The ideas about the need to look at education systems critically and change them is catching on, and spreading to smaller town and areas as well, as is evident from the article below.

Overhaul Education

Editorial in Herald, Panjim, Goa, India. 21/10/03

Already, we are feeling the pinch of an ineffective education system. Young Goans, we've seen for decades have earned their degrees by the thousands, but then, have had no place to go, literally. Their aimless education has forced hundreds, if not thousands of Goan youths to leave homes and seek greener pastures overseas. Be it as cooks or butlers aboard cruise-liners and hotels abroad, as one former chief minister, Dr Luis Proto Barbosa, was famously quoted as having said, to mechanics, welders and drivers in the middle-east. And, of those that have stayed behind either out of choice or compulsion, as many as 35,000, lie listed as unemployed on the live registers of the State-administered Employment Exchange.

It is also not very uncommon to find in Goa graduates of science, be it in the field of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology or any other, perched on desks and working as clerks or officers in the scores of bank branches, dotting this tiny State. Or perhaps, as accounts and administration clerks in some private firms. Ditto for graduates in other fields like arts and commerce. Another significant chunk, are employed either as front-office executives in this State's volatile hospitality industry. And, most of them for a remuneration package that will hardly pay for a decent living. In short, it can arguably be concluded that our education system is skewed, and has generally, turned our youth into a mass of literate but unproductive human resource. A human resource on the loose, without purpose or goal. Thus, it could arguably be concluded that those holding responsibilities somewhere down or up our education policy-making hierarchy, both the saffron as well as secular-blooded, have erred by a mile... repeatedly and incessantly over the years.

Among the most obvious lacuna of the existing 10-plus-two secondary and higher secondary education system, is the absolute lack of in-built mechanisms that teach the student to learn oneself. Whether within the curriculum or without, social-scientists by the dozens have concluded and universally accepted, that a student at the right age must be taught, counseled or cajoled into discovering his/her own latent talents. Thence will he/she be better equipped to make a considered and better choice of a higher education. But our educationists, ironically, cannot themselves read a simple writing on wall. And, if they've read it, they are guilty of having done nothing about it. Because, saffron or secular, educationists in office have for donkeys years miserably failed to re-structure the curriculum to include adequate aptitude-discovering and personality development components for our secondary level (Std V to X) students.

Besides, it is not just the educationists charged with the responsibility of chalking out curricula who are to be blamed. The onus also lies on heads of individual institutions or educational societies, more-so because the educational structure at the secondary level allows them ample scope to step in. Some have indeed stepped in, but many if not most, have simply ignored this responsibility of introducing sufficient number of sessions, designed and conducted by trained professionals, to ensure that students learn to be 'educated' and not just instructed.

Given the difficulty Goan youths, particularly the educated, are encountering to get commensurate jobs and the consequent frustration setting in, it's obviously time that Chief Minister, Manohar Parrikar, wakes up to the reality of our education system. Indeed, to be fair to him, Mr Parrikar, who presides over the education ministry, may have made some notable contributions. Be it the 'Cyberage Scheme' or the couple of others that offer government assistance for professional educational pursuits, the benefits have trickled down to a section of the student community.

But these measures, though politically potent and capable of winning him admirers, would go down in the ultimate analysis as cosmetic and merely benefiting the cream of the student community. Education is one area of governance that must, by all means, go beyond politics. It's not just enough for the State to ensure that Goans only turn 'IITians' by the scores only to serve alien nations and economies. These brilliant ones, like Mr Parrikar himself, have the wherewithal to get up there, and, at the most may only need just a push. It's the larger mass of students that lack the brilliance and who are forced into the general pool of non-professional education, to whom the State have a greater responsibility to. It is this segment of our learning young and their needs that Mr Parrikar must respond to. He is therefore, expected to shun the nuances of mere administration and let the lesser bureaucrats manage this chore. He, given his much-touted image, must go beyond petty administrative issues such as appointing Mr X, Y or Z, as director of education, and instead concentrate on triggering a process of reform in education policy.

He must inspire educationists, most of who have held office for long years in Goa, to own up and say mea culpa and engage in an in-depth exercise of thought and interaction. Be it a principal of an institution, or a bureaucrat at any level in the gigantic department of education, and not just the saffron ones, must all be made to tick their minds and roll their pens to ink an education system that departs from the present. One that is suitably modified, re-structured and effectively re-defined, both at the micro as well as macro level, for the better. The chalta hai attitude will just not do, not at least in this important sphere of governance that holds the potential of elevating our beautiful State to the real numero uno position.