The Problems of India and what we can do about them.
Tags: Education, India, Women, Caste Systems, Corruption

Not to be downright polarising, but India’s problems are immense and too many to count. From casteism, rape, and corruption to the general mindset of the citizens; India is plagued by confusion amongst the people on the pretext of culture and tradition. It’ll take a lifetime of hard work to undo the inter-connected and subliminal acts that have ruined the reputation of our country.

What I’m here to do is to go back to the root of all these problems, education. By giving you context as to why things are the way they are, and what we as students can do about them, it’ll loosen up the frustration and anger I’m sure many of you have thought of as well.

So, where do we begin?

Let’s start with a couple of statistics on the Indian education system.

According to the World Education Services, “With more than 1.5 million schools and about 260 million students in 2015/16, India has the world’s second-largest school system after China.”

India’s literacy rate is 77%, 96% in Kerala is the highest; 66.4% in Andhra Pradesh is the lowest.

According to the CBSE, 88.74% of students that wrote the class 12 board exam have passed in the year 2020.

“Every year on an average 1.5 million students get their degree in engineering. Due to lack of skill required to perform technical jobs less than 20% get employment in their core domain.”

~ bweducation.businessworld.in

India produces the most engineers in the world, more than the US and China combined. It’s a huge priority of Indians to finish their engineering; it attaches a tag and a sort of societal status. You’ve heard me talk about this almost too many times now. What I’m trying to show you is the priorities of the schools and colleges as well. A lot of the schools reflect parents’ wishes to get their child into their school so they can become an engineer or a doctor and go abroad. It has become a business.

The priorities of 20th century school were to create an individual that is capable of doing routine tasks with a rudimentary skillset in a structured and stereotyped environment with no room for inquiry. It isn’t surprising because schools were replicas of factories when they were constructed. They aimed to create workers for factories.

Horace Mann, from Massachusetts, is considered to be the father of Modern Education. He laid down six principles regarding school, according to Science Trends.

Citizens cannot be both free and ignorant

The public needs to pay for, maintain, and control education

Children from all classes should have the same schooling

Education needs to be nonsecular (meaning not religious)

Education needs to use the principles of a free society

The educators and teachers need to be professionally trained

These principles defined education during the 1800s. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much modernisation since then.

Nowadays, this system can’t work due to the digital revolution and the rise of the internet. Careers aren’t jobs that you do for the rest of your life, now, a career can change throughout your life because we aren’t bound to one occupation anymore.

On that thread of occupation, let us segue into the caste system in India.