On True Education

Dr. Bhamy Shenoy writes in the Star of Mysore about “True Education” in Mysore. Pratham Mysore tried to offer courses for students that stressed on creativity and asking questions, only to find that only 4 students were interested.

Dr. Shenoy argues that despite the talk among educationists about child-centric, creative learning (and in popular culture too… like Advani’s tears after the movie Taare Zameen Par), there is a long way to go in changing mindsets about the aims of education.

“Coaching and tuition classes are flourishing in Mysore. Crores are spent by the parents to prepare their children to take admission tests for professional courses. But when an NGO like Pratham offered free cour-ses a few weeks back to prepare them to face real life situations where creativity is stressed over routine work, only four students enrolled….

We can ignore such a shocking poor response to a well-recognised and universally praised pedagogical sys-tem to poor marketing by Pratham. By doing so, we are making a mistake. To me the poor res-ponse holds mirror to the failure of our educational system….
Some prominent educationists have also tried to spread the word on “True Education”. Deputy Commissioner P. Manivannan has offered to take some classes. Some have expressed interest. But so far, no educational institution in Mysore has come forward to conduct this course. Reasons: students are not interested, lack of motivated teachers, no spare time, busy with examinations, admission time, beginning/end of semester etc. The main objective of “True Education” course was to ignite the thinking of the student and teach them to ask questions. In our schools and colleges, in class rooms, students are not encouraged to ask questions. Examination-oriented education system emphasises rote learning and scoring high marks and ranks. It is such an educational system which has given rise to a culture of tuition. Every educationist is critical of it. But no one does any thing about it.

Cross posted from Gowri’s post on the KLP Blog.