LET ME BREATHE - LET ME BE - LET ME LEARN by Aaryam Sharma

A 16-year old caught in the age old dilemma - mug up and sail through with high grades or learn and study what he really wants to. 

Rebuked and censured for not understanding the importance of slaving over his books, he lashes out not because he is unwilling to slog or put in the hard work but because he refuses to do so without actually understanding the concepts, wanting to learn and gain meaningful knowledge which will not only prepare him for real life but will also make him intellectually ready to contribute to making our world a better place to live in.     

Education is Flawed!

What more is that Education will continue to be flawed, not because of the fact that we will have more knowledge and our curiosity and questions will increase, but the fact that the 

purposes and outcomes of our education system are flawed.

The idea comes to me personally, as I have been through multiple boards during my academic journey, and each year, this idea of the flaw remains dogged, which I felt needs to be addressed.

Rather than teaching and encouraging young students to think and reflect, our schools drive us towards rote  learning, aimed towards scoring high marks in our exams. Most students also blindly accept these practices, and focus to score higher grades, without ever reflecting whether they actually comprehend the topic or not. Now, it is true that there are also many students who strive to understand the topic in-depth rather than memorising it, but the number is low, due to many factors which includes the mindset of  parents and teachers and their misguidance.

It has become easy and more and more common for students to obtain marks above 95/100, which demonstrates their hard work for sure, but it fails to test the student, as it never shows whether the student really learned the subject and is now prepared for the real world. 

But, teachers, and competition are not only to blame. The structure of the examinations is set such that the students can simply mug facts up and regurgitate them in their papers, which are sure to get them high scores, because the questions do not demand much thinking and analysis if any. This encourages teachers to further educate students to learn in such ways, and competition pushes this idea into students even further.

It is not a problem just in our country, but also in foreign boards. Boards such as the IB may market themselves as different, unique, and encourage holistic growth, but they too are mostly driven by the same factors as most Indian boards and of course money.

Most boards as per me in India and their syllabi also have many flaws. These flaws are mainly the lack of content in comparison with other boards in the world. However, with proper teaching methods, and practical applications of the topics, geared towards making the students think out of the box a solution is attainable.

But this is never achieved, because schools and boards focus on preparing the students for college – A thing that should need preparing, but is treated as the end of the road and not as a path to better learning and a better future.

There are also those who argue in favour of education systems citing its impacts on producing many scientists, but history shows that most great scientists were not valued and were average in their school years. This only shows the limitations of our education systems to help identify people with potential.

(It has also been proven by many college researchers that examinations such as the SAT are not accurate in judging the success of a student in college. In SAT historically men score higher than women, but in actual colleges, women have outperformed men.)

Even in cases that exceptionally gifted students are identified, they are often pushed back because of many issues such as teacher-student relations. (I don’t mean it in a way portrayed in popular media, that students lack social skills entirely, I mean it in a real-life context, where there is lots of conflict between students and their teachers, which results in biases, which impact these students drastically.)

And the biases that I had aforementioned, are faced by every student in their journey. Even though you may think a person is a complete teacher’s pet, it is often the case that there are some teachers that they don’t have a good relation with, so biases are a general thing. But in the wrong quantities, it can be disastrous for the student.

On the other hand, students who require lots of assistance –who are weak in studies – do not get any, instead they end up hiring tutors to teach them personally. Oftentimes, people have to join tuition centres, where the conditions are similar to the schools, which means that the students are not benefitted at all!

In my personal experience, there are many good teachers in every school. But school politics can affect them drastically, and most good teachers ended up leaving. I have also had many great home tutors, but since they only taught up to a certain grade, I couldn’t continue with them.

In my personal experience, I can (not so proudly, but surely) state that many teachers can become biased against students who challenge them, ask too many questions, test their patience not by misbehaving but by thirsting for more knowledge – which increases any student’s anxiety, as it did mine.

But it is teachers who are ready to step it up and be there for students who desire much more than just high grades who have always been my supporting pillars and who have helped me surpass their expectations and my own.

In conclusion, I would like to say that although there are some merits of the education system the way it is, it has many flaws, and a long way to go before it becomes perfect, but we shouldn’t give up, because in the end it is up to us to make the education system work.

Till then let me breathe and learn!