D K Pandita
Although the Britishers succeeded in crushing the Indians physically, yet they could not change the Indian’s mental defiance. The revolution was crushed but the sparks continued to emanate and the fire of revolution remained burning in the hearts of Indians. One of the sparks that emanated from this fire was that of educational revolution. Men in position made efforts to open such educational centers that followed the education pattern of Vedic and Buddha era and were also in keeping with the pattern followed by the other progressive nations of the world.
All these people decided to impart education of nationalism, cooperation and social unity, besides various other subjects. It also aimed at creating in the student love for the country, for society, for independence and for human beings and boycott foreign language, dress, communalism and untouchability. Consequently some such institutions were founded that did not have any interests in the Government financial help and its educational policy. The important ones among these were the Vishwa-Bharti, Vanasthali Vidyapeeth, Gurukul Kangri, Jamia Milia, Aurobindo Ashram, S.N.D.T. University, Vidhya Bhavan, Udaipur etc. In the beginning although these institutions had people’s inner sympathy, they did not receive their solid and open support because of the Government’s wrath. But in course of time with the appearance of Mahatma Gandhi on the political horizon of the country and also of a number of political parties, these institutions received encouragement. These institutions continued their struggle for life during the British in the hope of a better future atmosphere and started developing after the country achieved freedom. Today these are the one of the most renowned institutions not only in India but also in the world.
A common charge, which is leveled against the Indian education, is that it is, from the very beginning, literary in character and that it lacks seriously in vocational, industrial and technical aspects. Nearly all the Commissions and Committees appointed on Indian after 1947 on education from time to time, have reiterated this complain. After independence the attention of the country has been focused on this deficiency and efforts have been made in the sphere of technical and vocational education.
Why vocational and technical education in India?
The vocational and technical education in India has developed mainly in relation to assessed future demand for manpower and has largely been responsible for the growth of our industrial structure. According to the then Planning Commission, “The technical education system represents a national resource of science and technology with specialized laboratories, sophisticated instrumentation facilities and more importantly, teams of highly qualified scientific and engineering personnel on their faculty. These internal resources should be utilized not merely towards technological self-reliance but also to bring about progressive improvement in the quality of technical education.”
All the Education Commissions viz., The Secondary Education Commission (1952-53) also known as the Mudaliar Commission after his name and the Kothari Commission (1964-66) have emphasized the importance of vocationalized education and they have recommended that education at least upto secondary stage must be vocationalized. The Kothari Commission also emphasized the need of production-oriented education and the necessity of work experience for all students at all the stages of education. Many of the recommendations of Education Commission for vocationalization of education could not be fully implemented. Some multi-purpose schools were started according to the Secondary Education Commission, but this scheme was ultimately stopped because it could not succeed. The Basic Education Scheme as advocated by Mahatma Gandhi was a definite step towards vocationalization of education but the Government has not been able to promote this scheme well.
As far as Commercial education is concerned during the period between 1857-1902, it did not show any marked progress like agriculture education. But after 1947 progress has been made to increase and expand institutions and has increased significantly. The expansion of the system normally refers to one, or a combination of an increase in the number of institutions; a growth in student enrolment; an increase in the number of teaching and non- teaching staff, the diversified structure in terms of courses, institutional structures and management styles; and an enhancement of expenditure on the operation and development of the system.
India’s higher education system is the largest system of higher education in Commonwealth countries and second largest in the world with 25 Central Universities, 231 State Universities, five institutions established through State Legislation, 100 Deemed Universities, 31 Institutes of National Importance as on 31st December 2007. In 2008, the total number of university level institutions including 11 private universities was 431, number of colleges- 20,677, teachers was 5.05 lakhs and the number of students enrolled was 116.12 lakhs. Realizing the urgent need of revamping the Indian higher education system the Ministry of Human Resource Development recently proposed to establish 8 new Indian Institutes of Technology, 7 Indian Institutes of Management and 30 Central Universities under the 11th five year plan.
The technical education system in the country covers engineering, technology, management, architecture, pharmacy etc. The Ministry of Human Resource Development supports the programmes at undergraduate, graduate, post-graduate and research levels. The technical education system at the central level comprises of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc), National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and all India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Higher education also deals with the professional education. For this a network of public and private Polytechnics and vocational institutions, controlled and supervised by the councils specializing in each discipline, exist. Professional councils, like All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Distance Education Council (DEC), National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), Medical Council of India (MCI) and others are responsible for recognition of courses, promotion of professional institutions and providing grants to undergraduate programmes and various awards.
Not only this the Government has encouraged the education in India among our adult illiterate. Our Government has rightly chosen to educate the illiterate adults. In the education of adults the emphasis has not been only on making them literate, but an attempt is also made for education of the personality in order that they may fulfill the responsibilities of citizens of a democracy intelligently. In 1973 a Programme of Adult Education was launched. Its objective has been to educate 30 crores adults within the age range of 15-35 years by the end of the 20th century. The main purpose of this Adult Education Programme is to increase the working efficiency of the adults and to create in them a social and national consciousness.
The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was established by the Central Government in 1961 for implementing the educational policies and plans of the Central Ministry of Education. A concerted effort has been made to development of Languages, It may be divided into three parts- development of Hindi national language, development of Indian languages and development of English. In India there are many Youth Services, which work towards promoting physical, mental, social and cultural development of our youths. To develop our youth and compete at national and international levels an, All Indian Board of Sports and Games was established, this Board has been established for promoting physical, mental, moral and social developments of the youths.
The Indian Education System is generally marks-based. However, some experiments still have been made to do away with the marks-based system, which has led to cases of depression and suicides among students. In 2005, the Kerala Government introduced a grades-based system in the hope that it will help students to move away from the cutthroat competition and rote learning and will be able to focus on creative aspects and personality development as well. Another experiment was , The National Knowledge Commission (KNC) which was constituted on 13th June 2005 as a high level Advisory Body to the Prime Minister of India. The vision for NKC was articulated in the address of Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, ” The time has come to create a second wave of institution building and of excellence in the fields of education, research and capacity building.”
The most recent Yashpal Committee, 2009 emphasized that at the undergraduate level students should be exposed to various disciplines like humanities, social sciences, aesthetics etc., in an integrated manner. This should be irrespective of the discipline they would like to specialize in, whether general or professional higher education like medicine, engineering, etc. Such a measure it was said will open the possibility of new kinds of course-designing for professional learning in all fields from management and architecture to medicine and engineering.
In order to attain the objective of Universalisation of Elementary Education, the Government has enacted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to all children in the age group of 6-14 years. The RTE Act has come into force with effect from 1.4.2010. The last not the least effort of Modi 2 Government is to introduce New Education Policy 2019-20 (NEP) with an introductory note of ECCE and Missions Nalanda and Takshashila.
Despite all the efforts to develop the education system in India, access, equity and quality of education in India continue to haunt the policy makers till this date. This has mainly been due to the widespread poverty and various prejudices. The inability to check the drop out rates among the marginalized particularly in some of our very poor states and sections of the population is another cause of worry. Many aspects of the current educational setup demand review and change. Until concrete steps are taken to reformulate our methodology of imparting education, we shall continue to underutilize, even waste our youth, and this could have serious consequences in the future.
( The author is an academician and can be reached at dpandita2011@gmail.com)
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