Education System

Education System
Flaws And Remedies

The conventional education system that is
predominantly followed in India as well as
many other countries does not inculcate in
students the real sense of „education‟. The
flaws and the drawbacks of the present
system, its effect on the society, nature,
morals, democracy, public life and on the
minds of the students as individuals have
been clearly highlighted in the following
report. We have also presented the various
ways, the present Education System can be
improved by making the proper use of
technology as a tool.





By
Abhishek Singla (607/MP/12)
Chandandeep Singh(626/MP/12)
Ajay Kumar(612/MP/12)
5/6/2014

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Contents


1. Introduction 2
2. Conventional Education System 3
3. Flaws 5
4. India‟s Education System 13
5. Remedies 15
6. Impacts of Modern Education 19
7. Role of Tech. 23
8. Summary 26
9. Sources 27
























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INTRODUCTION

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one
generation to another.”
– G. K. Chesterton
Education is the imparting and acquiring of knowledge through
teaching and learning, especially at a school or similar institution. The
earliest educational processes involved sharing information about
gathering food and providing shelter; making weapons and other tools;
learning language; and acquiring the values, behaviour, and religious
rites or practices of a given culture. Before the invention of reading and
writing, people lived in an environment in which they struggled to
survive against natural forces, animals, and other humans. To survive,
preliterate people developed skills that grew into cultural and
educational patterns.
Education developed from the human struggle for survival and
enlightenment. It may be formal or informal. Informal education refers
to the general social process by which human beings acquire the
knowledge and skills needed to function in their culture. Formal
education refers to the process by which teachers instruct students in
courses of study within institutions.
Education, can be summed up at a basic level as referring to an
experience or act that has a formative effect on the mind, character or
physical ability of an individual. In the sense that it is formative means
that education is serving to form something that will have a long
lasting effect on the person’s mind and faculties.

Talking of the modern day education, one feels proud; of saying yes I am
an educated person. Formally or informally all of us are educated.
Education is the equipping with knowledge. The overall development of
mind, body and soul is the real education.
Carter G. Woodson once said “For me, education means to inspire
people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it
and make it better.”
Conventional Education System
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In the ancient times the process of educating people depended on a
school where the single teacher/master gave lessons to the pupils on
different subjects. Then gradually with the progress of the civilizations
schools began to form with proper administrative systems where
subjects were categorized and teachers were recruited accordingly. In
this system of
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education a specific pattern of teaching began to be
conventionalized. Teaching on a black board, with students well seated
on their seats to grasp the words chanted by the teacher became the
general method of teaching in schools, even in colleges. The process of
evaluation after successful completion of the course was done through an
examination system. For ages this has remained the dominant way of
spreading education where the construct of the school or the institute is
very specific.

Education Systems of Various Countries
 The education system in Japan gears students toward university
preparation. Kids in Japan know that in order for them to succeed
they must have high test scores. Even those kids who choose to go
to technical or trade schools still must ace rigorous entrance
exams. A lot of parental pressure is a key factor here as well.
Japanese kids also have more than one teacher in each class and
kids are encouraged to work through their studies without
textbooks, calculators, etc. This gives them many different ways to
solve problems.


 Another education system to keep an eye on is China‟s school
system. Chinese students do not spend their days focusing on
sports or socializing. Instead, they are completely dedicated to
intellectual pursuits. China‟s students study rigorously and are
even required to complete extra classes and tutoring. In fact, if a
child shows particular promise in Math, parents would begin
seeking out additional math tutoring.


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The word education comes from the Latin root e-ducere, which means “to lead forth” or “to draw
out”. Originally it was a midwives term meaning “to be present at the birth of”.
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 India‟s education system is also on the rise. Most children in India
already know what they want to be when they grow up by the time
they are in first grade. They have already dedicated themselves to
follow that career path. These kids are highly motivated and the
interactive learning approach in their classrooms seems to be
helping them retain information better than most. Teachers guide
their students through the learning process with fun and creative
activities rather than hours upon hours of notes and lectures.

 The education system in Singapore is also a school system worth
mention. Kids in Singapore begin attending school at the age of
three. They attend preschool for three years which includes two
years of Kindergarten. While this is not mandatory, more and more
parents are enrolling their children at the age of three to ensure
that their child has the right scores to get into more advanced
programs. The goal for teachers in Singapore is to focus on each
child‟s individual learning style and ability. This ensures automatic
success for the child as he or she will be less likely to fall behind.

 Finland is currently ranked as the number one education system.
Finnish students consistently have the highest scores in math,
science, and reading. Finnish schools also have a very low-key
model that allows students to learn at a more relaxed pace. There is
only a half an hour of homework every night and students don‟t
attend school full time like other school systems worldwide. The
goal is for the student to feel like he or she is “at home”. Students
study in lounges with comfortable chairs and fireplaces.

Finnish schools have no tardy bells and students do not get in any
trouble if they fall sleep during class. While the academic
expectations of each student are extremely high, there isn‟t the
expected huge amount of schoolwork involved.

Teaching is a highly sought after profession in Finland and these
teachers know just how lucky they are to have achieved their
professional dreams. Teachers also do not have to follow a set
curriculum, they are given free reign to do whatever it takes for the
success of their students. That is practically unheard of anywhere
else.
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It is easy to understand why Finnish students are a cut above the
rest. They have no restrictions placed on them and are allowed to
do what they wish. These kids actually want to learn, they know
that they can learn in creative and engaging ways. They also know
that they will not be subject to endless hours of homework and
memorization. The Finnish Education system does not believe that
is the best way for kids to learn. For example, if a child really
enjoys reading, he or she might read book after book all day long.
Teachers believe that this particular child will not only have
outstanding reading and comprehension scores, he or she will also
enjoy learning about a wide array of topics.

We have seen the way education is viewed in various countries across the
world. But we can‟t say any of the above education system is perfect. In
fact, most of them cannot even be safely addressed as good education
systems.
Let us examine the impacts of the modern education system on the
various aspects of our lives :

Impacts of Modern Education

The modern education system has been churning out self-centered
individuals who have no time for the well-being of the society they live
in. Individual aspirations take precedence over the social well being.
Success is measured in terms of what “I” achieved rather than what “We”
are up to. This is creating a society where the majority cares very little
about the overall well-being of the society and is only worried about “me,
mine and myself”. The result is lack of innovation, restriction of
knowledge use, chaotic society, failure of democracy, increased
corruption, plundering of natural resources, etc
Impact on Knowledge:-
There is a hugely negative psychological impact being made on every
student, when parents, teachers, friends, relatives all look only at the
scores in their marks sheet, and are not interested in their actual
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understanding and knowledge about the subject. The only goal of the
student has become to score more marks, not to earn more knowledge.
And even teachers are equally guilty in this. I always hated the concept of
“important questions”, “mark this for exams”, “this chapter is very
important.”. If those were the only important ones, then why on earth
did you include the other “unimportant” topics or chapters in the text
books?
There is nothing like, this is important or that is important in knowledge,
especially at such an early stage of learning. This very concept of
attributing importance again revolves around the probability of the
related questions appearing in the examination paper, again focusing
only on marks, not on knowledge.

Impact on Morals:-
Look at the kind of typical questions school going kids are asked.
“How much did you score? First rank?Very good.”
“Who comes first in your class? You should strive to come first, this is a
very competitive world. Beat everybody in marks.”
“You should win the race.”
When we make marks and scores the sole reason of education, means are
ignored and only ends matter. Students start parroting content in their
school books, won‟t share notes with others, become selfish, jealous.
“Did you understand what has been taught in the school today?
“Who are the other bright students in your class? Discuss with them
and see if they have a better understanding of what you know.”
“Guide other students in your class who find it difficult to understand
what you know.”
If we tell this to the kids, then they will learn to share knowledge, discuss
with friends, and knowledge grows by sharing, and so do the number of
those who know.
Impact on Democracy:-
Democracy runs on the very assumption that individuals vote for a social
well being rather than for personal gains. The root idea of democracy is
that all citizens strive to make their society a better place. But the
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moment a self-centered person is the voter, the electorate starts filling
with those who vote for individual gains and personal benefits rather
than for the collective good of the society. Votes will be cast by taking
bribe, on caste and communal lines, and ultimately the institution of
democracy suffers.
Many of us don‟t even go out and cast our vote! Many feel it is a waste of
time. Why? We are interested in personal good, not in public good. As a
result, the very fundamental root of the democracy suffers. People start
making lame excuses like “all candidates are bad”. Really? Ask them how
much they know about each candidate who has stood for the elections.
We do so much of research on the Internet, reading reviews,
understanding features, etc while buying a new mobile or a camera or a
Television. Why don‟t we do it when it comes to electing our
representatives? Self-centrism.
Bad people come to power because of the good people who do not go out
and vote.
Oh come on, we say. My vote doesn‟t really matter. How can a single vote
bring in a change? Well, small acts, when multiplied by millions of
people, can definitely transform the world. Democracy fails when every
voter ends up thinking, I don‟t matter.
Impact in Public Life:-
When the quality of democratic process suffers, so do all the democratic
institutions. How can we expect those who come to power riding on the
votes of self-centered individuals to be social centered?
Corruption, scams, power hungry leaders, favoring individuals or
particular sections of the society over others, all follow as a result of this
self centered democratic electorate. Elected representatives stop
representing the interests of their constituencies and instead start
amassing wealth, power and doing favors for their inner circles. Service
to the society becomes only symbolic, and in such democracies even if we
find a leader who spends a small fraction of his time doing social good,
he starts looking like a messiah. Ideally elected representatives are
expected to serve and develop the society throughout their tenure.
Democracy ensures that we are ruled by those who are no better than
what we deserve.
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Impact on Nature:-
Visit any tourist place and you will see plastics, bottles, papers littered
around. If the individuals were educated to care about the society, nature
and their surroundings, would they have done this? We have very little
concern about nature, but complain about lack of running water in the
taps. Look at the way the educated crowd screams and makes fun of
animals at zoos, forest safaris, etc. Look at how much open space we
leave around while constructing a new house, how much public space we
encroach, and then complain about lack of air and light, water clogging
during rains, etc.
Look how we DEMAND for more plastic bags at shops even for small
items. I have even seen the educated crowd arguing with shop keepers
demanding plastic bags even for silly items they purchase, and some
argue in English! As if whatever you speak, as long as it is in English, it is
always right. Can‟t we even carry a single bag of our own?
I am I plus my surroundings, if I do not preserve the latter, then I do not
preserve myself.

Below are discussed some ways most of the Education Systems followed
in today‟s world are a failure.






FLAWS OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS
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 FAILURE TO IMPART TRUE EDUCATION

To educate in the truest sense therefore, is about allowing our children
the opportunity to explore their immense potential in a safe, supportive
and sensory rich environment. The real job of any education is to help
students find themselves. Unfortunately, this is not what always
happens within the narrow confines of the modern day classroom.
Albert Einstein once said “Education is that which remains, if one has
forgotten everything one learned in school.”
The predominant conventional educational system is full of bugs, some
of which can be realized below:
Firstly, our education is confined to schools and colleges. It has
become a process of spoon feeding. “Spoon feeding in the long run
teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon” were the words
of
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E.M.Forster. We are being fed with facts and knowledge. Not art,
not books, but life itself is the true basis of teaching and learning.
Cramming of facts and dates, hi-fi mathematical formulas, theories
and doctrines should be at college levels when one has chosen his area of
interest. What will the history pay a doctor or a mathematician, or
medical terms to a historian?
Secondly, an art can only be learned from a workshop of those
who are earning their bread from it. Modern education has spread
more ignorance than knowledge. Most of the women even don‟t know,
where, the fabric they are wearing, came from. The word “How” is
missing in our world which causes ignorance.
“Education…has produced a vast population able to read but unable to
distinguish what is worth reading.” says
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G. M. Trevelyan.
Thirdly, all education is bad which is not self-
education.Presently, children after school are sent to
tuitions.This is a clear question mark on the ability of school
teacher. Homework tutorials are mushrooming up in our society.

2
E.M. Forster(Edward Morgan Forster) was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist. He is
known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy.
3
G.M. Trevelyan was a prolific author and also a British historian.
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Students are thought of like they can‟t do anything on their own and so
are sent even to do the homework. Homework is a waste of time, if it is to
repeat class work done today or to be repeated as class work to be done
tomorrow.
Our schooling does not leave us with time to get
educated. Mark Twain once said that” I have never let my schooling
interfere with my education”. Our child‟s normal routine has become to
wake up early, brush up their minds with light reading, go to school, then
go to tuition and finally come home and do the homework.
Finally our education is producing machines out of pupil.They
read books, they speak books and they do books.Discussing in
class lead to complications, which remains as confusions for a life time if
left untreated. Vladimir Nabokov, a U.S critic, poet and novelist says
“Discussion in class, which means letting twenty young blockheads and
two cocky neurotics discuss something that neither their teacher nor
they know.”
 HINDERS THE OVERALL GROWTH OF CHILDREN

The current learning environment has unfortunately failed to recognize
that there are important landmarks and stages of development that take
place within each child, and that sometimes the way children are taught
can interfere with these phases.

Learning is Sensory

“Learning is experience. Everything else is just information”
Einstein

To begin with we need to understand that learning first comes in through
our senses. Experiences and sensations are learning, and therefore
sensory rich environments are imperative to learning. Unfortunately
many of our educational practices today assume that people learn best if
given lots of information in either lecture or 2-D form. Students are
expected to sit still, keep their eyes forward and take notes.

Carla Hannaford in her book Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All
In Your Head notes that in general current formal relies too strongly on
language as the medium of instruction. Words, she says, though
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important, are only bits of information. They are not experimental and
are poor substitutes for the directness of hands-on-learning. Words can
only be understood if they produce some kind of image in the mind of
the learner – if students cannot access the underlying images, then the
words are not comprehensible. Experiences on the other hand are direct
and real, they involve the senses, emotions and movements that engage
the child fully. There is no substitute for the force and vividness of actual
experience.

The Role of Movement

It is a sobering fact that physical activity has declined by 75% since the
turn of the century. Children today are just not as active as previous
generations, largely due to their media-companions – the television set,
the computer and the play station.

Movement activates the neural wiring -throughout the body, making the
whole body the instrument of learning. Recent research is helping to
explain how movement directly benefits the nervous system. Muscular
activities, particularly coordinated movements, appear to stimulate the
production of neurotrophins which are natural substances that stimulate
the growth of nerve cells and increase the number of neural connections
in the brain.

Unfortunately, throughout school, children are taught not to move their
bodies during class. They are also taught to keep their eyes forward and
to only look at the teacher, the blackboard or their book. These
classroom restrictions ignore the fact that seeing is intimately connected
to movement.

In a study of more that 500 Canadian children, students who spent an
extra hour each day in gym class performed notably better on exams
than less active children.

Movement is now understood to be essential to learning, creative
thought and high level formal reasoning. It is time to consciously bring
integrative movement back into every aspect of our lives and realize that
something this simple and natural can be the source of miracles.

Unique Learning Styles

We also exhibit a preference for one brain hemisphere over the
other. Your „dominance profile‟ for example left brained, left eye
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dominance, right ear dominance and so on will determine the way you
take in information and learn.

Each hemisphere of the brain develops and processes information in a
specific way. The logic hemisphere (usually the left) deals with details
and processes of language and linear patterns (all very academic and
ordered).

By contrast the right hemisphere (also called the gestalt hemisphere –
meaning whole processing or global as compared to linear), deals with
images (imagination!), rhythm, emotion and intuition. The „big picture‟
processing happens here.

The logical (left brain dominant) learner generally does very well with
academic types of learning as is currently found in our schooling
systems). These children are more likely to have high self-esteem and
experience less stress, because school work is geared toward their
competencies.
Our educational system favors students who are left brained, can process
linearly, take in information auditorially and visually, look at the teacher
and repeat pieces of information in a logical, linear fashion. This
dominance profile however, only makes up, on average 15% of the
student population. These learners are the ones who are usually
reinforced with the gifted and talented label by the educational system.

Ease with language requires the words and proper sentence structure
from the left and the image, emotion and dialect from the right). True
intelligence comes from the ability of using our whole
brain. Poor development of this critical link between the hemispheres
can result in learning and attention problems.

The more we access both hemispheres, the more intelligently we are able
to function, in fact, it is necessary to use both hemispheres to be
maximally proficient at anything.

Going Against the Grain

Of great relevance to our children‟s current situation within the
classroom, is the fact that the gestalt hemisphere (right) exhibits a
growth spurt of dendrites between ages 4 and 7 and the logic hemisphere
(left) a growth spurt between ages 7 and 9. The failure to recognize these
landmarks is a root cause of many problems within education today.

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At the very time when gestalt function is being accessed (between ages 7
and 9), the British Curriculum of education begins alphabet and number
recognition, with reading following in quick order (all of these are logic
hemisphere functions). This might not be a problem if we involved
image, emotion, and movement and built on the student‟s imagination
and vocabulary. Strangely, we do just the opposite. We teach children to
“sit still”, learn letters and numbers in a linear fashion (including
printing, a very linear, logic hemisphere process), and read books with
simplistic vocabulary, no emotion and few images. We go directly
against natural neurological development.

“Demanding that the young child prematurely develop
symbolic capacitymeans that programs which nature intends
for that period, are severelyneglected. Ironically, these early
programmes are the foundations we needfor true abstract,
symbolic capacity later. Since nature’s imperative isto follow
the model, however, children have no choice but to try.With
no neural structures developed for this capacity, a majority of
children are defeated before they begin. Guilt and a loss of
self-imageresults from their inability, while we continually
test them to showhow they fail to measure up”

-Joseph Chilton Pearce


How Danish Schools Respect the Natural Brain Development

The Danish school system, respecting natural brain development
patterns, does not start children in school until seven years of age. They
teach writing and reading from a holistic, gestalt processing format and
then move to the details later, around age eight, when the logic
hemisphere is ready to handle it. Reading is not taught until age eight –
and Denmark boasts 100% literacy.

When learning to read, the teachers ask the children to choose a favorite
song which she writes in cursive and then has the children follow the
words as they sing. This establishes an emotional-relational connection,
so important to the memory process, since memory is closely linked to
emotion in the limbic system. There is a lot of movement and rhythm
play in each learning process.

In the Danish public school system, students don‟t begin school until age
7 and are not tested until approximately age 14. Their first tests measure
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only linguistic, scientific, technical and mathematical skills. The final
exam, given at age 17 or 18, is not at all like the final exams you might
remember from high school. The Danish final demands much more
integrative formal reasoning.

Students choose when they will take their final exam. Each is given a
piece of art and a piece of literature, poetry or prose (usually one of the
classics). They have a period of time to write the exam, usually a couple
of weeks to a month. They are expected to prepare an integrated
dissertation tying their assigned pieces to history, biology, physics,
chemistry, language mathematics, art and social sciences. This final
exam is written in two languages and then presented to a committee that
interviews the student to determine eligibility for graduation.

Each class lesson in the Danish Schools is replete with art, music,
movement and cooperative group work. Cooperative learning encourages
students to interact, share their learning preferences, and listen to and
learn from one another. Social interaction occurring in the course of all
these educational activities honour individual differences and gifts, thus
eliminating the labels and limitations to individual initiative and
creativity.

“In my observation, based on years of work with schools and
schoolchildren, the labels used for specific learning difficulties
are generallyarbitary and non-pathological ….more often than
not, labeling leadsto oversimplification and insensitivity to the
very real, very uniquepeople behind the label. Sadly, in some
ways, we have trapped thesechildren – and adults – in a
diminished view of themselves and theirpotential for
learning”

Carla Hannaford

 SUPPRESSES CREATIVITY, KILLS INDIVIDUALITY

The examination and evaluation system tests only a narrow range of
skills, especially those of memory and suffers from grave errors, so much
and so, that people question the legitimacy of a modern education
system itself. Education at all levels put an undue strain upon the nerves
of the Indian students and makes them crammers, imitators and unfit
for original work and thought. It lays emphasis on giving students ready-
made knowledge, systematically and neatly organized in the form of
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lessons, units and text book. It does not provide the basis for creative
thinking. At all the stages of education, from preliminary through
secondary right up-to the college stage makes mind a store-house of
knowledge. It not only discourages original thinking, but also efforts for
pursuit of excellence. It incites youth to chase blindly for success
materialistically, which is mainly based on ruthless competition.

Human creativity is bulletproof, or so we are led to believe. The system,
our parents, and the world are constantly telling us we have plenty of
time to do this and that, that whatever dream we have can wait until
we‟ve focused in on our studies, got a degree, got a job.
But understand, that it‟s these comments that are silently shooting down
the minds of future Walt Disney‟s and Steve Jobs; chipping the armour
that protects our ideas. Poisoning our creativity.
Sir Ken Robinson,
4
TED 2006 :“All kids have tremendous talents,
and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly. My contention is that
creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should
treat it with the same status.”
The system smothers talents. It ignores creativity. They don‟t care about
the individual, about building. They don‟t care, even, about creation.
A person may be extremely academic and they may fly through the
questions they are set. But they will be so busy flying through the
questions that they won‟t have time to educate themselves, or get ideas,
take opportunities, grow a personality.







4
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-
profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”.
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INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM
WHERE DOES IT GO WEAK?
Education has been a problem in our country and lack of it has been
blamed for all sorts of evil for hundreds of years. Even Rabindranath
Tagore wrote lengthy articles about how Indian education system needs
to change. Funny thing is that from the colonial times, few things have
changed. We have established IITs, IIMs, law schools and other
institutions of excellence; students now routinely score 90% marks so
that even students with 90+ percentage find it difficult to get into the
colleges of their choice; but we do more of the same old stuff.
 Rote Learning
Rote learning still plagues our system, students study only to score
marks in exams, and sometimes to crack exams like IIT JEE, AIIMS or
CLAT. If once the youngsters prepared for civil services and bank officers
exams, they now prepare to become engineers. If there are a few centres
of educational excellence, for each of those there are thousands of
mediocre and terrible schools, colleges and now even universities that do
not meet even minimum standards. If things have changed a little bit
somewhere, elsewhere things have sunk into further inertia, corruption
and lack of ambition.
Creating a few more schools or allowing hundreds of colleges and private
universities to mushroom is not going to solve the crisis of education in
India. And a crisis it is – we are in a country where people are spending
their parent‟s life savings and borrowed money on education – and even
then not getting standard education, and struggling to find employment
of their choice. In this country, millions of students are victim of an
unrealistic, pointless, mindless rat race. The mind numbing competition
and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and originality of
millions of Indian students every year, it also drives brilliant students to
commit suicide.
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 Education simply a means of improving economic status?
We live in a country where majority of the people see education as the
means of climbing the social and economic ladder. If the education
system is failing – then it is certainly not due to lack of demand for good
education, or because a market for education does not exist.
Education system in India is failing because of more intrinsic reasons.
There are systemic faults that do not let our demand for good education
translate into a great marketplace with excellent education services. Let‟s
explore something else in this one: what should change in India
education system? What needs to be fixed at the earliest? Here is what
needs to be:
 Zero Focus on skill based education
Our education system is geared towards teaching and testing knowledge
at every level as opposed to teaching skills. “Give a man a fish and you
feed him one day, teach him how to catch fishes and you feed him for a
lifetime.” I believe that if you teach a man a skill, you enable him for a
lifetime. Knowledge is largely forgotten after the semester exam is over.
Still, year after year Indian students focus on cramming information.
The best crammers are rewarded by the system.
 Creativity, original thinking, research and innovation given
no value
Our education system rarely rewards what deserves highest academic
accolades. Deviance is discouraged. Risk taking is mocked. Our testing
and marking systems need to be built to recognize original contributions,
in form of creativity, problem solving, valuable original research and
innovation. If we could do this successfully Indian education system
would have changed overnight.
 Learning by Memorizing, the biggest flaw in our education
system is perhaps that it incentivizes memorizing above originality.
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 Lack of smart teaching faculty
For way too long teaching became the sanctuary of the incompetent.
Teaching jobs are until today widely regarded as safe, well-paying, risk-
free and low-pressure jobs. Once a teacher told me in high school “Well,
if you guys don‟t study it is entirely your loss – I will get my salary at the
end of the month anyway.” He could not put across the lack of incentive
for being good at teaching any better. Thousands of terrible teachers all
over India are wasting valuable time of young children every day all over
India.









HOW CAN AN EDUCATION SYSTEM BE
IMPROVISED?
 Providing Education for all
It is high time to encourage a breed of superstar teachers. The internet
has created this possibility – the performance of a teacher now need not
be restricted to a small classroom. Now the performance of a teacher can
be opened up for the world to see. The better teacher will be more
popular, and acquire more students. That‟s the way of the future. We
need leaders, entrepreneurs in teaching positions, not salaried
people trying to hold on to their mantle.
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 Implement massive technology infrastructure for
education
India needs to embrace internet and technology if it has to teach all of its
huge population, the majority of which is located in remote villages. Now
that we have computers and internet, it makes sense to invest in
technological infrastructure that will make access to knowledge easier
than ever. Instead of focusing on outdated models of brick and mortar
colleges and universities, we need to create educational delivery
mechanisms that can actually take the wealth of human knowledge to the
masses. The tools for this dissemination will be cheap smartphones,
tablets and computers with high speed internet connection. While all
these are becoming more possible than ever before, there is lot of
innovation yet to take place in this space.
 Re-define the purpose of the education system
Our education system is still a colonial education system geared towards
generating babus and pen-pushers under the newly acquired skin of
modernity. We may have the most number of engineering graduates in
the world, but that certainly has not translated into much technological
innovation here. Rather, we are busy running the call centres of the rest
of the world – that is where our engineering skills end.
The goal of our new education system should be to create entrepreneurs,
innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers and writers who can establish the
foundation of a knowledge based economy rather than the low-quality
service provider nation that we are turning into.
 Effective deregulation
Until today, an institute of higher education in India must be operating
on a not-for profit basis. This is discouraging for entrepreneurs and
innovators who could have worked in these spaces. On the other hand,
many people are using education institutions to hide their black money,
and often earning a hefty income from education business through clever
structuring and therefore bypassing the rule with respect to not earning
profit from recognized educational institutions. As a matter of fact,
private equity companies have been investing in some education service
provider companies which in turn provide services to not-for-profit
educational institutions and earn enviable profits. Sometimes these
institutes are so costly that they are outside the rich of most Indian
students.
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There is an urgent need for effective de-regulation of Indian education
sector so that there is infusion of sufficient capital and those who provide
or create extraordinary educational products or services are adequately
rewarded.
 Take mediocrity out of the system
Our education system today encourages mediocrity – in students, in
teachers, throughout the system. It is easy to survive as a mediocre
student, or a mediocre tea
cher in an educational institution. No one shuts down a mediocre college
or mediocre school. Hard work is always tough, the path to excellence is
fraught with difficulties. Mediocrity is comfortable. Our education
system will remain sub-par or mediocre until we make it clear that it is
not ok to be mediocre. If we want excellence, mediocrity cannot be
tolerated. Mediocrity has to be discarded as an option. Life of those who
are mediocre must be made difficult so that excellence
 Personalize education – one size does not fit all
Assembly line education prepares assembly line workers. However, the
drift of economic world is away from assembly line production. Indian
education system is built on the presumption that if something is good
for one kid, it is good for all kids.
Some kids learn faster, some are comparatively slow. Some people are
visual learners, others are auditory learners, and still some others learn
faster from experience. If one massive monolithic education system has
to provide education to everyone, then there is no option but to assume
that one size fits all. If however, we can effectively decentralize
education, and if the government did not obsessively control what would
be the “syllabus” andwhat will be the method of instruction, there could
be an explosion of new and innovative courses geared towards serving
various niches of learners.
Take for example, the market for learning dancing. There are very
different dance forms that attract students with different tastes. More
importantly, different teachers and institutes have developed different
ways of teaching dancing. This could never happen if there was a central
board of dancing education which enforced strict standards of what will
be taught and how such things are to be taught.
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Central regulation kills choice, and stifles innovation too. As far as
education is concerned, availability of choices, de-regulation,
profitability, entrepreneurship and emergence of niche courses are all
inter-connected.
 Allow private capital in education
The government cannot afford to provide higher education to all the
people in the country. It is too costly for the government to do so. The
central government spends about 4% of budget expenditure on
education, compared to 40% on defence. Historically, the government
just did not have enough money to spend on even opening new schools
and universities, forget overhauling the entire system and investing in
technology and innovation related to the education system. Still, until
today, at least on paper only non-profit organizations are allowed to run
educational institutions apart from government institutions. Naturally,
the good money, coming from honest investors who want to earn from
honest but high impact businesses do not get into education sector.
Rather, there are crooks, money launderers and politicians opening
“private” educational institutions which extract money from the
educational institution through creative structuring. The focus is on
marketing rather than innovation or providing great educational service
– one of the major examples of this being IIPM.
Allowing profit making will encourage serious entrepreneurs, innovators
and investors to take interest in the education sector. The government
does not have enough money to provide higher education of reasonable
quality to all of us, and it has no excuse to prevent private capital from
coming into the educational sector.
 Make reservation irrelevant
We have reservation in education today because education is not
available universally. Education has to be rationed. This is not a long –
term solution. If we want to emerge as a country build on a knowledge
economy, driven by highly educated people – we need to make good
education so universally available that reservation will lose its meaning.
There is no reservation in online education – because it scales. Today top
universities worldwide are taking various courses online, and today you
can easily attend a live class taught by a top professor of Harvard
University online if you want, no matter which country is belong to. This
is the future, this is the easy way to beat reservation and make it
inconsequential.
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Role of Technology in Education
No generation is more at ease with collaborative, online technologies
that the today‟s digital natives who are immersed in computing
environment. Where pen and notebooks formed the toolkit of previous
generations, today‟s learners come to class armed with laptops,
smartphone and iPod. The current era of pervasive technology has
substantial implication to education. Technological innovation, a
hallmark of academic research, is changing the way that students learn
and universities teach.

Say for instance, is technology causing education to improve over time or
have we just been catching up with the trend of educational technology?
See how schools use to operate during the 90’s. Teachers use to
explain a topic via black boards. Students on the other hand could hardly
find any extra reference or material on that very topic easily. Teachers
and text books were considered to be the source of knowledge. Even the
teachers used to stick to the contents of text books which was
infrequently updated and contains many errors. Many other problems
also need to be addressed. Now if we see the present scenario of school
then we are sorry to say that not much has changed since the 90ies. We
still are using black board; we are still using the contents of text books
which are too old to needs updation. Teachers are referring to the same
text books are the only source of information and knowledge available to
most of the students as well as teachers. So we see that almost nothing
has changed ever since. So when a computer technology can change and
when a mobile technology can change why cannot the educational
technology?




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EDUCATION WITHOUT TECHNOLOGY V/S EDUCATION
WITH TECHNOLOGY
To measure the benefits of using information technology we are dividing
education into two categories:-
If we impart education without technology then these are the outcomes:-
 It is Passive.
 It is formal.
 It is instructor driven.
 It is time dependent.
 Content defined by others.
 Grade is given only after final evaluation.
 Not all the students fully participate.

Now, if we impart education with technology then these are the
outcomes:-
 It is Active.
 It is informal.
 It is student driven.
 It is not time dependent.
 Content defined by students.
 Individual contribution is measured.
 Progress is accessed throughout.
 All students fully participate.

Its positives outnumbered the negatives and now, with technology,
education has taken a whole new meaning that it leaves us with no doubt
that our educational system has been transformed owing to the ever-
advancing technology. With technology, students are more than ever
engaged in creating their own knowledge.
“Technology and education are a great combination if used
together with a right reason and vision.”
Technology improves education to a great extent and it has now
become a need for revolutionizing education for the better. With
technology, educators, students and parents have a variety of learning
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tools at their fingertips. Here are some of the ways in which
technology improves education over time:
 Teachers can collaborate to share their ideas and
resource online: They can communicate with others across the
world in an instant, meet the shortcomings of their work, refine it
and provide their students with the best. This approach definitely
enhances the practice of teaching.
 Students can develop valuable research skills at a young
age: Technology gives students immediate access to an abundance
of quality information which leads to learning at much quicker
rates than before.
 Students and teachers have access to an expanse of
material: There are plenty of resourceful, credible websites
available on the Internet that both teachers and students can
utilize. The Internet also provides a variety of knowledge and
doesn‟t limit students to one person‟s opinion.
 Online Learning is now an equally credible option: Face-
to-face interaction is huge, especially in the younger years, but
some students work better when they can go at their own pace.
Online education is now accredit and has changed the way we view
education.
 Distance learning and online programs are gradually
gaining a firm foothold in academic institutions all over
the world
Studies have shown that more than two-thirds of all academic
instruction in the world offer online courses. Most of them
consider distance learning as key in advancing their mission,
increasing access to education.

There are innumerous instances till date where we can see the
improvement in education, once it embraced technology. Here we state a
few remarkable ones of them to provide you with a more realistic picture
of the whole scenario. Here‟s the list along with the references to the
originals:
 The Flipped Classroom: This popular technological approach
has gotten to everybody‟s ears by now. It is a practice in which,
students watch lecture videos as homework and discussion is
carried on them in the class-time by the teachers. It has resulted in
a remarkably better student performance, with noticeable grade
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boost-up. Students can now learn at their own pace and save class-
time for interaction.
 Effectiveness of EdTech on Mathematics for K-12:
Technology has proved to be effective for making students
remarkable technologies, which in my opinion should be brought
to the light. Computer-managed learning is a program that uses
computers to assess student learning on Math and assign them
with appropriate Math material, which they can work on to score
and receive a chart of their progress for self-assessment;
Comprehensive models such as Cognitive Tutor and I Can Learn
use computer-aided instruction as well as non-computer activities
for students to approach Math; Supplemental CAI technology
consists of individualized computer-assisted instruction (CAI), to
provide additional instruction at students‟ assessed levels.
Findings indicate that educational technology applications produce
a positive effect on Mathematics achievement.
 Long-term research indicative of the positives of
technology on learning: Researches have been performed to
address to the question, does the use of computer technology affect
student achievement in traditional classrooms as compared to
classrooms that do not use technology? An extensive literature
search and a systematic review process were employed and insights
about the state of the field, implications for technology use, and
prospects for future were discussed.

 Educational Technology improves student learning
outcomes: Evidence suggests that educational technologies can
improve student achievement, so long as such tools are integrated
thoughtfully into teaching and learning. When digital capabilities
like, online environments are incorporated meaningfully into
instruction, students have new opportunities to learn and achieve.

 The effect of technology on education depends on the
design of instruction: The design of the instruction accounts for
more variance in how and why people learn than the technology
used to deliver the instruction. Educators and educational
researchers should be encouraged to focus on determining how to
better integrate the use of a given technology to facilitate learning,
rather than asking if it works or if one is more effective than
another.

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Summary
Education can be summed up at a basic level as referring to an experience
or act that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability
of an individual. Education and its ways have undergone a lot of changes
with time, though not very significantly everywhere. Where earlier the
process of educating people depended on a single teacher/master who gave
lessons to the pupils on different subjects, now we have specialized
administrative systems where subjects are categorized and teachers are
recruited accordingly. Each country has its own system of education and
each system has its own advantages and weaknesses. Indian education
system is considered better than many other countries‟ systems but it has
anindeed failed to educate the students in real sense. Our system teaches us
memorizing of raw facts and data, which are of no use in real life. It
suppresses creativity, and kills the individuality of the students, by not
focusing on skill-based education. Not only in India, even countries like
America, where 43 % teens drop out of school due to lack of interest, have
failed to develop a proper education system. Education system should focus
on experience that involve the senses, emotions and movements that
engage the child fully, rather than making the student sit still, keep their
eyes forward and make notes. These classroom restrictions ignore the fact
that Movement, creative thought and high level formal reasoning are as or
more crucial than reading books and getting „marks‟ for the overall
development of an individual . The education system is simply producing
machines out of pupil. Our System has produced a vast population able to
read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. The current learning
environment has unfortunately failed to recognize that there are important
landmarks and stages of development that take place within each child,
learning first comes in through our senses and physical movements, rather
than by listening to words. Even Rabindranath Tagore wrote lengthy
articles about how Indian education system needs to change. China, Japan
and India follow strict approaches to force students to study subjects which
do not interest them and hence their system, though might have succeeded
in some cases has failed in engraving the true man from the child. On the
other hand, Countries like Denmark and Finland have proved that
providing leniency and focusing on individual‟s creativity and child‟s
natural brain development, discarding rote learning and forceful methods
of teaching can be a much better way of education than the conventional
way. Efforts are being made by entrepreneurs, teachers and educationalists
to provide better approaches for teaching than the conventional ones.
Modern Technological methods like Online Education courses, digital
learning, and distant learning are progressively being adopted to impart
good and effective education to all.

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REFERENCES

http://bupinder21.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/modern-education-
system-the-pros-and-cons/
http://k12educationsystem.com/top-k-12-education-system-in-the-
world/
http://edtechreview.in/news/681-technology-in-education
http://www.hitxp.com/articles/society/negative-impacts-modern-
education-self-centrism/

http://privatejobshub.blogspot.in/2013/04/present-education-system-
in-india-how.htmledge and learn something from the experienced
people which will increase their communication skills.

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/15612069-the-top-reasons-
why-schools-are-killing-creativity-in-students
TEDX 2006

http://www.onelifesuccess.net/education-kills-creativity-do-schools-
kill-our-innovation/

http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-system-india.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sir-ken-robinson/do-schools-kill-
creativity_b_2252942.html
http://www.gnu.org/education/edu-system-india.html


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