Education System for Technologically Advanced Modern World

Education System for the Technologically Advanced Modern World:

This is a draft which is in initial stages of development, there is lot of work to finish it.

Number of Children attending government schools in Telangana is huge, providing quality education to all these children is a very challenging task. When proposing solutions to these problems, it is very important to judge them based on these following factors 1. How easy to implement them. 2. How easy to manage them 3. Use of technology to automate most of the tasks. 4. Careful design of the systems to solve concerns of students or teachers.

–more points to be added

Purpose of the Education:

Main purpose of education is to make students think and ask questions. When I think of education system, One common event which happend in primary schools keeps recurring in my mind, where students are repeating after teacher, saying A for Apple, B for Ball etc. You go to any elementary classes, you could hear those students chanting without really understanding what they are. Ideally, teacher should be asking students what do you know of words starting with A or B. This gives students an opportunity to think and answer, even if it is wrong it is ok.

I think this is much more deeper problem than it potrays. Since we don’t speak English language from childhood, we don’t hear that many words while growing up, it becomes difficult for children to recollect those words when teacher asks the questions. I wonder, weather memorization of concepts/ideas rather than understanding is actively ingrained to a childs brain right from very young age.

On a much deeper level, I think having too many languages to learn also has some contribution to it. I am not sure of any country where you have to learn these many languages and also more importantly, how it effects learning and communication ability. But, there is some evidence that learning/knowing multiple languages is better for brain. I am not sure how conclusive this is.

(Disclaimer: I am not against any religion or faith). One more problem which is deeply imbibed in our culture is Sanskrit slokas which pujaris chant or speak. We have taken for granted that they chant something and we repeat it without really understanding and would never bother to asks or understand their meaning. A child seeing these events would normalize that chanting/memorizing something without understanding is ok.

Unfinished. More coming soon.

Examination System: Lowest hanging fruit to improve the education system is to fix the examination system. Simplest example is CBSE vs State Boards examination styles. Telangana Examination system is more memory based and rote learning based compared to CBSE.

One way to improve the system is change the examination from pen and paper to computer based examination. Computer based examinations gives us freedom to completely reimagine how you can test students, instead of memorizing, rote learning and writing at the time of examination. You can test the same subjects visually or graphically or in a Question and Answer format.

It is difficult to implement this for all classes of students and also in rural areas. Best candiates to test this system are engineering students especially computer science to start of with. For Engineering Students, it is better to move to a more practical based examination system. For example, in a computer programming class, you can give them a large code which contains bugs in it and ask them to debug and fix it. Main reason why engineering students are not hireable is because the whole system is not practical based. Everyone know that you can mug up last 3 years of question papers and get good grades.

Unfinished. More coming soon.

Syllabus:

I also feel, State Syllabus has too much concepts and subjects. I don’t think knowing that many would be helpful in fact it is harmful for majority of the students. Focus of the teachers have shifted from development of skills of the students to completion of the portion. Goal of the education system should be to help student develop the skill of learning not simply covering wide range of concepts.

There are definitely some bright students who would want to learn advance concepts, having either advanced classes for them separately or guiding them in the right direction would be enough.

Unfinished. More coming soon.

Role of Technology in Education: This is huge, needs lot of thought and research.

Use of Digital Technologies in examination, this would be a game changer …. people don’t complain this

Pen and Paper: It is a static system. Limted Information, you can only write stuff that fits in a paper.

Digital: It is a dynamic system, for example if you have an image, you can zoom in, zoom out and see to the smallest detail. It is an unlimited system, you can write how much ever you want.

Communication Skills:

One aspect of Education System is to learn how to think, asking questions and how to learn. But, another major aspect of it is how to express your thoughts.

IT could be orally either through presentation or informally: I do see this problem in majority of the students, generally it is wrongly attributed to English language but it is much more than that. Teaching this at a very young age would make night and day difference in a students life. Learning something at a very young age is very easy compared to learning at adult life especially when it comes to communication.

It could be on a written format: This is consistently tested through the examinations.

Oral presentaion from a very young age should be part of examination, not in a final exam but definately at the mid terms. If possible it should be a seperate class where a student should be tested on their presentation skills. Oral presentation is very time taking, so creating a seperate class for this will definately not disturb the individual class schedule.

Sports System in Schools: How Monetary incentives for individual schools when they win a sports competition and also sports points based system for college admissions or jobs for students would be a good motivation for schools to focus on sports.

We all know how sports help in physical and mental development of children.

Infrastructure: • Physical Infrastructure • Digital Infrastructure

Extra Curricular Activities: Unfinished.

Decentralization of Education System: Unfinished.

Learning from alternative Schools like Jiddu Krishnamurti’s inspired Schools: Unfinished.

Role of Parents in Improving Education System: How to include parents in making the schools accountable for the education of their children.

Pre-Primary Education:

Primary Education: Unfinished.

Secondary Education: Unfinished.

Higher Education: Unfinished.

Research: Unfinished.