There was a time when a notebook and a pencil were sufficient tools for study in a classroom. In today’s world, students need much more to prepare themselves for the job market. The thing that has not changed is the impact a teacher can have on the life and learning of a student.
The present education system is not sufficient. It is mainly based on theoretical knowledge rather than practical knowledge.
The students play no active role in the attainment of knowledge. Things are loaded on his mind which he cannot digest; he only crams and therefore they never become his own. Our educational system according to Dr. Annie Basant is just “Filling students’ heads with a lot of disjointed facts poured into the heads as into a basket; to be emptied out again in the examination hall and empty basket carried out again into the world.” This is the reason why a student who succeeds well in his college examination fails miserably in the examination of life.
The existing system of our education is predominantly academic and theoretical. The student is taught lessons by books, but not lessons from life. In other words, he is provided with knowledge but not with wisdom. He is obliged to know the history of Greece 200 years ago, but he knows nothing of what’s happening in his own country.
In a way, our education has become a sort of pastime luxury, a form of amusement like many other modern things of entertainment. Students go to school and colleges more for the sake of amusement than learning.
Our classroom has an appearance of almost a cinema hall; well furnished with chairs and electric fans and blackboard which can be compared to a screen on the background of which the teacher stands more or less like an actor trying to please his audience by his saucy remarks, pleasant stories, etc.
He is on the stage and has to play his allotted part very sincerely. Such as actors appear before the huge audience of the students one after the other and if any actor fails in his dramatic performance, the audience gets out of control and raises strange catcalls of all kinds, just as happens in theatre.
In view of the foregoing defects and shortcomings, our system of education calls for a radical change. Practical knowledge, self-reading, information gathering, work experience in school life should be given more importance to bring about a complete and harmonious development of all factors of human personality.
‘Students go to school and colleges more for the sake of amusement than learning.’ – Students go to school/colleges for the sake of being able to find a job later. Although that doesn’t take away from the fact that the pursuit of knowledge in itself is not enough to draw them to school, to compare schools with theaters and teachers with actors is perhaps dramatizing the reality of it.
“This is the reason why a student who succeeds well in his college examination fails miserable in the examination of life.”
I would say it’s more common for an uneducated person to fail in life…