Is it "the right time" for education system to introspect on its evaluation and certification process?
You see, you have been bullied every now or than for apparently no good reasons
especially in your early growth phase as you can recall from your childhood
memories and being bullied even today while you undertake every new challenge.
Take a pause and rewind, being bullied for not performing as well as the next
bright child in your class or neighborhood, not been able to memories the
obvious answers to the obvious questions asked in the endless class tests,
being bullied for not performing financially as well compared to people with
similar background in life.
Let’s see what's the DNA
of this bullying business and has it any significance in the light of the fact
that learning and absorption capacity of a person is mostly independent of
their childhood performance due to several unknown and very unpredictable
environmental influences and opportunities available in one's life as they grow
compared to limited and intentionally restricted options available/ provided to
them in early childhood. Has it any significance at all in today’s rapidly
changing world with emerging technologies, accessible and free resources of
knowledge and why this business of bullying should fade away real fast, at
least why its high time for the same to happen. Let’s see why the boundaries of
education system should and will disappear very soon.
If you will closely observe the peripheral resources of learning available
today while tracing the chronological changes in streams of information
dissemination and future possibilities of technological infusion in informal
learning process which all cumulatively presenting a new and broadened learning
process, this informal learning process is getting so inclusive, so fast every
passing day that it will make your head spin. These informal learning tools are
mostly ignored in education process at present.
Let’s look at the parallel
growth in education system, which apparently seems way behind the real life
real time pace of development when it comes to learning process - internet,
smart phone, social networking just couple of examples though, you know!
Unfortunately none of these wonderful tools of information exchange and
knowledge transfer which have become core of everyone's everyday life are in
the priority list of education system at all, and neither going to be an area
of interest or exploration very soon for them, rather they will make sure that
this plethora of life changing tools shouldn't get into the education system in
the name of discipline, in the light of childhood vulnerability! Of course you
need some kind of regulatory mechanism.
If we go with the current
ideology of educational evaluation system then people in their life should be
arranged in the exact same order of professional success as they were arranged
in their school or graduation class, as evaluated based on their marks gained,
based on their knowledge of the curriculum, but take a look around and you will
realize it’s not true, it can’t be and it will never be true. The current
evaluation system doesn't acknowledge the real potential of individual; they
just care about the part of potential confined to their established boundary of
curriculum, including peripheral limited activities like cultural and sports
participation, ignoring the future environmental influences especially
technological ones.
Present educational
evaluation system seems somewhat flawed and bit dangerous as well; this whole
process of establishing and certifying who has what capacity at the very early
stage of individual's growth period while the growth of a person is directly
proportional to what kind of opportunities he or she received in post schooling
or later part of educational or personal life. Imagine a hypothetical situation
in which an institution firmly establishes this fact that some particulate
child has capacity of a D+ grade performance in primary or high school level,
imagine if he or she could not get through selection process of a good school
at secondary or higher secondary level and hence could not further got enrolled
in a good university because of that D+ grade. Now imagine, what if that same
child becomes extremely knowledgeable and efficient few years down the line
after completing primary or high school education possibly due to new
environmental influences, due to the latest learning tools and vast knowledge
resources available today, what if he or she is the first one to grasped and
master the latest tools of learning and research, what if that D+ grade student
is technically the soundest candidate for higher secondary or university
entrance but couldn't secure admission just because some institution had long
back established and authoritatively certified the poor grade of student based
on some skewed benchmark. A dream might get devastated due to early
certification of knowledge on a discreet fragmented evolution system often
within a limited bandwidth of educational framework. Couple of questions for
you to answer - Can you justify assessment establishing poor performance of a
geek child in cultural and sports activities or visa-versa? Can you justify
assessment based on questions asked in class tests, answers of which you can find out in less than 20 seconds in Google? Can you justify bullying of that
poor student who does not know the one word answer of that textbook question,
when he or she can find out a precise and elaborate answer of that question
within seconds while learning much more in the process only if you could have
allowed him or her to use their smart phone? What’s the validity of asking such
questions today and what is the validity of educational assessment based on
such questions today at all? Don’t you think it’s the right time for the
education system to introspect?
Mutation of educationsystem due to technological infusion is an emerging area of exploration which
educational strategists should focus on. Learning is a constant process, and
with the exponentially growing free and accessible resources of knowledge,
learning process is bound to be an exponential phenomenon. So, if you are a
parent or a teacher or educationalist think twice before bullying your child or
student or to those supposedly less knowledgeable than you today, because they
are going to come back tomorrow loaded with knowledge and laced with such
innovative tools of precise knowledge acquisition which we can’t even imagine
today. Today's comparison of two kids has no realistic relation or reflection
at all with the actual success in their life in future when they will be at the
highly accentuated curve of learning, the only deciding factor would be who
shows how much interest in the emerging technologies and sources of learning,
who familiarize himself or herself how much and who absorbs how fast and all of
this is totally independent from the performance and potential assessment of today.
It’s not just the fault of
education system which apparently fails to timely acknowledge the impact and
possibility of technological development which has and will always outpace the
development of educational system. Education system has its own constraints
which we should also acknowledge, which is that they need to thoroughly
investigate, assess and validate everything before letting it into the
curriculum of education system, they can’t really merge the trending knowledge
into the mainstream education without thorough understanding of the trend and
its possible impact on the students, young or mature, and by the time they
understand the trend and tame it down to the extent to be eligible for the
mainstream educational inclusion, that trend becomes outdated, hence this
constantly lagging process of chasing new knowledge and hence this outdated
dissipation of knowledge through structured education system. And since the
benchmark of assessment is outdated, there is grossly wrong process of
assessment of students as well. For another example, no matter what and how
extensively that particular student knows about some area of his or her
interest, it is not going to help him get the good grade unless that knowledge
is about one of the couple of subjects specified in the curriculum. That
student is supposed to stick to the curriculum diet imposed on them by the
institution; apparently every other knowledge is irrelevant in the eyes of
education system at least that’s what they think is important to secure a good
job at the end of the day. A fundamentally wrong notion of educational
performance at least a highly irrelevant model of evaluation of talent in
today's world when you are not just solely dependent on schools and
universities for your learning, while you are learning wherever you are,
whenever you want, in that very moment, learning on your mere wish. In spite of
all this free and immense knowledge the existence of educators can’t be
negated, what is needed is to have a holistic approach towards talent evaluation
and fast inclusion of technological shifts.
This is "Learning on
the go" generation and we can’t confine it in the predefined boundary of
education, we can’t impose on others what they should learn, rather they should
decide what they want to learn and it’s our responsibility to provide them the
customized curriculum of their individual interest, education system will
increasingly have to be much more flexible, it’s inevitable and its need of the
hour. What needs to be done here is that to create a macro framework for the education system, flexible, fast and inclusive enough to quickly notice,
sanitize and accommodate the changes occurring in technological field and
otherwise, into the mainstream education system. A framework which makes the educational
system sensible and smart enough to allow unlocking the true potential of
unique individuals rather than mass production.
