Education Beyond Marks

VOICES

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The education system of a country is one of the efficient tools in nation building. Education works as a useful weapon to eradicate all the evils from our society. But, what should be the actual parameters to judge one’s education, should it be marks or skills?. But today one can easily observe that the current education system of India is totally based on marks.  Yes, we are making students only to memorize the words in the books, we are not making them understand the basics. The current education system lacks practicality and relevance. We try to measure the knowledge based on the score on a certain test, there should be more focus on learning rather than marks. Trying to judge how ‘bright’ a student is only on the basis of the answer sheets seems to be outdated. One of the major flaws in the current education system is the outdated syllabus which continues to be the part of curriculum despite the fact that the technology and issues are changing in every few days. To circulate quality education among students, there is a need to undergo a reformative change in the current syllabus which will promote students to study something which will be of use. In order to generate skilled force, we need to make education skill based not marks based because today market is searching for skill not for our marks. Indian education system should allow students to identify skill sets and that skill should not be evaluated on the basis of our memorizing power and writing it in exams. I think after 6^th standard, students should go through a bunch of “skill identification” tests to find out where they are good at. It should be not about pass/fail but for finding the relative order of skills. Instead of reading about certain topics from a dry text, we should work out on real life oriented tasks which will increase the productivity skills of a student. Today, we are facing unemployment in our country and the primary reason behind this is the lack of skills among graduates, although they have good grades in their academics. Interactive learning should be the part of the education system, where students should not only listen to lectures by the teachers instead they should ask too. Yes, marks can be an important tool to differentiate among students, but marks should be awarded on the basis of classroom participation, project work, communication and leadership skills, only then a genuine student will shine projecting them qualified in the needs of the market. Our testing and marking systems need to be built to recognize original contributions, in the form of creativity, problem-solving. If we can do this successfully, Indian education system can change overnight. We need to realize that memorizing is not learning and we should stop encouraging memorization. The goal post of the Indian education system needs to be redefined to promote good future of the country and to make the dream of “skill India” true in the real sense.