CLASS X REFORMS...

With the appointment of Kapil Sibal as the new HRD minister students and parents all over the country are expecting a wind of change to blow. With the HRD minister set to make Class X boards optional, it is worth deliberating if we are actually addressing the root cause of the problem. Mr. Sibal states that Indian education system is traumatic for both students and parents and the increasing number of suicides sets the urgency of the matter. While his other arguments may be directed at the root but this one seems to be a superficial one!
A different reason and not Class X boards makes the education system traumatic. It is gaining access to the system at the nursery and college levels that is traumatic. It’s coping with the dearth of options within the system that’s traumatic. Children commit suicides post poor results because students’ options close after that. Doors shut. It’s the fear of ‘life-after’ if you don’t score well that’s traumatic. So how do we cope with this problem?
First, we need to add more(in fact a lot of) seats to the system and make it equipped to cater to the huge population of students, both at the nursery and the college level. Second, education should be used as a tool to help students realise their talent area. Subjects should be as diverse as possible till the primary level. Subjects like music, sports, yoga, astronomy, sculpting, painting, basic sciences and maths should be introduced at the primary level at different stages. This would give children an opportunity to know which areas enthral them, unlock their brain and switch them to ‘exploring-mode’, thus identifying their talent areas. As they progress towards the secondary level students should have the liberty to pick few subjects of their choice from the primary level and continue to mature in them. Also after the primary level, subjects relevant to engineering, medicine, law, psychology(streams of higher difficulty) should be introduced. Stress should be laid on exposure than learning till Class VIII. As the student transition to higher levels of learning, they can keep on picking subjects of their liking and thus move gradually towards focussed learning from the one that was diversified at the primary level. This is how one can cope with the dearth of options within the system and make learning an enjoyable experience!
We shouldn’t forget that towards the end of the school years we might have students who may have only sports, arts, music subjects(and no sciences, maths) in their portfolio. But that does not matter at all. After all so many years of school education has moulded them from a raw talent to a finer one. The basic motivation behind this set up is imparting exposure at the school level itself and not at the graduation level(as is the case now). People argue that every talent cannot be an extraordinary one. We can have only one Abhinav Bindra, only one P. T. Usha or oly one Vijender Singh. Well, if China can win more than a 100 medals in a single Olympic, why do we stick to only one?