Is our education system preparing students for tomorrow?

If you are an Indian, you might have actually heard people talking about the Indian education system, at least once in your life, haven’t you? Yes, and if you are an Indian student in the 21^st century, then you must have heard about this. People say that the Indian education system is outdated, as today’s sciences are much more advanced than those taught in the book. So, it raises a question immediately in the minds of the people: Is the education system of India preparing students for the future?

Let me give you an example. If you are a student of class 6^th or 7^th or have actually passed these classes, you might have learnt about the electric bulb. We know about a bulb is it is a tungsten filament connected with two wires on each end and is surrounded by a glass bulb. This is the bulb that Thomas Alva Edison actually invented in the year ­­1879, the Incandescent bulb. This bulb produces both heat and light.

According to this theory, children today are still learning about the bulb that was invented 142 years ago. As you can see, it is already outdated since the light bulbs today are totally different from the light bulb that Edison invented. Today, we have LEDs (light-emitting diode), CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps), and many other kinds of light bulbs.

Our country has many things still taught in the schools that have already been considered outdated in other nations. How can a nation expect new innovations in their children when they are still taught what their great grandparents studied in their classes? How can a nation develop if the children still are studying the same things that children three generations before studied? We require new innovation that teaches us also about the new innovative ideas rather than old outdated ideas so that we can also develop something that is one step ahead of the expectations of the adults of our nation. Today, our country is the home to over 1.35 billion people, and so there are over 1.35 billion different mindsets in our nation. Imagine, if we start to make everyone’s mindset innovative, just imagine, where our country would be in terms of innovation—way ahead of any other country on the planet.

Other than outdated resources for learning and innovation, our country also faces the problem of the lack of resources. Again taking an example from science, there are very few schools in our country which provide the facility of a laboratory, and most schools who have the facility of a laboratory do not let the students use them more frequently, which makes a huge gap in the learning of the student as practical knowledge is very important to understand a concept, especially a scientific concept. People in India mostly just memorize whatever is written in the book without taking the essence of what the book is trying to teach them. Hence we need to update, not only our syllabus but also our mindset so that we can compete and surpass the other countries on the planet.

Because our society is linked to everyone, there is always that we can do at an individual level to solve this problem. Today, in the modern age, we have the largest resource of information on the planet, the Internet that has connected us from one end of the planet to the other end. So using the internet for this purpose is a wonderful method of collecting innovative ideas that can update for the outdated and resource-lacking education system of our country and can help us gain more and more knowledge. Apart from the internet, we can also practice schemes for the development of the education system that will aid in the intellectual and innovative development of the people of the country.

So these were a few of the many problems with the education system of our country. Our country has always been a knowledge hub in the past, but problems like these make it harder for us to go back in that past where people from all around the world would come to India for their quest for knowledge rather than people from India would go outside for studies as is the case today.

We should try to develop our education system so that we can develop new and innovative ideas that can be considered progressive both in outlook and result for the future of our nation. Here is wishing that to happen. Thank you!