Of all the things on the earth the most difficult thing I find to unerstand is our culture. It's complexity has resulted in many other complex issues one of them being our education system. I asked many people for their views on our education system and read many things but no clear answer was ever given by anyone. I met few people who spoke about cultural nationalism and claimed that our education system is far too westernized than we require where as I met few liberals (!!!) who believe we were never better than uncivilized animals and we desperately need western education system. These people (including our PM Manmohan Singh) claims that we learnt a lot from western powers and they were the ones who gave us a great education system. Now the question arises is our education system great? My answer is definitely not. During my graduation I opted for two economics courses and thru'out the course we were never taught anything written in Indian context. We totally concentrated on American and Euro economies and its problems. I opted for a literature course where I wasn't taught a single text from India. All we were taught was Shakespeare and Keats.Does that mean we never produced any quality literature or we don't need to know anything about it. Ask any educated person in the country(including me :( ), they will definitely know about shakespeare, keats and Frost but its very unlikely that they will know about Kalidas or Maithilisharan Gupt or Nirala or several others. We are living in an education system where people are ashamed if they don't know english properly irrespective of their proficiency at many other Indian languages. English has become a status symbol and if a person is not good at it, he doesn't deserve to get good job and good school. I came across one of the speech made by Lord Mccauley in british parliament about india:
I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.
-- Lord McCauley in his speech of Feb 2, 1835, British Parliament
the same person who designed the education system that we still follow.
This speech clearly states that India wasn't all that bad at that time as projected by some self acclaimed intellectuals.
So now the question is can we get away with the present education system and revert back to the old one. My answer is no. Now we can't revert back, simple reason being that our economy where service sector is so important, relies totally on our capability to speak english and which gives us an edge over China and other asian country in this area. So i still feel that though this education system is not the best but still it is unavoidable. So the does that mean we should blindly follow the path once carved out by Britishers. I'll say we should redesign the path where stress is laid on english but importance of our cultural heritage and languages is not undermined. Simply speaking we shoud not consider an english speaking person as great intellectual at face value and a native language speaker as a dumb fellow just because he can't speak english that well. We should lay more stress so that quality literature is available in native languages of the country also and the courses should be structured more in an Indian context rather teaching in American context which has become fashion of good universities in India.
I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native self-culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.
-- Lord McCauley in his speech of Feb 2, 1835, British Parliament
the same person who designed the education system that we still follow.
This speech clearly states that India wasn't all that bad at that time as projected by some self acclaimed intellectuals.
So now the question is can we get away with the present education system and revert back to the old one. My answer is no. Now we can't revert back, simple reason being that our economy where service sector is so important, relies totally on our capability to speak english and which gives us an edge over China and other asian country in this area. So i still feel that though this education system is not the best but still it is unavoidable. So the does that mean we should blindly follow the path once carved out by Britishers. I'll say we should redesign the path where stress is laid on english but importance of our cultural heritage and languages is not undermined. Simply speaking we shoud not consider an english speaking person as great intellectual at face value and a native language speaker as a dumb fellow just because he can't speak english that well. We should lay more stress so that quality literature is available in native languages of the country also and the courses should be structured more in an Indian context rather teaching in American context which has become fashion of good universities in India.
