Who are ‘Educated Youths’?

The more necessary it seems, the less likely it gets.

The term ‘Educated Youths’ would address the millions of youths who are
under any levels of education and are considered to be the Building Pillars Future India [BPFI]. With
reference to the title, it is easy to predict that this article is all about merely finding faults in the
system of school education and whatsoever is taught to the students including the higher education.
But the response to such prediction is not affirmative, which will be justified further.

The purpose of this article is to provide some clarification to the readers,

from the knowledge of the author, about the pathetic situation which the so called BPFI encounter
in their educational institutions. Primarily, what ‘providing education’ means to educational jargons
is probably ‘providing knowledge’. This might have been the successful model of education during
the Industrial Revolution in 18th century. But this model of education miserably fails when Industrial
Revolution makes its 4th edition [Industrial revolution 4.0]. We could possibly come across the
phrases, ‘machine learning’, ’machine to machine communication’, etc. If machines could reach the
capability of humans to learn, why not the teaching model of students be subjected to any change,
which is same for over two centuries.

If the author is considered to be incredible of making claims on the teaching

model, a citation from World’s renowned entrepreneur Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba groups be
considered. At the annual meet of World Economic Forum, Davos, 2018 his key focus was not on
way of doing business, rather it was on the challenges in the education model. He mentions that if
we don’t change the method we teach, 30 years from now will be a big trouble. If machines could
learn the same what we are capable of, it is s essential to teach students something unique.
Teachers must stop teaching knowledge so that the machines can never catch up with us. Such
things are soft skills, values, believing, independent thinking, care for others and teamwork, which
are currently considered as moral sciences and remains outside the academic part, untouched. But
the important thing to be noted is that knowledge will not teach you these values, and never can be
learned by the machines.

One could oppose that his considerations may not be applicable to the
Indian teaching society unless implemented globally, and this may be the only yardstick quoted by
educational jargons to evade criticism. For those enlightened minds, let me make a field level
example. Mr.Udhayachandran, IAS, Secretary of School education department, Tamilnadu himself
confesses that there are backlogs in the current teaching model, not only at the school level, but
even at the higher education institutions, say engineering, intend the students to learn from the
notes provided by the faculty members. The purposeful reason to oppose this methodology is that it
is entirely incompatible with the basic purpose of education.

Moreover, the roles of government in the domain of education, be it at the

Centre or the State, profound polices are majorly lying dormant. In 1966, Kothari Commission had
said in its voluminous report that India should aim at spending 6% of its GDP on education. More
than half a century later, we are spending less than 3% of GDP on education. Every year the Union
Budget indicates that it is not a high priority although it is loudly announced to be so. This year’s
Budget is no different. It seldom receives high-level attention.

The fascinating idea of privatisation of educational sector has presented a

bleak picture of production of students merely able to learn subjects and miserably failing to acquire
knowledge and its values. Society in wish we live in always projects students who are able to score
good grades in examinations are better than poor scoring ones without considering what knowledge
has been acquired by the both.
 Personally as an observer, what I feel is that a change in educational sector
has been kick-started at various levels, which is evident by the current change made in revision of
the syllabi. This cannot be considered as an entire solution for this mounting crisis, but it could
ensure a gradual mutation in the current educating model. The change, which is inevitable in any
sector, would turn into a revolution of if it can stir up the hearts and minds of the people involved.
So, we being a part of this educational sector shall make a resolution to resolve the drawbacks and
provide the future generation a Value-based education, rather than knowledge-based one, which
could be celebrated as a victory of the expected Educational Revolution 1.0

-a victim,
Kamaleshwar Rao Sadasivam