I am sure everybody agrees that the Indian educational system requires reforms. Let me list out some of the most obvious problems and their solutions.
The medium of education should be either Hindi or English. Why do students need to study in any other language? If a state language should be taught it can be made the 2ND or 3rd language.
A student in
Regarding those 'activists' who say that students should be taught in the state language or in their mother tongue, they are there only for publicity or because they feel jealous that somebody else is learning something better.
An example of these activists is Dr. Rajkumar from Karnataka (Yes the actor whose death caused all that chaos in
Up to class 12 there are countless boards in
Only Social Science and Language syllabus should be decided by the state as Local History and Geography changes from state to state.
Some state boards are in pathetic condition. The corrections are so bad that students practically queue up by the hundreds to apply for re-evaluation. Teachers who have erred considerably in correction should be penalised heavily, even put in Jail for a month and barred from correcting papers for life.
Board examinations should be conducted with 100% video taping of the examination hall. This would reduce malpractice and give some value to the marks scored in exams. Again it is some state boards that are pathetic on the malpractice issue. Any kind of malpractice should lead to a jail term. If the examiners are involved then they should be jailed for life (Is it such a big crime you ask? Well sending the efforts of thousands or even lakhs of students down the drain is a SERIOUS offence according to me).
The constant re-writing of the social science text books should be stopped. Does history change so dramatically when there is a change of power in the government that entire textbooks have to be rewritten? The solution here is pure political will.
Now coming to professional education. Here private colleges are the rulers of the arena. There are colleges that run from what are practically sheds. Institutions with foreign sounding names which are nothing but bogus institutions. Universities whose degrees don't get recognized anywhere. Colleges without any kind of labs. The list is endless but the solution is one: Better enforcement of rules laid down by bodies such as the AICTE.
Foreign institutions advertising in
The above problems should be first sorted out before trying to implement 'Education for ALL' as an education lacking any value is worthless.
Solutions to the above problems do not require too much money, only will.
Hope our country reforms the education system or our dream of a Knowledge based economy will crumble soon, along with it the dream of being a super power.
Today Knowledge is power; nothing demonstrates this fact better than Google.