Education is India is obligation. It almost like a social obligation. It comes in the category of marriages where the acceptability and eligibility is variably dependent on the amount of education one has and the salary one draws. The reason why I say ‘amount’ is because it is looked upon by how much education a person has and not by the of knowledge that one possesses.
There was a time when education was out in the open. But today, education is restricted and mostly dominated by the textbooks. And the education system has turned us into parrots where they expect us to mug up things and vomit it out on the paper.
But the question is if textbook education is really worthwhile? Do textbooks really add to the knowledge base that we have or does it only add to the weight of the bags?
It has become mandatory for the students of today to read from the textbooks and thus they have very little time to think and find out for themselves. It restricts the knowledge base of the students to learn and explore. The spoon-feeding makes them lethargic.
But it also has a flipside. While information from other sources may give you ‘meanings’. Textbooks give us ‘definitions’ which is more important to learn for the implementation of our learnings in life.
When an apple fell on Newton, he gave the definition in order to explain the meaning and not the other way round. Maybe many more Newtons and Einsteins may grow of a text book.
– Kashmeera Tambe
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