This is the season of admission at schools and a planning phase for the colleges. There is a high probability that this time also the planning and execution shall miss the mark of logic. The fault is not in their stars, it is the vicious circle that behaves like a devil’s triangle. The Policy Makers - Parents - Teachers are the ones to be hailed as heroes and as the culprits at the same time, for the success or the failure of the student.
We are not away from an age when the children shall see the whole propaganda of money-making naked. There is no rescue from the fact that education has been failing to make a better world to live. The wars, not between nations, but between people and cultures, between genders and social classes, are not the result of a good education. These have grown from the very fact that we did not allow education to flourish. Rather, we made space for the trio to make their stakes better. It was possible to work together but that was to come after relating themselves to the purpose of the institution of education.
The parties, the THREE Members of the Team, have been in a constant fight. Like 1984, they are constantly at war with each other. We, the students or the sympathisers, can not get the exact idea as who is fighting whom. This chaos has entered the classrooms and the return has been the fuelling of the same downfalls in the society and self.
Policy Makers have interests in the implementation of what they feel is right. There has been less space left for deliberations that oppose the notions. If someone sees something wrong, the objection does not have weight. Parents have one thing in common for the education system and institutions and that is DISTRUST. The trust-deficit that has always been there in our society has swiftly entered the edifice of education. Parents don’t trust the schools and colleges or universities their children ware going. The sense of pride is a thing of the past. There are adjustments and just ‘creeping like snail’ movements.
The schools have something important to think of. It is their Survival in Employment. The policymakers have taken away the actual cause from the mission of teaching. It is a matter of getting a job-keeping the job – concluding the job safely now. Promotions Priorities have taken over teaching priorities among the teachers. The new regime rules that ask for 'other than teaching' accomplishments have made it clear to teachers that they shall be the last one to speak in terms of education. It is better that they shut their voice and adhere to the agenda, actually, there is none.
The policies of the government are often aligned with their own thinking. They do have good intentions. But the bad ones make a fatal hole in the ship. The madness to bring something from a foreign land and them implement it via circulars has left least for the educational institutions to do. Everyone ends up ‘complying’ to the instructions. Sometimes, the compliance is so blind that one wonders on the logic of doing a mundane task. But, the question of survival does put an end to questions. These have to be done, and that all they know.
Owners have two types. First, the ones who had money and thought of making more of it. They raised buildings and headed to transform the black into white. Then there are those who have an enterprising vision and their institutions have something to offer. We cannot see each private or public institution as a slave to us. But the Policy Makers rule them and the Parents tend to feel that they have owned them. It seems an exaggerated version of what Parents have done. But, it is a fact that the amount of interference and doubts parents have carried to schools, has forced them to cater to the ‘payers’ more than the kids.
There is a terrible thing happening to education. It is being abandoned by those who are its default caretakers, not just stakeholder. Students have only one thing to do, that is learning. The rest is the responsibility and duty of the state, school and sponsors (parents). But the separation and mutual distrust are making the system go astray.
We need a holistic approach, attitude and affirmation each day. Our children in schools and universities are the future of mankind. At a time when we are facing the challenge of dying not by wars and weapons but virus outbreaks, the only hope lies in education. The way we impart this, the way we plan it and the way we protect it, seems the only rescuing path.
The brutal Policy-Promotion-Profits trio has to be thrown out. People-Parent-Planners-Pupils are to be seen together and then, we can be assured of a steady and successful journey towards tomorrow.
