Every human being, despite their inherent uniqueness is similar. They are similar with respect to the fact that they all have their own respective needs, the fulfillment of which is integral to their personal and social development. Our student life, the time we spend in organized education, is integral in shaping who we become over the passage of time.
The needs that arise within us over the course of this time, combined with the manner in which they are fulfilled, determines how we turn out to be in adulthood. In the “mad race to the front” that has become characteristic of the 21st century, what we see the world over and particularly in our country is students, intentionally or unintentionally, being deprived of certain essential elements whose presence is important to their well being. We see many ‘important’ student needs being left unfulfilled. This constitutes the essence of student poverty.
“Student poverty” covers a wide array of issues emerging from “economic poverty” amongst students, their being unable to afford good quality education to “emotional” poverty where students find themselves lacking the support structure in terms of guidance and counseling necessary to help them with their changing emotional requirements from “spiritual poverty” where students are deprived of integration into existing value system to “intellectual Poverty” where students are deprived of access to basic knowledge and information. Living in a rapidly moving job oriented world, what we are seeing around us is the shaping of today’s educational system around an exam-oriented mindset whose primary goal is ‘marks’ rather than ‘Learning’. A student’s ‘education’ is measured in terms of how well he is able to score in the answer sheet rather than in assessing how well what he has learned, has contributed to his development as an individual and as a member of a greater society.
Having set the ‘goal’ as ensuring that their students score the maximum possible marks in the examination, schools and colleges (while setting the pace with tests, revision exams, model exams and preparatory exams) seldom find time to allocate for ‘seemingly’ less important tasks as inculcating within students as awareness of existing value systems and spiritual knowledge and providing them with proper emotional and psychological guidance. In fact the few months before the so called ‘board exams’ are so strenuous and hectic that it poses a serious threat to the emotional and psychological well being of students. Looking around ourselves today we see, what is popularly being spoken about as the “co-modification” of education, simply put it means that education comes with a price tag attached. Those who want the “good quality” education will get it only if they shell out astronomical sums of money. What this means is that in a country like India, where a large number of the people live in below poverty line conditions education will gradually become out of reach of the majority of students from poor backgrounds. Adding to their woes is the deplorable state of the many schools run by the government, specifically keeping in mind this section of society.
Education in India today becomes ‘Helpmate’ to suit certain existing criterion. It has become compartmentalized such that students who are part of one specific stream absolutely lacking knowledge about any other stream. Emphasis has today become on ‘mugging’ up what is exclusively part of ones field of study rather than choosing to learn, experiment and implement in interdisciplinary fields of study and learning. All this has contributed towards growing “intellectual poverty” amongst students.
It is the students of today who will become the driving force of our nation tomorrow. It is around them that future society, economics and politics will revolve & hence it is necessary for today’s society to ensure that their development is looked after whole heartedly and completely.
Vivek John Varghese,
St. Josephs College,
Bangalore.