CHENNAI: In times of great crises like this, the education sector in the country should encourage the youth to emancipate themselves by experiencing and questioning the challenges in the society, says Jawahar Nesan, Vice-Chancellor of the JSS Science and Technology, Mysuru. By pushing for online education that helps only to meet the curriculum deadlines dictated by the market, we are alienating students from social reality, he says. Excerpts...
There have been several transformations to the education sector in the past few years. Is the current lockdown a crucial period for the sector?
Education is the first sector to have been paralysed since the start of the pandemic as social distancing is not at all a possibility in the campus. Now, society is facing a great threat in the form of a mounting death toll due to the coronavirus. The consequences are unimaginable. Living conditions and lifestyles are facing redefinition, demands and supplies have come to a standstill and productions are lost. The higher education campuses are not only the places for delivering predetermined curriculum but also for grooming the youths in response to contemporary developments, challenges and requirements posed by the society.
Is the education system not engaging with the current situation? Is the sudden growth of Ed-Tech companies is a direct result of the lockdown?
In the contrary, what the country has been doing since the onset of this pandemic is that what the neoliberal forces have been wanting to capitalise out of this turbulent stride. Policymakers, lawmakers, educational service providers and people at the helm of affairs have been voicing for continued teaching and learning online. The children and youths need to learn how to overcome this crisis, how to stabilize the mind and streamline their thoughts so that they could logically apply their mind in taking decisions. They are disconnected from the society they live in.
Are you saying that online education is bad for students?
There is no doubt that online programmes and resources might certainly attribute to subject matters of instruction and improve the learning experience of students. But, will this offer a foolproof all-round learning opportunity to the learners and enable the educational programmes to attain curricular objectives? The outcome of these programmes are aimed at preventing any disturbance to the creation of an employable person for the market. It has no relevance to the experience a student is having right now. It treats students and education as a commodity. When the country is amid a crisis, the education system should aid the emancipation of that society.
Most institutions have not introduced new programmes presented by the market. They are rather using the time to complete the existing curriculum.
These arguments are nothing but empty thoughts of the neoliberal economic forces, which see everything through the market-driven value system that preaches principles like 'time is money', 'value for money', 'cost to corporation', 'smart services' and so on. Certainly, this kind of a 'life of conformity' - as a form of education - can surely be achieved through the so-called new and suddenly inspired
online teaching and learning platforms. But this would dehumanise the youths and prevent creating a citizen. It will lead the higher education sector towards brain-drain in the long run by making it dependent on online materials created by liberal markets and societies abroad. They plan to make money from India, by creating employable students, without investing anything in the country. Education should be built upon the functions of the society.
Are you suggesting that the higher education system needs a revamp as a whole by redefining the learning outcomes?
Science, technology and market should exist to solve society's problems. Right now the society is solving the market's problem. Corporates have partnered with the State to redefine learning outcomes as a narrow set of skills that would create employees that fit the narrow roles the market expects.
Education should provoke people to think, question,learn, and innovate and challenge. Human kind has
been aspiring to create endeavours against hardships. A successful experience is what is called knowledge. Education should work toward knowledge creation that is socially driven.