Long hoardings advertising ‘guaranteed government service’ (in a certain time-period) at bus- stands, metro stations or at different public places attract the attention of many educated, unemployed youths. In the book fair, there was huge crowd around the stalls of different publishers who are providing the ‘success capsules’ for getting good scores in examinations.
Here, near Delhi University, we can find these ‘factories’ which produce government employees for us.
Stability in jobs/careers is the basic need of many humans, if they want to live their lives with satisfaction. For this purpose, a large number of youths across India come to Delhi to prepare themselves for the purpose of getting a government job. These youths face many problems while preparing – in terms of adjustment, finances, part-time jobs, shifting here and there, and many other compromises.
But, this is not the issue which I am going to discuss. I want to focus on the process of making a servant of the government. In many cases, these coaching centres charge a huge amount for their services. They put the facts/information in the minds of aspirants, without keeping an eye on the relevance of the facts.
Freire named this as the ‘banking‘ concept of education where we just put facts or information in the mind of children. Tagore also talked about it through the story of a parrot. Even the National Curriculum Framework (NCF), 2005, also recommended avoiding learning through a process of rote.
But often, after completing their formal education, students come to these centres just to acquire factual knowledge. If we try to see this in depth, we will find that this practice puts a big question mark on the relevance of our formal institutions (schools, colleges, universities). Why are they not making the students able enough to crack these examinations, even after a period of three or five years – while these centres guarantee success in just three or six months? Or, do we need to rethink the aims of education? In my opinion, this puts a question mark on the entire education system of India.
In many colleges, we have great faculty members who come through a proper channel having good qualifications, experiences and even publications. Then, why do they fail in this? We have proper infrastructure in the form of schools and colleges. Then, why are these centers able to prepare youths to crack the exams? Why do students have to pay huge amounts for a short period, when they have already completed their education for little cost?
In my opinion, there is also another side to this issue which puts the question on the examinations board. Why do they need to know a candidate’s grasp of factual knowledge to determine a capable aspirant? Is there a different meaning of ‘education’ for them?
We have to think about the output of free and compulsory education, scholarships, resources, if our youths are to emerge from this process of capitalism, unscathed. To me, this is the face of capitalism where some capitalist forces influence the whole education system, government services and the aspirations of the youth.
These centres are only suitable for a particular class who can access them. In my eyes, this may lead to discrimination in our society. I do not have the data which can reveal the number of successful candidates coming out of these centers. But, I do think that the number of unsuccessful people is probably much larger.
As youths, we also need to think what we had really done during our formal education, our futures are ultimately decided during the months we spend at coaching centres.
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Image used for representative purposes only.