Wanted: a holistic approach to education

The excitement stirred up by the announcement of the results of the IIT-JEE (Indian Institutes of Technology-Joint Entrance Examination — an Indian examination which decides admission to India’s best engineering colleges) has almost settled in the two weeks since the benchmark for the next round of Indian students. These students have already begun to doggedly pursue the dream of reaching the summit of their academic experience raised by yet another year of continually increasing competition.

But should this supposed indication of a successful high school science education really be what determines whether a student joins the educated elite of India? And is this the way of testing students in line with the ideology of an education which lasts a lifetime?

Hoping to win that trophy of excellence and to live up to the high hopes of securing a place in the distinguished IITs, students begin a rat race where they are actually told to leave behind most co-curricular activities so that they can spend more time fighting for that ticket to ‘success’; where not what they have learnt but how many other students they leave behind is rewarded; where some subject topics are emphasised and others ignored merely because the former eclipse the latter in the question papers.

Of course, examinations are absolutely necessary; they are an effective means to evaluate students’ academic performance, but not when they are the sole factor in deciding aspiring students’ entire academic careers. When the competition is so intense that the focus shifts, naturally, from taking part in an intellectual journey to solving more exam problems than everyone else, when science is seen not as a way to understand the world and attain the good of humanity but as a selfish path to worldly and materialistic ‘success’.

The day when not only the IITs but every other Indian academic institution adopts a holistic system to judge the youth, encouraging well-rounded individuals over competition conscious ones will be the day when India starts on track to a smarter future with conscientious intelligence willing to make a difference as its engine.