Outsourcing plagues a new field - Education!
Keen students with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, stepping out of the cosy comforts of their homes and pursuing academic as well as non-academic learning under the aegis of a dedicated guru is a thing of the past.Today, education is all about a lot of fierce competition, a lot of cramming, a lot of time crunch and yes!a lot of vitamin M. Teachers' time is sold for a price, study material - books,CDs,casettes etc are sold for a price.On a scandalous note,so are technical degree projects, marks cards, degree certificates,and even jobs!Commoditization of education has reached dizzying new heights.Nothing in the field of education seems to be beyond the reach of the long hands of the moolah power.
At the risk of sounding outdated, it would be worthwhile to quote this article published in Times of India about a month back.Curbing the practice of outsourcing home-works and projects may affect the lives of a zillion Preeti Shah's in India,who earn their living through outsourced home-works. However, the hazardous effects of leaving this practice unchecked are spine chilling:
First, the rich kids will hog an unfair advantage since they can 'buy' more and more quality education aids like Preeti Shah and use this to unfairly beat the genuinely brighter but unfortunately poorer kids in class, who might not be able to afford an impostor for their projects.
Second,India shall soon be churning out millions of hollow-headed so-called 'graduates','degree holders' or whatever it is that the system might fancy calling them.
Cramming in schools and homes coupled with the insane pressure on a a kid to keep pace with the furious rate at which information overflow is occuring all around us,is the biggest culprit that promotes such commoditization of education.Unless parents as well as teachers are sensitized adequately to the trade-offs involved in heavily pressurizing students to excel, this heinous practice of outsourcing shall continue to walk the streets of education with its ugly head held high; the 30-year old impostor's mind shall continue to compete against and triumph over that of a 12-year old, depriving some other deserving 12-year old of his due credit. This, in the long run,could kill the deserving kid's self-morale that eggs him onto learning and achieving more in life.If you were to be in the kid's place, would you like to look forward to a zombie-like future like that? If you answered "No", do your bit to weed out the Preeti Shah's before the menace spreads enough to make your child a zombie.
Thought for the day: The day is not far off when MasterCard's punchline "There are some things that money can't buy; for everything else there's MasterCard" will read "There's nothing that money can't buy.For everything, there's MasterCard"!
posted by chutki @ 2:50 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Ah Chutki... your thoughts are always so thought provoking!Couldn't agree more on the phenomenon of commoditization and commercialization of education. But then as you rightly pointed out, there are more questions than the answers that this debate generates.
Why do children need an 'imposter' after all? Because of infromation overflow? Because of competition? Now I would think having competition is not bad! The students at least use their intellectual capacities to the fullest. And may be whatver they fail to to accommodate is taken care of by the commercial counterparts of these students. The issue however becomes serious when these commercial counterparts take care of more than just the overflowing part.
The brighter souls however manage to differentiate themselves from the others at higher education level coz there will be no imposters to help them at IITs or IIMs or AIIMSes. Only the best brains manage to get into it. (well, govt is planning to introduce rervations her too.. but that's another sad story!)
Oops... btw looks like I have almost types a post in your comment box! High time I signed off... before you press the Delete button that is!
If the students today have to face the immense pressure, it's because of the winning curse. Just because the competition is so tough, no one wants to leave any efforts to make it sure for themseleves. In this process they end up doing a lot more than what is actually required or adequate.
Don't be naive to believe that this "outsourcing" is something new and IIT, IIM students are free of it. What are the coaching classes which churn out admissions in hundreds, if not outsourced educators. Don't you think they introduce a bias towards the students who are able to "buy" their "services".
The point is - Indian education system needs to be revamped. This crazy rat race has to go. To start with we can make "quality education" accessible to all. For this, we need to shake up the sarkari school system. These schools are just a big farce! We also need to provide good higher education to many more than today. "Preeti Shah" and all are just the tip of the iceberg, if we need to better it we need to turn it upside down. Sadly, I'm not too hopeful anything will change.
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