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What simple steps can we take to create awareness about Education in India?



Education in our country is losing its value now days, though the literacy percentage is increasing but the importance of education and its real values are depleting. Whether the challenge is to provide jobs or to provide moral values, the contemporary education system is not sufficiently capable to face the challenges. A lot of reforms are badly needed and it’s the need of the hour to contemplate and act on this issue with utmost sincerity.

In our country, there are mainly two types of schools, the government aided (semi or fully) and the privately owned. It is seen in general (putting aside the exceptions of Navodaya schools, Sainik Schools etc), that the government schools are not functioning well and are unable to provide a quality education, now since, a very large population of kids gets facilitated by these schools, mainly in rural and semi urban areas, it is high time to focus on the amelioration of these schools.

Few years back The Times of India group had initiated a program, teach for India, wherein the youngsters from various elite colleges and institutes are selected by a process and then finally they are put into an internship in which they have to teach the kids of government schools, mainly of the backward areas. The overwhelming response of the program and the exponential growth in the abilities of kids manifests what types of reforms are needed in our education system to spread it throughout the nation.

It is a very common observation that the kids of government schools are not interested in getting educated because they don’t find the teacher who can inspire them and can inculcate the real meaning of education. A very unique observation is that when students from colleges teach these kids then the kids get motivated and get inclined to the education. Now the suggestion here is that if each college (precisely the elite colleges) start emphasizing in the improvement of education status of the government schools of their vicinity, this can actually help a lot in serving the purpose. A recent example is from IIT Kanpur where four students refused to get into the job hunt process of campus and decided to teach one more year after passing out, before joining any company.

This can be made a system where the students can contribute to the society and their small initiative can actually make a big change.

Other and very important steps are instillation of new courses into the education system, courses of practical importance and skill building should be there as main courses so that the rat race behind existing system can be discouraged, as this rat race is leading our country to a stage where a big population of youths will be having degrees but no job in hand.

Other much needed step is to synchronize the education with industry so that the practical aspects of education can be experienced and it will motivate the students.

Last but not the least, thought education must not be only job oriented and should inculcate the values in students, but at the same time, adequate opportunities should be there for students to transfer their education into a professional world with ease.

Read about AglaSem EduCon 2013, India’s first largest one of a kind Education Conference. Also, feel free to tell me in comments about what simple steps you think we can take to create awareness about Education in India?