Any education system ‘in tune’ with the current time or worse, the past, is actually ‘out of tune’ with the future which will be radically diverse
Along with the winter season, Delhi witnesses yet another season. This is the period where you can see adults getting ready for school while their wide-eyed, innocent toddlers look on. It’s the season of nursery school admissions, when children enter the formal education system for the first time. This is a tough time for parents as shortlisting schools, visiting them, talking to coordinators, principals, filling up forms and finally, getting their child admitted to the school of choice is indeed an exciting yet bewildering experience for couples.
The first and perhaps the toughest part is to shortlist schools as it is not only about the infrastructure, brand value, owners, teachers, location and so on but also about what is best for the child. There are nursery schools which have forward integration with CBSE or ICSE school education systems, there are International Baccalaureate schools and then there are schools which follow the learning and standards set up by the Cambridge Assessment International Education. Alternative systems of learning have also come up, which follow educational philosophies like Waldorf Education or Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Education. Homeschooling, which has its own merits, is also catching up as a concept now. Then, of course, there are schools with the sole philosophy of earning money. What system one should follow and what are the parameters on which a particular system should be judged become critical questions for young parents. The world around us prods us to make our children “fit in.” The defined notion of success, with even its timeline cast in stone, makes us jittery when those notions are not fulfilled and timelines are not met. As a society, our disproportionately-high focus on making our students “fit in” the traditional moulds makes us lose out on developing leaders for our society who can stand out. Let’s face it. The future is uncertain. The world, 10 years down the line, will be radically different from what it is today in ways we cannot even imagine. Things, which are not even part of science fiction today, will become reality. After all, who could have thought that the neighbourhood restaurant would be just a click away and a smart speaker would do your bidding? The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), digitisation and new technologies are changing the employment landscape. Large-scale disruptions will lead to newer jobs, replacing the existing ones. The fear of human jobs, being replaced by algorithms is not misplaced. As Yuval Harari, in his book, 21 Challenges of the 21st Century, says, most humans in the future will not suffer from exploitation but from irrelevance. Under such circumstances, any education system “in tune” with the current time or worse, the past, is actually “out of tune” with the future.
In an age where information is available on the fingertips, there is no point in schools bombarding students with facts and figures and judging them on the basis of their ability to recall information. A person full of facts and knowledge but devoid of critical thinking skills, innovative ideas and perspective will lose relevance in the society of the future. The morrow will require people who can make sense of information, use it to gain perspectives and create more knowledge. In short, tomorrow belongs to knowledge-creators, not knowledge-aggregators. “Intelligence” has to make way for “consciousness” and “education” has to make way for “learning.” Education, as we know it, has been intertwined with the dimensions of time and space. Technological changes and the consequent shift in attitudes are effecting decoupling of education and the two dimensions. The “uberisation” of education due to the rise of on-demand education technology is bringing campus to smartphones and disrupting the traditional education system in ways one could not have fathomed until recently. The very basic assumption that the first 20 years of life spent in getting educated will guarantee a job that will sustain a person for the rest of their working life is being challenged. The ’90s kids, who burnt the midnight oil learning programming languages, suddenly found data scientists getting a major share of the pie in the job market. A person might have to learn multiple skills in their lifetime to stay relevant. The framework of life-long learning is expected to eclipse, if not replace, the existing education system. Learning how to learn will become more important than learning the skills and knowledge relevant to today’s economic landscape. However, learning skills alone, which can be easily monetised, will not suffice in a world both made and fractured by technology. Ethics, emotional intelligence, resilience and empathy are some of the skills needed now, more than any other time in human history.
There is some progress in this direction. “Klassens tid”, a time slot that Danish schools dedicate just to teaching empathy to students, is a fundamental part of the curriculum. Jack Ma said that independent thinking, teamwork and empathy will not just set students apart, they will ensure they can be valuable contributors to society in ways that make them irreplaceable. The Indian education ecosystem, too, should catch up with the metamorphosis of global education systems and create an education philosophy based on the model of “glocalisation” after understanding global trends and assessing local needs. Parents must make conscious and informed choices to prepare kids for a radically different world.
(The writer works at the intersection of public policy, communication and technology)
