I was glad I did not know the boy standing on the high diving board, hesitating to take the leap. As I walked past, I realised it was the perfect analogy for India and her education issues. We still have to take that leap. It is known that the waters will be chill for a while, there will be shock; it will take some courage to take the leap, but it must be done. Standing up on the diving board only exposes oneself to fear and vulnerability; it won’t get us to a place where we can at least join the race, forget about winning it.
The numbers do not need to be reiterated, nor do the problems. The scale is known to all: 12 million people entering the workforce each year, which drives out all other goals and leaves income generation as the primary goal. Get this right and at the very least, taxes from the 12 million will raise India’s standard of living via better public investments. Get this wrong and India could spiral out of control: Young, unemployed and directionless populations are the stuff of civic nightmares. This is not a ‘feel good, let us do better’ kind of exercise anymore. If the youth are not constructive, we would be engulfed with a series of problems.
…
The solution to India’s ‘opportunities’ lies in shifting from a constrained resource mindset to feeding unconstrained ambitions. The big leap in education needs different thinking.
…
1) Education as investment sounds obvious, but it is not really as straightforward as the most important things that education provides cannot be measured easily. How does one measure the confidence a good school gives or the friends one makes for life? But most things can-the enhanced earnings for each additional year of education, the value of networks, the returns to investors for professional courses directed towards employability, etc. Even the return on investment to a simple government school can be calculated via proxies-and must- so that we start focusing on the gains to students and society. The shift from expenditure as an input into a dark hole to an investment changes the attitudes and expectations from education completely.
2) Education as an essential infrastructure is the next mindshift required. It is not of much use if one gets bullet trains and information superhighways when there aren’t enough good people to create value out of these. Education is soft infrastructure and must receive priority investments and concessions like the rest of the infrastructure sector. Just as one identifies and supports priorities in infrastructure, one needs to identify priorities in education and implement them through a medium-term national education strategy.
3) Education as influence: Not just as part of the national narrative for national pride but also as a means to increase the nation’s circle of influence across the globe. Education has been used by many countries as soft power
4) Education as an industry may not be as controversial a perspective as it is made out to be. While education may be a not-for-profit sector by regulation, it has all the other characteristics of a standard industry. The only, and significant, difference here is that it deals with people and their change process. It is easy to mistakenly say that in education, people are the product, but this is not so-the value addition to people is the task of this industry. Like every other industry, it has supply chain issues, challenges in logistics and constraints in resources. It has similar problems in vendor management, in funding, regulatory compliance and more. While educators have resisted solutions that come from the industrial or corporate world, there is a case for acknowledging that the business of education can learn much from successful toolkits in industry.
5) Education as inspiration. The purpose of education is to raise us to be better human beings who build sustainable societies and civilisations that are respected over a period of time. Education must elevate us in ways we would not even have been able to see before. We need it to create aspirations for us at the very least, and grow us as individuals and people…To merely seek employment as a goal of education is not enough; it is only the first step. If education policy is designed to only meet this basic requirement in schools and colleges, then it must add components of lifelong learning for meeting greater aspirations and ensuring progress for its people throughout their lives.
anantjani.com 