The need for quality education in the country has regularly been stressed in this country. The cliché of education being the backbone of the nation has always been there, but it is this very backbone which in recent times has taken a battering.
The ugly and gross manner in which questions at various examinations have been leaked have clearly given the lie to the idea that education in the country is on the right track.
It is not on the right track, but what is even more disturbing is the fact that no one --- and that includes the minister for education and others at the senior levels of the education structure --- is willing to take responsibility for the slide. No one has resigned and no heads have rolled. That is tragic as well as an embarrassment.
Besides, the issue of quality education necessarily involves education that encompasses a wide field of knowledge which the young must traverse. In these past many years, perspectives on education have changed, for the worse.
Knowledge has been in decline and subjects that offer chances of quick employment have taken over. In other words, education has been getting increasingly trapped in a vicious cycle of corporate culture, with the result that subjects like literature and history are no more part of the syllabi at a number of largely private higher educational institutions.
We do need quality education, of course. But the education system we are today burdened with is not the means by which we can go about fulfilling our aspirations. There is a clear need today for a wholesale re-evaluation of the system of education in the larger interest of the young.
The various fields of education must be reshaped in such a way that they produce intellectually developed young people in the country.
And with education must come that essential ingredient of social progress, namely, employment opportunities. We have to keep the educated young in the country. Only a fully developed system of utilizing their talent and expertise can ensure that.
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