INDIA'S EDUCATION ( A CULTURAL GENOCIDE)

Chapter 10 Future ahead

The country is going to change drastically from what we are used to knowing it as. I say that with the confidence of major sociological research. The "culture" that we have will change. To explain in detail culture can be divided into two parts, material and non-material. non-material culture can be further divided into cognitive and normative. The information and knowledge as we know it is part of the cognitive non-material culture and the rules and norms of society are the normative cultures.

The material culture is the one that changes rapidly, thanks to the internet and the rise of global trade companies we can get products from across the globe shipped to us. This leads to cultural exchange via goods and products and therefore the youngsters today have a much bigger opportunity to express their individuality through finding items from all over the world. Purchasing smartphones, clothes, utensils, medicines, automobiles and even pets of the foreign breed are all part of rapidly growing material cultural exchange.

The non-material culture is also being exchanged and shared albeit way less rapidly than material. To speak of normative and cognitive cultural exchanges, the massive impact Korean and American entertainers have had on the country's youth is a sociological study of its own and cannot be summarised in a small paragraph. The community of Indian anime and manga fans is getting stronger and bigger every day.

I want to make something very clear before saying anything ahead. I am just a sociology enthusiast as of writing this document and my intention is not to label cultural exchange as something as good or bad, I am only stating that non-material cultural exchanges are happening and they will continue to happen, what one makes of it is up to the person himself.

Given that we are currently living in an ever-changing world it is certain that material culture exchanges are occurring fast and thanks to those, technological advances can be enjoyed by many across the globe. The second inevitable sociological change will be normative and cognitive. Already we are observing that the majority of academically skilled and cognitively developed individuals chose to leave the country and settle elsewhere in the world.

This is only going to increase as the United States and Europe are no longer exclusively on the list of Indian youngster's dream countries. Japan is going to capitalize on the massive anime and manga following that they have all over the globe. It's not unheard of for teenagers to be a weeb or otaku at some point or know someone who wants to live in Japan. Next in line is South Korea with its rapidly growing K-pop industry the country has very well managed to hide the horrible conditions of models and how the country has become the world's plastic surgery capital for their unjustified obsession with good looks.

The nation is facing an identity crisis due to a lack of proper education and cultural understanding. We can make malls after malls and create taller buildings covered with glass in a tropical country but in the end, they will be lifeless and soulless. The reason why Japanese homes or dresses or meals or animations stand out is that they have embraced their culture and have marketed it to the world and now are in a position to capitalize on that. The same thing goes for South Korea.

The scary future is now looking at us from just a few years distance, if we do not take serious action against the "de-personalisation" occurring within our society and show our children that we love them and that we support their choices and we are willing to accept them for who they are as individuals instead of forcefully putting them in indoctrination centers where they feel upset, threatened and abused they will lose their sense of individuality and will desperately look for a personality or ideological group to feel wanted and to feel the support of community and belongingness.

Our education model does not resemble a safe and supportive growth environment but rather it has more similarities with a military experiment performed on prisoners of war. The students are not taught how to deal with unfamiliarity at all. I would like to suggest performing a sociological experiment. It could also be called an educational experiment. The idea is simple, first at the start of an academic year let students sit in class as they wish and let them settle down themselves. Let few months pass by and then a teacher has to order them to follow a seating plan decided by the school management. It could be according to roll numbers or anyway, the teacher seems fit.

Observe the students and just witness the change in students' attitudes and state of happiness. It is needless to say that humans like to be around other people but they don't tell you that it is also important who those humans are and whether they want to be around them or not.

We have to incorporate a system where the educator (teacher) gives knowledge more than instructions. So far in schools, we have seen teachers giving more instructions to students rather than information. The level of educators hired by private schools can be extremely low in some cases, this is because most teachers did not want to become teachers instead, they were aiming for something different altogether but ended up as teachers.

Go on google images and search for images of Socrates and Gautam Buddha and Dronacharya from Mahabharat and Jesus Christ teaching their followers. Do you notice how the students are sitting around them in mostly random order? Now look for images of kings or monarchs in their courtrooms and you will observe people sitting on platforms or chairs at a fixed distance from one another and row after row of administrators. These formations are also found in military recruitment and training grounds.

The solutions are not simple and the fact of the matter remains that Indian people are not majorly bothered about the quality of education, they care more about a cricket match than they do about child pedagogy. The reason for that being the lack of educated people in pop culture and the lack of pedagogical practices in media. If we were to lay down a plan for a complete renovation of our education model, we will need a team of child experts such as psychologists, nutritionists, pedagogists, and educators who are willing to do the excessive research work for the betterment of our children and future of our country.

The plan would be to look at systems around the world and try some permutations depending on what suits Indian students. The subjects offered and the syllabi of those subjects need to be reconsidered. We need important subjects like health made mandatory for all classes and subjects like diplomacy and conflict resolving taught in senior classes. Self-defense and laws of the country should also be made mandatory. The syllabi and examination methods should be made by expert pedagogists and child psychologists and teachers.

I will be honest with you all, I have little hope that anything will change, no I have no hope that anything will change for good of students in schools. It was never a priority and it never will be. It has been overlooked and it will continue to be overlooked for at least a few more decades.

High school students in Parkland Florida experienced a horrible tragedy on 14th February 2018 when a school shooter killed 17 people in their school. After the event, the agitated students started a campaign and protested by marching and organizing school walkouts. The students fought for legislative changes and were able to get the local government to change more than 60 gun control laws making them tighter thereby making it difficult for people to get hold of automatic assault rifles.

There were attempts to defame and demoralize them by the far-right and conservative activists but they couldn't do much. Now I am not at all saying that Indian students should walk out and start protesting for better education. The country right now is majorly divided on all political, social, and economic issues and the protest would become meaningless due to that. The occurrence of new education policy might be an indication that few legislations on education may be on their way but we will have to wait and see how they are implemented and how good they are.

The future is promising in many sociological aspects such as the exchange of culture and technology along with new carrier pathways and automation of tasks like floor cleaning and turning on and off electronics. The same cannot be said about the development of human beings themselves. Will we be able to provide a learning environment for our children to catch up with the rapid advances in material development and make India stand on the same level as the developed world along with boasting a happiness index similar to those of Nordic countries and Bhutan? I don't know but I want to find out, as I say sociology can be experienced as it is one of the few subjects that happen around you all the time.

Thiswas my take on the state of India's education model. I would love to hear whatother readers thought about it.