1+1=2. Why so? Have we ever wondered about this? There are millions of kids tossing this question in their nursery schools every year and invariably the curiosity is being brutally murdered by labelling it as a silly question and the kid as a nuisance value in the class. Not for no reason are the research potential and publications so disheartening despite excellent infrastructure in some world class research institutions in the country.
As rightly said in a Gujarati proverb “પાકા ઘડે કાંઠા ના ચડે” (you can’t train the ripen (or should we call it rotten) mind), the research aptitude has to be encouraged right from childhood. Learning to multiply without referring the book is the research done by the primary school kid. Unfortunately we tend to ignore the most critical span of development of thought process of a child and strangulate the curiosity.
The eagerness to question Why? and the zeal to find out its answer is all it takes to become a great researcher and also an enthusiastic human being. Our primary education system acts as a slow poison curtailing these natural human tendencies and programming the human mind to behave in a particular way that accepts what appears attractive on prima facie and shrieks to investigate. The excessive quantification of intangible knowledge has landed today’s teens into a ratrace for marks and made them blindfolded towards the incredible joy of research, the eternal satisfaction of nurturing the solution to a problem and finally the true sense of achievement upon solving the problem.
When the 17 years old HSC students staying not more than 15km from the city of Ahmedabad struggle in simple arithmetic division, in reading a Gujarati newspaper fluently and still manage to pass the examination, the need to look into the current education system and remove the tainted glasses of ignorance surface manifestly. I have been volunteering for Avbodh IQG Rural Empowerment Program (AIREP, www.aireprogram.blogspot.com) and it is thanks to this initiative that I witnessed the real state of education in rural India.
A teacher is such a powerful character that can transform a spoilt brat into a civilized individual, a mob into a team and a heard of nomads into a civilization, but with power comes responsibility. With due respect to a few exceptions, the state of primary school teachers in India is quite dismal.
Making the studies joyous is the need of the hour. Improving the motivation levels of the primary school teachers is of paramount concern and it calls for drastic and urgent measures towards forming an all inclusive primary educational system model that provides a smooth transition to the vocational courses as well as college education from primary schooling.
I’d like to conclude with a twist in the popular saying: “The hand that holds the chalkpiece, rules the world.”
