If your plan is for one year – plant rice, If your plan is for ten years – plant trees, If your plan is for hundred years – educate children – Confucius
A nation’s future growth trajectory is shaped by the quality of that particular nation’s education system. Education, therefore, attains paramount importance of all sectors of a nation. Poor quality education system inevitably produces poor quality workforce and thereby resulting in poor socio-economic growth of a nation. Any nation’s education system that fails to keep pace with rapidly changing global trends, will gradually push that nation to the brink of oblivion, put the identity at stake. Today’s world driven by groundbreaking technological advances, globalisation, unprecedented socio-economic-environmental challenges necessitates our education system to prepare our new generation for such a world. For quite some decades now, the education system in advanced societies has been consistently focusing on producing highly skilled professionals, instilling entrepreneurial, innovative, creative, critical and analytical thinking, collaborative mindset, etc in the young generation of their countries. Today, those education systems are churning out innovators, entrepreneurs, leaders, who are setting the trend in today’s world.
But in an age when all the advanced education systems are increasingly aligned towards knowledge economy, is our education system, especially Bodo medium, producing enough skilled human resource? If not, are our leaders doing enough to reform Bodo medium education to transform our youths into innovators, entrepreneurs, or at least youths with requisite skills to effectively compete with their counterparts from the advanced societies or to effectively participate in highly globalized society driven by futuristic technologies? What are the steps the curriculum developers and policy makers in Bodoland have taken to prepare the Bodo medium students, in particular, students in Bodoland, in general, to keep pace with emerging global trends?
One of the greatest achievements of successive Bodo Accords is that Bodos now have managed to secure their right to manage their own education institutions, can mould them as per their requirements, wishes and aspirations. It’s been more than a decade now since Bodoland University was established and recently as per BTR agreement a separate Directorate for Bodo medium schools have been created. In other words, we have secured significant amount of independence over how to prepare our new generation to be at par with other advanced societies. It is an administrative achievement every Bodo must feel euphoric about but to translate this euphoria into an agent of transformation, our educators, policy makers, CSOs and government must collaboratively make tremendous effort to develop and evolve such a curriculum and design an instructional system that prepare new Bodo generation, especially the disadvantaged kids, to effectively participate at national and global arena while making them sensitive to and aware about local issues. To do justice to the upcoming Bodo generation, curriculum developers must incorporate curriculum materials that teach the skill set required in 21st century – Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Information literacy, Media literacy, Technology Literacy, Flexibility, Leadership, Initiative, Productivity, and Social skills. Gone are the days when, acquisition of the “three Rs” (reading, writing, and arithmetic) was considered as an attainment. The world of the 21st century requires a radically different orientation. To participate effectively in the increasingly complex societies and globalized economy that characterize today’s world, students must receive the requisite skills.
But does it mean that merely designing such progressive curriculum is enough? Evidence suggests that certain countries occupy higher position in terms of innovation, productivity, patent filing or overall quality of the students than others even though they all have reformed their education sector to make their new generation 21st century ready. Various factors, including socio-politico-economic situation, instructional design, student well-being, parents’ role, etc contribute to the failure and success of an education system. Some of these issues may require long term multi-pronged approach, while other factors can be addressed by merely emulating the successful models across the world such as introducing smart course content, designing efficient instructional system, flexibility in education, etc. While some of the approaches can be emulated worldwide, certain region specific issues will require unique approach.
Educators’ role determines the success and failure of an education system and therefore a nation. If the success rate of students from Bodo medium is pathetically poor, it is largely because of poor quality of our educators and the people in authority are deafeningly silent about it. The entire recruitment process is plagued with corruption and nepotism. As most Bodo medium schools are government funded and teachers on regular pay roll, the govt must play the vital role by introducing stringent recruitment process. Finland, considered one of the best education systems in the world and being emulated both by developed and developing countries, has one of the most stringent selection procedures for teachers. Their teachers are professionals – selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education and post recruitment they further receive world-class training. The profession of educating is just as serious as the doctors and engineers are. There’s a popular belief in Bodo villages that students’ success in their education rely heavily on their parents. Does it imply then that kids of poor, illiterate parents, who make up the majority in Bodo medium schools, are bound to fail due to lack of access to resources, knowledge, proper guidance, etc? How did such an exclusionary belief system creep into our society? Isn’t it an effort by the authorities concerned to cover up their inefficiency or to wash their hands off the responsibility of providing equitable quality education to the major chunk of the Bodo population? Such a belief system is straying way too far from the concept of equitable quality education.
However, augmenting merely the teachers’ quality is not an end in itself. Teachers’ participation in providing quality and inclusive education is immensely important. Teachers’ motivation, though tends to be overlooked by various schemes and policies, is extremely important aspect. For ideological motivation, all teacher training need to specifically focus on making the teachers realize the importance of their role in nation building process. Publicly giving monetary reward to recognize the contribution of well performing teachers can also boost teachers’ morale. Without enough motivation, teachers’ participation in performing their role will always be lackadaisical.
Uncomfortably high percentage of students from Bodo medium schools has poor proficiency in English language and is one of the main reasons why majority Bodo medium students are failing in today’s rapidly changing job market and to pursue higher education in other subjects, except Bodo literature. Importance of English language in all national and international affairs, its access to wider knowledge pool or to high profile job markets needs no further elaboration. Considering the limited access and scope of Bodo language and high value of English language, it is tragic that teaching Functional English to Bodo medium students was not given adequate emphasis. Government therefore must initiate process to teach Functional English in all schools and at all levels and must recruit brilliant graduates in Functional English for the post of English teachers. Govt must ensure that all students from Bodo medium schools have sufficient level of proficiency in both spoken and written English by the time they pass 10th.
Large number of Bodo medium students take up non-professional, non-technical or non-specialized subjects for their higher studies. It is high time that BTR government, in collaboration with curriculum developers, teachers, parents, intellectuals, alumni/students of reputed educational institutions and various CSOs conduct an investigation and come up with holistic solution.
Several teams of special teachers comprising psychologists, health specialists, social workers, educators, etc can be set up at block or sub-divisional level and they should be given access to the centralized data of all academic records of students. Underperformers should be investigated into as to the reasons of his/her under performance and given proper counseling.
A dedicated network of all regular teachers can be created and every teacher should invariably be member of such a network. This is to encourage teachers to discuss or consult for alternative solution if their approach to certain student related issues cannot be solved by their own approach. Such a network will also be connected to or under the supervision of teams of special teachers.
Lack of access to career counselling is another impediment for Bodo medium students in taking well-informed career decision that capitalizes on their strength. As major proportion of Bodo medium students hail from rural or semi-urban areas, unavailability of such counselling at the right time means students end up taking popular but extremely crowded stream/course/diploma which increases their chances of remaining unemployed. Access to right information at the right time about the right institutes, universities, courses, education loan, etc plays a crucial role in their career oriented decision making process. Govt can encourage private entities or NGOs to provide subsidized services in this regard.
To bridge the digital divide between the rich and poor students, govt should make an effort to equip schools with computers in a phased manner and can appoint shared-teachers, who will teach computer science at three different schools in a week. The idea is not just to give the kids with poor economic background hands-on experience in digital technologies but also to stimulate their curiosity in the technologies. There are reports that computers given to the schools are lying idle due to unavailability of instructors. Efforts should be made to induct qualified computer teachers on the aforementioned basis.
Education, being the only sector capable of harnessing the power of youth to transform Bodo society or Bodoland should attract more budgetary allocation. In 2019-20 BTC budget, the govt allocated only 85 crore rupees out of 4667 crores, which is around 1.8 percent of the total budget, extremely low in percentage terms as compared to the allocation of other countries or states.
It is highly advisable that curriculum developers for Bodo medium go on a field study tour to such countries, i.e., Finland, China, South Korea, Singapore, etc, which have filed the highest number of patents, trademarks, the most innovative, productive countries to study their education system, society and other factors that contributed in their being the top position holders in those areas.
Today’s unemployment crisis in BTC can largely be attributed to education system that fails to inculcate entrepreneurial spirit, innovative thinking, risk taking aptitude or to provide requisite skills demanded by today’s job market. What our education system has produced is an army of job seekers rather than job creators. BTR government, Bodo curriculum developers, intellectuals, CSOs and other stake holders must come together to review the current system of education and overhaul it with the one that equips Bodo boys and girls with, as OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría puts it, “the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve their full potential, to contribute to an increasingly interconnected world, and to convert better skills into better lives needs”. To compete or survive in this world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and other futuristic technologies, Bodo education system must produce entrepreneurial, innovative, creative, imaginative, solvers of complex problems, sensitive to ethnic and gender issues, environmental issues, etc. Until and unless new Bodo generation is able to create opportunities out of problems, our society will merely be consumers – consuming others’ products, innovations, imaginations and thereby resulting in a dependent society; and job seekers rather than creators. Today’s world is no longer just about establishing political boundaries to safeguard and preserve a unique cultural identity, not just about governing your own people for the sake of political right. Signing of BAC, BTC or BTR Accords have only prepared the groundwork but to establish a vibrant and progressive Bodo society able to effectively survive or participate in a globalized world increasingly shaped by ground breaking technological advances. The tasks at hand for our leaders have increased manifold – they must now have clear vision and persistent determination to transform the once little known Bodos to a vibrant society, radiance of which permeates through borders of Bodoland. For doing so, each and every Bodo youth has to be empowered with requisite knowledge and skills highly valued by today’s or tomorrow’s world. Only then can we hope of establishing a Bodo nation as envisioned by Bodofa Upendra Nath Brahma. Access to quality education must not be only rich people’s privilege. Access to Quality Education is everyone’s right, poor or rich, and it is the responsibility of our leaders or government to ensure that no one from the underprivileged class in Bodo society is unfairly left out. Failing to provide access to quality education to the poor, we arbitrarily prevent a vast majority of talent from participating in the transformation of Bodo society. Bodo can be a vibrant and progressive society only when the vast majority of our youths receive 21st Century Skills, only when they are integrated with the skills and knowledge pool demanded by global society. Today’s education is not just about teaching how to identify or combine alphabets to make a meaningful word. “Reading literacy”, as defined by PISA-2018 report, is “understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society”. The good news is, as PISA-2018 report suggests, to attain such a high quality education, not much expenditure is required but the determination or proper planning. It’s high time we busted the myth that only the private, missionary or expensive schools can produce quality students.
