THE NEW PATTERN OF EDUCATION-AN ANALYSIS
Dr. G. L. Bakhshi The Central Board of Secondary Education has introduced the new pattern of education, commonly known as 10+2 in all its schools beginning with IX class, with effect from May 1975. The first course leading to the examination at the end of X class (corresponding to the present Matriculation examination) will include three languages, Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences, also work experience and Health and Physical Education-a general undiversified education for all.
The second stage to end with the 12th year is an improved Higher Secondary course with more accent on vocationalization, involving diversification and specialization in subjects best suited to the genius of the pupil. For Most Students, this will be the terminal stage of education and stepping-stone to careers in life. After that the academically disposed scholars Could go in for the three-year degree course.
A radical feature of this scheme is that it makes work experience or community service compulsory. The pupil can choose from a long list of subjects like electric gadgets-their servicing and repairs, electronics, agriculture, photography, leather work, typing and tailoring. This part will consist of practicals only, no theory or written paper, and the assessment will be internal and cumulative at school. The traditional system of evaluation will also be reformed. There will be no pass or failure as such. There will be Grades for each subject-5 Grades in all: G-1, Outstanding; G-2, Very Good, G-3, Good; G-4, Fair and G-5, Poor; and this will be a surer guide for employers who look for special proficiency in their one special trade and also for admissions to higher professional or technical courses.
Forty years ago, Mahatma Gandhi advocated Basic education or work-centred education or learning through doing. He said that in a poor country like India, where 80 per cent of the population is agricultural and another 10 per cent industrial, it is a sin to give a purely literary or liberal education. The tradi-
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tional education has a negative role, it makes pupils more unemploy- able: a farmer's son who passes B.A. and M.A. becomes unfit for unsophisticated farming; the housewife's daughter who passes M.A. looks down on housewifery and is all for a white collar job, which is in such short supply. It is anti-national to continue such a system.
The work-centred education will develop self-reliance and self- confidence through earning capacity instead of a feeling of helplessness without a routine job. It will instil dignity of labour found in all advanced countries but absent in India; it will produce the spirit of initiative and enterprise that will create openings and opportunities where there are seemingly none. Of course, mere education will not end unemployment; that depends on economic development and many other factors. But it will make our young men and young women fit to face new challenges in life and to transform both our society and its economy through innovations and unsuspected adventures.
New System of Evaluation The new system of evaluation reflects also the new needs of a fast changing society. To declare a pupil as a failure in any class at so early an age will give him an inferiority complex for life and stunt his growth. Gandhi, Tagore, Edison, Einstein and Ramanujam all did poorly at school examinations but later became world figures. Why dub a child as a failure if he does badly in one or two subjects that he is compelled to study with or without his will? His interests may lie elsewhere. Give him a poor Grade in that and a good Grade in subjects in which he shines. That is simple justice to the young.
The new system is the first step towards revolutionary changes in the educational scene. And there is the rub. Everyone clamours for a wholesale change in the system of education and examination. There are no two opinions that the present system ha. outlived whatever limited utility it once had. It produces neither employment nor character nor discipline. Laymen look on schools and colleges as time-filling institutions. The experts express their dissatisfaction with it. Yet as soon as
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there is a real prospect of a radical change some members of the intelligentsia fiercely rally to the Support of the system of which they themselves have been critics. Our main problem seems to be that our radical thinking is not matched by radical action.
Soundness of New System The new system has got overwhelming support from expert educational opinion. It was recommended by the Kothari Commission, it conforms to the National Policy Resolution on Education (1968), it has been approved by the Central Advisory Board of Education and by various all-India forums and seminars. If such massive commendation is not enough to launch it into practice, nothing can be. Let the dissenters not wince before the challenge of change which they have been advocating so frequently. The new system seems to be the best under the circumstances and deserves an honest and sincere trial.
Unfounded Fears The no-changers warn us that the new system will encounter many difficulties. Nothing great was ever achieved without surmounting huge difficulties. But that is no reason for not making
Education for self-reliance
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a beginning in the right direction. If men remained confined within the safe familiar limits, there would have been no aeroplane, no space travel, no adventurous inventions. A verse in the Panchtantra says, "Low men do not start any venture for fear of meeting obstacles; the middling ones do make a start but leave off when there are obstacles but the high-minded persist in the right course, though again and again beset with difficulties".
The prophets of doom warn us that the new scheme will founder on the rock of finance. Where from will come the huge funds and local expertise to teach many odd items of work experience in a thousand schools? Where there is a will, there is a way. Money is never any bar to real progress. It is on record that the total equipment used by Sir C. V. Raman, the first Indian scientist to win the Nobel Prize, was hardly valued at Rs. 300.
India has over-abundance of human resources and acute scarcity of finance. Our policies should be man-power centred and not money- centred. Human effort and human ingenuity work wonders, while mere money power proves a non-starter. Indian education would have been in a far happier position today, if Gandhiji's ideas of developing education around work experience had been adopted 2 to 4 decades ago. But then the no-changers had their day and Gandhiji was too busy with more urgent programmes to secure independence for India, to devote his whole time and attention to educational reform.
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