I neither believe in fairy tales nor fairies, but at this point in life when I’m in high school, I really want to meet a fairy. When I do, I’ll ask her to get me a time machine. The aim behind this is that I want to go back and meet the inventor of maths and ask him to solve R.D Sharma’s book (the ‘Big-B’ of maths) overnight. Only then will he know the suffering of the noble souls.
The starting itself is frustrating, right? Then imagine being a 12th grader, waking up for school at 6:00 am, spending 12 long hours at school and when you are back home you have got tons of home works to do and that finally drives you crazy. Life’s way too colourless.
I’m delighted about the willingness of my brain, heart and mind, that have paved my way through the bumpy roads (school) for the past 17 years. On the other side when I think about Anitha, Abinaya, Rahul, Vijay and many other students whose lives were eaten by this cruel education system, my heart gets frightened.
The present-day system of education is only textbook oriented. The students of CBSE and ICSE boards are still a little lucky as they are allowed at least to express their own relevant answers, unlike the state boards, which demand that the children mug up even the page numbers.
Why is the system like this? The one standard answer I have got always is “The system is like that”. If it is so, then who framed it?Why can’t there be any changes in the substandard system of education? When thousands are incapable of managing the educational stress and relying on suicide as the only possible solution, do you not see that something is going very very wrong here? Millions are living their lives in darkness, believing that they are stupid because they were judged by the ability of a fish to climb a tree.
The fault is not in the stars rather it is in our education system.
The British were the ones who brought this mechanism of ‘copy-pasting’ to teach Indians their ways of life. Children in their country are encouraged to do more vocational courses. They aim at developing the workforce of the future generations as a whole. But we? We depend on the updated version of an outdated system. Our leaders wanted to make our country a developed nation. This can be achieved, only if any progress is made in favour of the coming generations.
From the depth of my knowledge, the solutions I would like to offer is that the system of Gurukul can be brought into effect. More windows should be provided for exploration. Some other strategies of learned legends can also be employed.
The poet in me scribbles her poems only on the question papers. The artist in Raj is not allowed to play with colours. The singer in Sathesh comes out only in the bathroom. The athlete in Swati is impeded under four walls just to write the chemistry exam. The list does not end there, a cartoonist, a fashion designer, gamers, meme creators and many other student’s talents must be motivated.
If the playgrounds had a voice, then they would have cursed the classrooms for taking away the blessings of the little toes from them.
Finally, I would like to say in conclusion that we are all aware of the equality of education, but now the time has come to debate about its quality. I’m not sure if the fairies up there know my intention or not, but I’m pretty much sure that people will give a thought to this essay if at all they read it. Maybe that’s the reason why God has sent me this fairy (the whole team of YKA) to help me to preach about the system that has been ruining lives for ages.