media influence etc.. Children should be helped in a way so that they can understand themselves and their world better and they can look at life beyond livelihood.
The most important thing is to shift our focus from livelihood to life education. Once that is done, I am sure we will have much more creative ideas on how to do it. Many experts, educationalists and leaders would come forward with creative ways of educating for life. Most important thing is shift of our focus.
