Education in India: What should we study?

Every nation displays a splendid picture of homogeneity when looked through a bird's eye view. However, there exist many layers of identity when plummeted to the lowest levels of the society. For example, in case of India an individual of this land falls under at least three layers of identity. The foremost being of an Indian then of the community she belongs to (such as Bengali ), and last but not the least of her economic condition.

If illustrated through the Indian education system then, the subject of one particular national curriculum might face serious challenges. The Indian government has made it mandatory to learn English and Hindi as subjects in school, be it private or public, since they have been declared as the official languages of the nation. Further, there are 22 languages officially recognized under the constitution of India, but in the run for importance, the mother tongue gets the least priority in school by reason of its no contribution in the global job market. Now for example, a child who lives in the rural parts of Southern Rajasthan gets a very small amount of exposure to Hindi let alone English for the local language spoken over there is Mewari. The kids in this area live under utter poverty and most of them do not even have TV sets in their houses. Hence, remain mostly cut out from the globalised world where English stand as an important language. Thus, even after investing a lot of energy the teacher (who himself is incompetent in the language) can bring them to only mug up the alphabets. Further, it is believed that a child's primary learning is highly derived from his/her immediate environment therefore; many of the children's books have pictures of whatever the child sees in her daily life in them. Now, a child who dwells in the remotest corner of a tribal village has never received a glimpse of the trains and aeroplanes depicted in his book and so it becomes difficult for him to comprehend a word which do not match any picture of his imaginative world, whereas, for a child living in the urban parts, who grew up travelling in such vehichles probably know the word even before attending primary school. Consequently, the same book which becomes very much understandable for the urban kid turns out to be seemingly inscrutable for a rural kid.

In contrast to this, some countries like USA and UK where the differences are lesser, it might be feasible. For, the language they are born with is not only at par with the medium of instruction in schools but with the world at large as well. Nevertheless, as there are very less countries in the world who are at such advantageous positions, I believe that a nation should not enforce her students to study the same curriculum until entering college. The objective of education is to help in the proper manifestation of perfection of a mind and not only to prepare them for the job market. A tribal kid will never be able to go beyond the borders of his state for higher studies but an urban kid might trespass the borders of his country. Hence, a step by step procedure to empower students is what is required rather than setting one standard which becomes unnecessarily difficult for people who are economically and socially handicapped. With so many disparities, I believe one particular national curriculum cannot be applicable for all students in a country which speaks more than 780 languages and has a polarised class distinction.