Quality Education, that’s the urgent need of the hour.

Change! What does it signify? Does it mean the change of the label glued on a wine bottle or the change of the entire wine bottle with its content? Our new west Bengal Govt. has pitched in for many educational reforms, one of them is abolishing pass-fail system till class eight. I believe this is just a cosmetic change or a noble idea without any real material in it. The very purpose of education is awareness or creating innovative brains or developing the society. In the present learning system, students, below 10^th standard, come to school or read books not for brainstorming or for knowledge gathering rather they do it for their parents or out of a compulsion. Many of them could not do with this after few years, and opt to neglect study because of financial condition or lack of interest, or repeated failure or they find a better option to live with. 

In our country’s educational curriculum class eight is seen as one of the most key milestone as the course from this step could be considered as the 1^st building block of higher education and it’s quite a different path from the earlier classes. The average age of the student, in class VIII, is 14 and from this pre-adult age, many qualities like: self-esteem, consciousness, self-realization etc. start blossoming. It’ll not be wrong to say till age 13 a boy or girl is in his/her childhood days and they start exploring their pre-adult age afterwards. What I’m trying to indicate is, from class VIII a student start realizing, irrespective of their reason, what education is all about or, at least, we can make them understand.

 Education is our primary right but at the same time we don’t have any right to snatch the most precious time, childhood,  from the children putting them under curriculum burden. On the contrary, it can be argued, why not then abolish pass-fail till class X? We have to think in a comprehensive manner. To improve the quality of students, there should be a healthy competition among students; at the same time without taking the extreme position we have to impose the restriction somewhere within the path. The object should be to give utmost opportunity to the students for maximum learning without impairing the quality of student.

In bigger picture it can be said, the consciousness, the passion or the curiosity of student about study, knowledge raise once they are mature, once they understood the meaning of education or once they think about their future and that begins, I think, after the class VIII. If the student, who opt to leave the school after V, is given chance to continue till class VII, may think (being conscious or grown-up) twice to be back on the journey of knowledge for better future; if not still we will be benefitted as the average educational qualification of whole country will rise. It’s true that good students will always be there to take the education seriously, it’s not that the burden of education (read exam pressure) makes them better student; they becomes good because of their knack, their culture, their passion to be the one among of many. Not that they will be least interested or their quality will degraded due to absence exam-pressure. Why can’t we think that they may get ample opportunity to go astray and think beyond the syllabus. In these circumstances, it seems, it’s a welcome initiative of our Govt.

Having said this, I want to make stern allegation against our education quality. Whatever I said earlier is possible only when the knowledge distribution system is changed. Whatever knowledge we get in schools is just some written knowledge which they need to remember till the exam comes; which subsequently brings private tuition in picture for this read-for-exam system. This indicates that the quality of education in the schools is not per excellence. Why should a student come to school, just to be literate or for a compulsion? Before anything, student should be made to realize (that’s not being done really) that education is not a burden, it’s for their better future; it can give an alternative (or better) source for bed and butter and above all to make one a good human being. So education should be a lure of bright future than a compulsion. So until unless, the quality of education is improved no reform or corrective step can be beneficial.