Indian Family budget and education

Indian Family budget and education

Just consider the most promising and progressive world economies surely you will end with India, emerging as the world leader in this arena. With the speedy progress on economic fronts country is not legging for behind on the fronts of price hike of day to day commodities and life supporting products.

Have a look on following description: A computer lab with high speed internet connectivity & equipped with most modern computer systems, Air conditioned meeting hall, Long, spacious, green tree loaded and shadowed premises, state-of-art indoor game hall, finely architected and well decorate receptionist desk, Olympic sized shaded swimming pool and well dressed staff. Surely you had started thinking about the corporate office and work place of a multinational company. Will you please allow me correcting you, all the above description has nothing to do with a business setup or commercial enterprise. This is all about the modern and high classed boarding school in India. In fact education of children is the most worrying factor for most of Indian parents.

In the Indian economy, middle class, to whom even the American President blamed for the recent price hike in world markets, is working as the back bone of the system. These regular price hikes often disturb the domestic budget of this class but the most destroying thing for the budget of middle class Indian families is the unbelievable increase in expenses related with the education of children. Look at expenses under this head they are showing a huge growth of over 100% during last five years.

In the year 2002 most of recognizing schools in most of metro cities of the country were charging a monthly fee between Rs. 100 and Rs. 300 only but today this monthly fess is raised to minimum of around Rs. 300. Now think of other important expenses head of education of Indian children and this is private tuition, for which parents have to pay almost equal amount of school fee. On the one hand government expenses on primary education are increasing and on the other hand numbers of government schools are showing a constant decline with simultaneously number growth of private school is keeping on increasing and as the natural result of all these is visible in the form of high priced schooling.

Before I conclude this, I would like to ask a very simple question to huge Indian middle class families. I was a secondary school teacher for more than 25 years and still wondering on wisdom of teaching computers to kids who are not still perfect in their mother tongue? Before blaming government just think of our attitude of measuring standard of education only basis of amount paid by us for importing this to our children. Don’t you think until and unless we are not going to change our this attitude we will remain not only deprived of benefits of national economic boost but also will have to face the problem of disturbed domestic budgets due to these increased educational expenses.

True Essence Of Education

True Essence Of Education

Firing and killing of fellow student at one of school located at Gudgaon near the capital city Delhi has not only proved tsunami for the national conscious of the country but also provided a space for debate and put a question mark on our present educational system.

Like the most of life fields educational arena is also dominated by the stiff competition and our present educational system is being looked as the stress source for the students, parents and teachers. Unfortunately our budding generations are not equipped with the training skills of controlling the mind to face and get rid of these stresses.

While reading literature of great Indian philosopher and educationist Swami Vivekanand, I come across with a sentence

“To me the very essence education is the concentration of mind and not the collection of facts.”

Now look at our present educational system, the real factory, a place in true senses for the synchronizing of human mental capacities for memorizing and collection of facts and reproducing the same at appropriate time say examination or during the interview for the job. Our system is emphasizing on collection of facts with a minimal space for the development of wisdom faculty. Students are prompted for acquiring best knowledge but kept deprived of wisdom essential for using this acquired knowledge to its totality in the practical life. We all know human beings are livings with most developed nervous system but surely we are not with infinite storage powers and memories, might be being aware of and realizing this, our forefathers have invented “scripts” to keep the facts in written format for the use of future generations. Probably here lies the failure source of our present educational system.

Kida are forced to face the educational syllabus at the tender age of 2 -3 years, without getting time for maturing their mental abilities, in the form of “Pre nursery” or “Play school”. This is the reflection of pressures of the present educational system on our lives, that I had prepared a computerized presentation of the English alphabets, for our grand children well before their birth. Though being a teacher I was aware of harms of pre mature exposures and hence my oldest grand daughter [almost 3 years] was recently saw this presentation first time.

I come across with an interesting finding. I was taking interview of a computer graduate for the post of service engineer. I asked the candidate about the operating System and told that candidate had installed it for more than fifty times and with a habit of reading the changing screens while the installation. I was surprised to know that person was not aware of number of changing screens during a single and complete installation. This was happening only because this information was not part of syllabus. This is indicating another failure of our present educational system. Students are learning remain rigidly in the frame of known facts and lacks in the use of their imagination powers and observation skills, probably that’s why our most of modern science inventions are incidentals baring a few targeted ones.

I am not denying the power of facts. I know future can get birth only from the uterus of past, failure is the first step on the success roads but surely we need a balance between the collection of facts and acquiring the wisdom for utilizing and analyzing these facts. Only this can work as the true and ideal educational system.