Reorienting Education ~ II

Our understanding of success also needs reconsideration. A person may earn a large income and yet experience a life impoverished by broken relationships, anxiety, selfishness or an absence of purpose. Another person may have a modest profession but contribute enormously to family, community and society. Economic achievement and human fulfilment are not synonymous. Education should not teach young people to be indifferent to material success, but it should teach them that material success is only one component of a meaningful life. This brings us to perhaps the deepest question: what is the purpose of human life?

Different philosophical and spiritual traditions answer this question differently, and education should not impose one particular answer. But education should create the intellectual space for a young person to ask the question. What does it mean to live a good life? What do I owe to my family and society? What is the relationship between freedom and responsibility? What constitutes happiness? How should one respond to success and failure? What is the difference between desire and need? How should power be exercised? What makes an action just or unjust? These are not questions outside education. They are among the most important questions education can help a human being explore. Literature, philosophy, history, art and culture have a special role here.

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Literature allows us to enter lives different from our own. History teaches us that societies are shaped by choices and consequences. Philosophy trains us to examine assumptions. Art develops sensitivity and imagination. Music and theatre cultivate emotional expression and collective experience. Civics teaches us that rights are accompanied by responsibilities. These disciplines should not be regarded as ornamental in an education system increasingly oriented towards science and technology. The technological citizen of tomorrow will need the humanities precisely because technology will increase his power to act while leaving unresolved the question of what actions are desirable. Hence, the need for an inter-disciplinary approach to education.

Reorienting education also requires a closer relationship between education and the world of work, but in a different way from simply making education job-oriented. Students should have opportunities to understand actual workplaces, professions, entrepreneurship, crafts and skilled occupations. Vocational education should receive the dignity it deserves. The artificial hierarchy between "academic" and "practical" learning needs to be reduced. A society requires skilled technicians, artisans, farmers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, researchers, teachers and professionals of every kind. Education should help young people understand that dignity comes from the value and integrity of one's contribution, not merely from the social prestige attached to an occupation in a stratified society. At the same time, industry and employers also have a responsibility.

If graduates lack employability, the answer cannot always be to demand that universities simply produce more narrowly trained workers. Employers, professional bodies and educational institutions need a continuing dialogue about changing skills and competencies. Life-long learning must become normal because professions themselves are changing rapidly. The person who enters employment at twenty-two may need to acquire entirely new competencies at thirty-five, forty-five or fifty. Education cannot, therefore, be something completed before employment begins. It must continue alongside employment and throughout life. Technology makes this life-long approach increasingly possible.

Digital platforms, open educational resources, libraries, lectures and collaborative networks can make learning accessible well beyond conventional classrooms. But technology should be used to deepen learning rather than merely accelerate information consumption. The objective should not be to produce people who consume more content, but people who think more deeply, question more intelligently and act more responsibly. The relationship between education and social degradation must also be understood carefully. It would be too simplistic to attribute crime, violence or moral decline to shortcomings in the education system alone. Social problems arise from multiple and interacting causes. Yet education has a preventive and formative role.

A person who develops empathy, self-control, critical thinking, respect for law, appreciation of human dignity and the ability to resolve conflict constructively possesses resources that can help resist destructive impulses and social pressures. Education cannot eliminate crime, but an education system that consciously develops character and social responsibility can contribute to a healthier social environment, away from deviant social behaviour. Ultimately, what we need is not less education but a broader conception of education. We need to move from education as credential to education as capability; from education as preparation for employment to education as preparation for life; from learning as an activity confined to youth to learning as a lifelong process; and from knowledge as personal possession to knowledge as a resource for social contribution. The reorientation of the education system must, therefore, be systemic.

It should influence curriculum design, teacher training, assessment methods, institutional culture, vocational education, higher education, career counselling and community engagement. Educational institutions should be encouraged to measure not merely examination results and placement figures, but also participation in meaningful projects, innovation, service, creativity and the development of broader competencies. Parents should be encouraged to value curiosity and character alongside marks. Students should be told that a career is important, but it is only one part of a life. Employers should participate in shaping relevant competencies while recognising that universities have a responsibility larger than supplying skilled labour. Policymakers should ensure that employability and human development are treated as complementary rather than competing objectives.

The ultimate objective should be to create an education system that produces people who are capable of earning a livelihood, but who also know how to live; people who can compete, but also cooperate; people who can exercise rights, but understand responsibilities; people who can use technology, but are not controlled by it; people who can pursue ambition, but retain humility; people who can accumulate knowledge, but also develop wisdom; and people who can achieve personal success without losing sight of the society that made that success possible. Employment should remain an important objective of education because a dignified livelihood gives a person independence and the ability to contribute. But it should be understood as a means rather than the meaning of life. The real purpose of education is larger.

It is to enable a human being to understand the world, understand oneself, develop useful knowledge and life skills, cultivate values, form meaningful relationships, accept responsibility and remain capable of learning throughout life. The ultimate classroom is, therefore, not the school or university. It is life itself. The ultimate examination is not a written paper, but the difficult moment when knowledge has to become judgement, when freedom has to become responsibility and when personal interest has to be reconciled with the larger good. The ultimate certificate is not the degree hanging on the wall, but the trust that other human beings place in us.

If education can once again embrace this larger purpose, we will not have to choose between employability and humanity. We can create an education system that prepares young people both to earn a living and to live a life of meaning. We can transform the degree from an endpoint into a beginning, the classroom from a place of instruction into a foundation for life-long learning, and employment from the destination of education into one of its many instruments. The challenge before us, therefore, is not merely to educate more people.

It is to reorient what we mean by education itself. We must ask whether we are merely preparing the next generation for the labour market, or preparing them for the far larger and more meaningful and demanding task of being human. A society that gets this distinction right will not only produce better workers and professionals; it will have a better chance of producing wiser citizens, stronger communities and more humane human beings. Education should ultimately teach us not merely how to make a living, but how to make a life ~ and how, through that life, to make a meaningful contribution to the lives of others.

(The writer is an IAS officer, presently working as the Principal Secretary, Information and Cultural Affairs Department, Government of West Bengal. The views expressed here are personal and don't reflect those of the Government)