Mismatches in the educational sphere

There was a time when talk about mismatches was limited only to the nuptial knot and its aftermath. But now it has escalated to the very vital sphere of education that impacts on our youth. What are the two parties mismatched? The output from schools and the needs of the job market.

The feature, "Ground-breaking changes in the education sector" (Sunday Observer June 16) lays bare the magic formula (hope so!) envisaged by the Minister of Education, to correct this mismatch. It was a mismatch that caused the shedding of blood of many a youth entangled in past uprisings and of course the time has come to reconsider the whole "evil" scenario. The uprisings, a dark blotch on our history, were led by evil-minded men fishing in troubled waters.

In a startling revelation in the above article the Education Minister posits that the trend is not seen in the Far East Asian countries such as China, Japan and Korea.

The secret is that for many years they had been restructuring their education systems to cater to changing national and global needs. So, what were we doing is the inevitable question. There are a myriad answers to that ranging from blindly trekking along the path of the colonial system of education to experimenting with new policies with each change of government consigning consistency to limbo. Who suffered at the end? The youth of course and the country as a whole. It would be an interesting survey to explore how the education systems in other colonies ran and whether they too were plagued by this debacle of mismatching the output in education and the country's needs.

New path

Anyway there is nothing more noble or super-holy as saying "I am sorry" and trying a new path. So, among the many changes aspired to is introducing a GCE AL technology stream, a much wanted facet. Let us delve into the details of the mismatch that got intertwined with naked and shameful discrimination. It was a land mirroring the popular slogan, Kolombata kiri gamata kekiri. Entwined was also the focus on arts education as against science and technical education. To give the statistics however much nauseating they are, during the period under review, children doing science subjects approximated to the ratio, 21 percent and 27 percent in the commerce stream. The balance was a huge ratio of 52 percent in the arts stream. According to that feature, more than 200,000 students follow the Arts stream every year. Whoever asked for such a multitude? Most popular subjects followed are the languages,Buddhist civilisation, political science and logic.

Then they go on to face the job market under the ennobled title, "Arts Graduates", but find the doors cruelly shut. This is due to the mismatch. Good marriages, they say, are made in heaven and bad marriages, of course, elsewhere. So the mismatch results. The Minister has the bravery to trace as causes of youth unrest and bloody insurgency in the past to this mismatch. Of course, he need not carry the baby by himself since many others have been partners to the malady over the years.

Urgent attention

He himself has inherited a baby full of woes and worries that need remedying and urgent attention. Obviously aligned to this situation is the difference between the city schools and the village schools again leading to this phenomenon of "Mismatch". The village schools are not attractive enough to lure science teachers who always end up in the city schools. It is one vicious circle.

The educated intelligentsia is aware of the crosses carried in the voyage of modern education. Given a fillip by the Colebrooke Commission of 1832-33. Its exalted sphere began as a prerogative of the rich and privileged while the other student sectors were subject to a haphazardly grown educational system characterised by under-equipment and seething with teacher problems and a miscellany of other problems.

The offspring of the very upper crust of society did have a merry voyage via education, most children from affluent families sailing across the oceans to shed luster in the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Behind languished the next social classes, picking up many a bite fallen from the "Extravaganza" table while crawling under the table were the children of the poverty-stricken classes, in numbers superseding the other two. It is enough we did not encounter the very demon of worse destruction and mayhem.

Vain attempts

Were the down-trodden totally uncared for? No. Many a Government bravely tried to tackle their problems but it took and will continue to take, many years for the results of the changes to seep down. The vain attempts to put right the mismatches were one such gesture that never reached its objective in full. Even now it has not reached the goal. And again who suffers? The poverty-ridden class and their offspring who do not have any other saviour, but the State in giving them as a bare minimum, the package for decent living - composed of at least the following, a job, a house, the wherewithal for a decent married life. Now that is dehumanising, they are entitled to many more bonanzas even perhaps to reach the stars.

For the time being, the huge problem in education cannot be solved by the common spectacle of parents protesting outside school gates about a shortage of Science and Mathematics teachers or the lack of a laboratory, a feast in the eyes of sensational news hunters.

No. It has to be solved by a gigantic process to which the Minister has begun to lend a hand in earnest. Among these again is included the updating of village schools with necessary equipment for a science education. These would no doubt place the village schools on par with city schools and even arrest the glamour of the urban schools to the village folk, an ailment going on unabated.

There is also a move to introduce the AL Technology stream in selected schools, another salutary boon. In those countries the Minister has mentioned as those devoid of youth unrest, Technology plays a prominent part in the school and university curriculum.

If our mentors were sleeping over this fact all this time, it is time for them to wake up. The future is all agog with science and technology though we cannot shut our eyes to the very important part played by the arts subjects in the overall development of a human. Really, they will continue to stir our souls. But just now very closer home is the need to allot the utmost attention to the field of technology and science education and bridge the gap between the city schools and village schools in this sphere.

That way, the evils of mismatch in education would be greatly reduced auguring a bright future for our youth irrespective of social divisions.