Our educational rat race

This is going to be my shortest post till date.

This is results season (class XII results are out and class X results are out in a couple of days). Every year during this period I ponder over what our education system is doing to young brains. I wrote something last year (click here)

I am reading this book ‘Emotional Intelligence’ by Daniel Goleman (just started but very interesting so far). Therein I came across this statement attributed to Howard Gardner which struck a chord with me. Mr. Gardner is (was?) a psychologist at the Harvard School of Education.

“…We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed and many many different abilities that will help you get there.”

I think this is a very profound statement and one which we (especially we) need to take seriously. Given this benchmark, our education (rather exam or evaluation system) is in a very very pathetic state.

I think its time we step back and pull our future out from the rat race where every young brains go over text books 14-15 hours a day just to get 1 or 2 extra points.

I don’t see us producing too many original thinkers from in the current process. It’s high time; Our future is at stake here.

That’s it for now…