Day: May 16, 2012

The Education Minister has set a time-frame of 6 months for overhauling the education system in the state. Perhaps it must be the first time that a minister charged with the crucial portfolio has openly announced a complete overhaul of the system and it indeed surprised us. We have our doubts as to whether he will be able to complete the task in time for it would be a herculean feat. Yet, we pray for his success. First we must say a sense of commitment and political will is necessary on the part of the minister for undertaking the task. There are varied hurdles on the way to achieving success, and the first hurdle would be pressure from his own colleagues in the government, MLAs and different lobbies having vested interests. He has to be prepared for that. Second, the report of the Education Commission is gathering dust in the department and he has to rake up the past recommendations. We need to see the action taken report also, so as to prepare the ground for a new Education Commission with wide-ranging powers and a consultative process. Intellectuals, eminent educationists, experts in various fields including psychologists should be called in and asked to apply their mind. Framing of a good policy needs a multi-disciplinary approach and back-breaking sessions. We also would like to offer a piece of our mind. System overhaul of education is not only about recruiting qualified teachers and an effective monitoring system, good school buildings, a support system in terms of equipments and aids or for that matter a good transfer and posting policy for the teachers. Of course, these are also important. But the most important issue when we talked about education is the CONTENT, or in simple words, the curriculum. What are we teaching our children or our youth? Or what should we teach? The second question would be more appropriate to lead us in the proper direction. Another question crops up in our mind. What kind of citizen do we want to populate our society? Why do we need education or for that matter knowledge to fill our minds? We must carefully ponder upon these questions and begin the debate. For a society to grow and develop in the right direction, we need responsible citizens who are aware of their roots and the heritage that they have inherited and the ability to sacrifice for the good of the society or the state they belong to. And he will automatically become proud of his heritage and will walk with the head held high among peers. No individual will succeed in understanding others if he does not know the self. He must first understand his own society, its history and cultural heritage before he looks for understanding of others and other communities. He has to understand his own society’s world view before he seeks to understand the world view of other societies. He has to understand that Manipur was once a minor regional power in these parts and the Manipuri kings held sway over territories reaching the border of Tripura and Khasi hills in the west and far inside Burma beyond Chindwin even sometimes reaching the Chinese border. Our ancient chronicles called Puyas record the exploits of Manipuri kings in history. A wealth of knowledge is also captured in our timeless Puyas. The Puyas deal in varied subjects which include political and historical, geographical, natural phenomena, religious texts and rituals, genealogy, kinship, migration, medicine and physiology, astronomy, astrology, code of warriors, and monographs. This reflects our civilizational history. In such a backdrop, why should we despair for lack of local content. Appropriate amounts of knowledge could be gleaned from these ancient texts to teach our children and youth. According to the National Curriculum Policy, only 30 percent is reserved for local content which had remained unnoticed for years till the All Manipur Students’ Union (AMSU) raked up the issue. A contentious issue at that time was about our brethren in the hills and their supposed lack of aptitude in science and mathematics. We had voiced our opinion that, it is the system and the mode of lesson delivery which is at fault. The same situation happened in America with regard to the Blacks. Every people or community has its own notion of science and mathematics, and indigenous knowledge systems. That was how the concept of ethno-science and ethno-mathematics was born. We need to take this into account, in the content debate. Last but not the least, we must all understand that there is no such thing as ‘Quality Education.’ Education is simply education.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2012/05/in-search-of-education/