Education for everyone, is that worth it?

Education in INDIA

I am aware of the fact that education is vital for anyone's survival. But today's school and college based education is not the solution in my view. I was talking to my friend and in his view education is necessary for everyone. He met a 6th class boy who was selling snacks on the street. He advised him to study well and make a good future from that education. He got emotional over his condition. But just getting normal education in schools for more than 12 years of your life is not the solution in my view. The education system needs to change and become more inclusive and skill based rather than giving students same education irrespective of their interests and skills. In my view, education as it is today is literally of no use except for increasing percentages in indexes like literacy rate and so on. Even after passing out of college, people are jobless and even if they get jobs they are more of exploited rather than really working. They are paid a meager sum of money which is not enough and obviously not proportional to what is required for survival today. 

What is the problem with today's education system?

The main problem is that we think 'one fit for all' works. But actually, it doesn't. Everyone cannot be taught the same thing irrespective of their skills and  interests. What we think is that, if we give someone proper school education, he will become more competent for facing the real world. Undoubtedly, he will but wouldn't it be better if he was made to be competent enough to get a job or moreover open up his own thing so that he will do what he likes or what he is made to do. Why do we need so many incompetent engineers, doctors and so on? Education today is theory based and if we expect that it will make everyone competent to get a job, then we are obviously wrong. Education in India is firstly not practical based, secondly there are no quality checks since the quantity of students is very high and thirdly, we in India generally resist to change anything, we want everything to go as it was going before. How many people do say that just because of their school education especially in backward schools has got them a job or even a good university to study in? In all possibility, we must take appropriate actions before the whole things go out of our hand and the so called employment rate decreases or more than that work satisfaction decreases drastically. What would you say on watching a 'Dhabe Waala' or 'Tea Stall wala' earning much more than a qualified engineer who has a formal education.

What could be done to control this situation?

The first and foremost thing that must be done is formulation of a new way of gauging student's interests' and skills'. Rather than using 'One fit for all' strategy for educating people, we must make sure that separate education is given to different groups of students. Obviously, some subjects should be common to all of them which we think are necessary for students to study. And students should be allowed to switch from one stream to another without any hesitation if they don't feel comfortable. Second thing that must be done is ensuring quality of the education institutions on a regular basis so that proper education is being provided. If education standard is not up to the level, appropriate action must be taken including giving state funds for increasing the standards. The curriculum must become more of practical learning with quality trained teachers imparting education. One more solution is just adding 'Internship Programs' for school students as a part of their curriculum so that they can get a more holistic view of the real working world and financially weak students would definitely get much help from it. But this whole thing cannot happen on its own. Active participation of the government, NGOs, educational institutions is required and all related stakeholders must work in synchronization, to achieve good results and that would definitely result in 'actual' improvement in literacy rate, employment rates and other related indexes. We must not just look at numbers, but the quality too to make life worth living in our nation, India.