Disrupt education - Now!

By Kasthuri.S

(First prize - Bishop Cotton women’s Christian College)

Education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world.” In simple term education is the most powerful weapon which can change the lives of human beings and also world. This paper explains why does education need disruption? The objective is to clarify the importance of disruption in education. It also covers the importance of disruptive collaboration.

This paper also explores the need of disruption in Indian education system. This paper is done by analyzing of education sector and the key element provides some of the ways to disrupt the education system.

Let's disrupt education - now!

Education has been a problem in our country and lack of it has been blamed for all sorts of evil for hundreds of years. Even Rabindranath Tagore wrote lengthy articles about how Indian education system needs to change. We have established IITs, IIMs, law schools and other institutions of excellence; students now routinely score 90% marks so that even students with 90+ percentage find it difficult to get into the colleges of their choice; but we do more of the same old stuff.

Creating a few more schools or allowing hundreds of colleges and private universities to mushroom is not going to solve the crisis of education in India. There is actual need for disruption in education not just in India but in world as whole. We need something that isn’t built to make your classroom spin faster, but rather is built for the real work of understanding something.

The past has no power over the present moment. What might have worked in the past will not necessarily have the same impact today, as the world has changed dramatically in a short period of time. Education plays an important role in changing the world so disruption is very essential in education.

 Disruption in general is about unsettling, and is often thought of in terms of chaos. Disruptive collaboration is working together to force change. It’s the artful unsettling of that which has become inartistic. Creating a collaborative educational environment can build a community of caring individuals who are all working towards one common goal: Increasing the students' positive outcomes. Whether you are collaborating with another educator to team teach, working hand-in-hand with other adults such as the school's administration or parents or are encouraging the students themselves to learn together, collaboration in education can benefit everyone who has a stake in the school setting. Let’s connect and build something that doesn’t serve you or the past or what’s already here but others and the here and now. Let’s build something we’ve never had–and do so by empowering everyone that’s a part of this.

Let’s look into some of the examples which shows that we are still lacking with the ability to develop new way of thinking and discovering as it is interlinked with our education –

·       For many years scientists have studied our own solar system. But until the last few years, we knew of no other solar systems. This may seem surprising, as the Sun is one of about 200 billion stars (or perhaps more) just in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

·       We don't know whether life exists anywhere else.

·       We probably haven't really figured out the quantum world.

·       We don't understand our own biology: It's not too radical to say this, after all, if we did understand every detail of how we worked we'd presumably be able to eliminate disease

POPULATION IN DIFFERENT AGE GROUPS AND
THEIR PROPORTIONS TO TOTAL POPULATION

Age group	Population	Percentage
All Ages	1,028,610,328	100.0
0 – 4	110,447,164	10.7
5 – 9	128,316,790	12.5
10 – 14	124,846,858	12.1
15- 19	100,215,890	9.7
20 – 24	89,764,132	8.7
25 – 44	284,008,819	27.6
45 – 64	139,166,661	13.5
65 – 79	41,066,824	4.0
80+	8,038,718	0.8
Less Than 18	422,808,543	41.1
Less than 21	492,193,906	47.9
Age no stated	2,738,472	0.3
Source : C2 and C14 Table, India, Census of India 2010.

India is a young country which has more young population but education provided to them is not up to the mark there is a need for disruption in education.

 “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” In Indian education system we find more spoon feeding. “Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”

 By 2020, India is set to become the world’s youngest country with 64 per cent of its population in the working age group. With the West, Japan and even China aging, this demographic potential offers India and its growing economy an unprecedented edge that economists believe could add a significant 2 per cent to the GDP growth rate.

The unequal access to opportunity and the lack of emphasis on education remains a persistent problem. The report finds that a person in an urban area has a 93 per cent greater chance of acquiring training than someone in a rural area.

We are in a country where people are spending their parent’s life savings and borrowed money on education – and even then not getting standard education, and struggling to find employment of their choice. In this country, millions of students are victim of an unrealistic, pointless, mindless rat race. The mind numbing competition and rote learning do not only crush the creativity and originality of millions of Indian students every year, it also drives brilliant students to commit suicide.

Ways to disrupt education system in India: Teach skills rather than knowledge

Our education system is geared towards teaching and testing knowledge at every level as opposed to teaching skills. “Give a man a fish and you feed him one day, teach him how to catch fishes and you feed him for a lifetime.”   If we teach a man a skill, it enables him for a lifetime. Knowledge is largely forgotten after the semester exam is over.

Improve technology and infrastructure: India needs to embrace internet and technology if it has to teach all of its huge population, the majority of which is located in remote villages. Now that we have computers and internet, it makes sense to invest in technological infrastructure that will make access to knowledge easier than ever. While all these are becoming more possible than ever before, there is lot of innovation yet to take place in this space.

Re-define the purpose of the education system Our education system is still a colonial education system geared towards generating  pen-pushers under the newly acquired skin of modernity. We may have the most number of engineering graduates in the world, but that certainly has not translated into much technological innovation here. Rather, we are busy running the call centre of the rest of the world – that is where our engineering skills end. The goal of our new education system should be to create entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, scientists, thinkers and writers who can establish the foundation of  knowledge based economy rather than the low-quality service provider nation that we are turning into.

 It should contain and encourage open content Digital creation and collaboration may be challenging the ways in which we think about intellectual property in the classroom. Alongside budgetary concerns, many educators are embracing open content – OpenCourseWare, open source textbooks, and other Creative Commons licensed materials.

Get smarter people to teach For way too long teaching became the sanctuary of the incompetent. Teaching jobs are until today widely regarded as safe, well-paying, risk-free and low-pressure jobs. Teachers in India more often say “Well, if you guys don’t study it is entirely your loss – I will get my salary at the end of the month anyway.” He could not put across the lack of incentive for being good at teaching any better. Thousands of terrible teachers all over India are wasting valuable time of young children every day all over India. We need leaders, entrepreneurs in teaching positions, not salaried people trying to hold on to their mantle.

Conclusion: Education is ripe for disruption, and that there is a desperate need to bridge the education path for primary and secondary school graduates with the ever-elusive career gap. Career-long eLearning will be essential in creating the agile and adaptable work-force of tomorrow.

Bibliography:

 www.teachthought.com/terry-heick/disruptive-collaboration     

www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-sheninger/education-is-ripe-for-dis_b_11767198.html

 trak.in

startup.nujs.edu/blog/indian-education-system-what-needs-to-change

https://prezi.com/.../in-this-world-there-are-many-things-yet-to-be-discovered

www.indiaonlinepages.com › Population of India