India is a country of diverse cultures, languages and 53 recognised boards of education. Each board of education has its own syllabus for students. This means there are 53 recognised syllabi for students across the country. Every year, these students, after finishing their schooling from their respective boards, go to various reputed universities across the country for higher education. Here, they have to confront invisible socio-educational inequality. They are not aware of the inequality which is going to pose an obstacle to their potential.
Let me begin by comparing the syllabus of state boards and CBSE. There is a visible gap between them. The Uttar Pradesh board with more than 6 million students enrolled, added a chapter on “neglected heroes” in the era of Science and technology. Ironically, I found this news on the same page where it was published that India has successfully launched a satellite which will strengthen our capabilities to predict cyclone and drought. Instead of equipping these more than 6 million minds with scientific and complex problem-solving technique, the educational board finds it more relevant to equip these minds with glorifying the past whereas requirements are opposite to this.
Science and technology have undoubtedly been playing a crucial role to eliminate disease and poverty etc. and fulfilling every human need and quest. The Uttar Pradesh board does not have chapters on Descartes, Newton, and other influential thinkers who changed the course of history by their new and influential thoughts. Rather, the board is giving priorities to “neglected heroes” over Descartes. The heroes who have sacrificed their lives for socio-economic equality in society.
The very idea behind these “neglected heroes” was to promote harmony and rationality among the students for the betterment of evolving society in the modern world but unfortunately, the board has failed to trace it. It prioritises war story and religiosity among students over rationality. It is very obvious that rationality is behind every invention and abolition of taboos.
On the other hand, CBSE has quite a good syllabus for its students but, it seems as if only the privileged sections of society have access to it. So, there is a need to scrap state board syllabus for ensuring equality in society as well as equipping the youngsters’ mind with relevant information and shaping their minds to enable them to solve upcoming problems which humanity is going to suffer in the next 50 years — climate change and poverty, for instance.
Centralisation of the Educational Board will give more boost to the country’s quality of education in terms of smooth functioning and prevention of voluntarily tempering of syllabi for political benefits. The issue that arose when this demand was raised is that each state has many regional languages and it is the right of the students to get their primary education in their respective regional languages. So, the board can easily frame a syllabus according to modern requirement such as critical and scientific thinking in their respective regional language till 5th standard.
After 5th standard, the medium of instruction should be in English, because every professional course such as B. Tech, management and the medical sciences are offered in the English language. It is also the responsibility of the state to ensure that students indulge in some serious thought with respect to their course before pursuing it. It is one of the reasons behind the massive underemployment of Indian graduates in courses such as technical, medical and management. Underemployment and frustration in turn are behind large scale suicides.
India needs an independent and centralised education system to ensure the quality and quantity of education. The Medical Council of India and the University Grants Commission are the independent institutions in higher education. But, as long as we don’t have an independent and centralised system which takes responsibility of change in the primary education of country, and addresses the problems of students in the primary level, we cannot expect a good result from graduates to produce quality research.