By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Dec 18: For a turnaround in the education system, the Meghalaya government should begin by laying its focus on raising its standards and not on standardisation.
This is one of several insights provided by author, educator, mentor and international expert, Dilip Mukerjea who talked about the various facets of the state’s education scenario while speaking to The Shillong Times.
The tête-à-tête on the state government’s decision to adopt NCERT textbooks over those prescribed by the Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBoSE) brought to the fore many issues linked to education.
“I haven’t seen a single textbook here which is of world-class standard. Bah Rakkam Sangma (education minister) is trying his level best to raise the standards. He needs top-class people to help him build a team of intellectual commando units to improve the sorry situation,” Mukerjea said.
Otherwise, he said, Meghalaya will remain at the bottom of the ladder. In a majority of cases, the so-called education system here is an eradication system, he observed.
“The focus should not be on ‘standardisation’ but on raising standards! Education here does not need to be reformed; it needs to be transformed,” he felt.
Talking about his meeting with the education minister two weeks ago, Mukerjea said, “My objective was nothing to do directly with NCERT but help him understand how Meghalaya can become the learning capital of India if it follows certain guidelines.”
Stating that his help was sought, he said, “I am not prepared to be caught up writing textbooks but I have advised many governments around the world. If he gets a team of people who are going to finalise these books, I can check them before publication and show them how to make them world class”.
“Meghalaya is at the bottom of the ladder in the national standing of education. It doesn’t mean the textbooks in New Delhi, Chennai etc are fantastic. When I was a child, they were but not now,” Mukerjea said.
He said somebody in the decision-making body may have gone against local sentiments to replace the textbooks published in Meghalaya with those of the NCERT. But, he pointed out, textbooks cannot solely be blamed for poor academic performance.
“You can have the best textbooks in the world but if there is a mugging system and no learning system, you will fail,” he said, adding “The teaching standards are also very low.”
He felt the issue became political as the education minister opted for NCERT.
“I don’t know the back story. I didn’t even ask him who told him to go to NCERT. I have myself seen many of the local textbooks and they are absolute rubbish,” Mukerjea said.
He said NCERT is the best option in case it is better than the MBoSE option. If not, they should retain the MBoSE option and improve it, he stressed.
He said he is not a Khasi but he loves the people here and would love to see Meghalaya become number one. But, he continued, emotions have to be on actual skills and competence which are missing.
“If the local people are focused on standard, you must not go for standardisation. Today I went to NEHU and met a few students. They are fantastic but they hate school because the teachers cannot teach them with fun, excitement and joy. They cannot fascinate them on the subject matter and they rely on the textbooks,” Mukerjea said, adding that Meghalaya is dependent on a “broken system”.
He stressed, “Raising standards is an important point and it does not matter at which level. From kindergarten upwards, when textbooks are given to children, the idea is that the textbooks, teachers and parents are all partners in the same ecosystem. But the textbooks don’t exist with the full information in the way the brain is designed to learn.”
He said the requirement in the education system is to learn the trick of how to learn.
“When you are talking only about the textbooks and not about the teacher, then the textbooks have to be ideally colour textbooks, visual-verbal text with drawings. The drawings have to be done in such a way that the understanding of the learning material is immediate. It is then easy to understand. The third thing is that the textbook in each chapter does not have a professional level summary of the whole chapter. In one page or half a page, they should know the technique of summarising,” Mukerjea said.
He stressed that teachers should start learning before they start teaching. He said the teaching colleges in the state are not up to the standard.
“The previous education ministers were not educators but eradicators. They stole the lives of the children. They have no idea how to learn. They gave commands and dictated just because they held the position,” he said.
He also said that every child deserves the right to have proper education and observed that “Right to Education in Meghalaya is Right to No Education or Right to Lousy Education.”
“They are struggling to get qualified teachers but many teachers are not getting paid. It is a very sorry state and there is a lot of corruption involved with this network of textbooks…There is a back handed payoff and things like that. The department has to clean up the muck,” he stressed.