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| EDUCATION TRIBUNE |
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Being
humane Inner-city
college success story Campus
Notes
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Being humane A
few
years back, one senior colleague while delivering a lecture made a distinction between human resource development and human development, and I found it so meaningful. While our education system works tremendously towards human resource development, it hardly shows any concern for human development. The output of education is generally measured in terms of the number of doctors, engineers, teachers, graduates and postgraduates churned out by the system, while there is absolutely no focus on producing good human beings. Thanks to the impact of privatisation and commercialisation, any degree is evaluated directly in terms of monetary returns it can fetch. Neither the school, college or university; nor parents ever bother to reward a child who takes out time off his studies, to help a poor child next door with some books, or other help he/she needs. This is often considered as “waste of time”, which must be used for pursuing one’s career. Every child, I am sure, has a natural instinct of helping other children and sharing one’s assets with them. But the process of socialisation trains him/her to be indifferent, apathetic and blind to others’ needs, encouraging an extreme self-promotion to the maximum extent. With the cut-throat competition in place, parents and teachers encourage their children/students to be secretive about their studies even with their best friends. A parent whose grown-up child decides not to appear in an interview so that another candidate who needs the job more than him/her could get it; rather than taking pride in the child, calls him/her foolish and stupid. This process of reward and punishment goes a long way in killing the soft emotions such as kindness, self-denial, sacrifice and patience, giving way to ruthlessness, jealousy, stubbornness and insensitivity in the children growing as young men and women. Nowhere in the process of getting education is the child rewarded for being a kind, helpful and selfless human being. Of course, he/she is repeatedly made to learn that the only way to win laurels is by scoring more marks than others in the race. Having learnt these lessons since childhood, these children, on assuming adult roles later in life, are dominated by the strong emotions of mindless competition, heartless professionalism and insensitive attitude. Consequently, there are numerous doctors who have never been taught to prioritise service over money; there are brilliant teachers who are inaccessible to their students in emotional crises; there are competent administrators who join government service not to serve but to rule and there are leaders for whom politics is a source of income and prestige. Most unfortunately, it is very common among young men and women aspiring to immigrate abroad to procure fake certifications showing that they have rendered voluntary service through certain organizations, and most often it is their parents who help them in the process. Very often education is interpreted in an extremely narrow perspective, confining it to schools, colleges and universities. However, education entails both formal and informal education, the latter imparted by parents within the family; media, both print and electronic, and peer group. Unless there is a consistency among all these agencies, the outcome is bound to be other than the desired or intended. Unless the lessons of honesty and truthfulness contained in the books get reinforced in the broader process of education, through the behaviour of parents, teachers and other members of larger society, we shall continue to have human resource development without human development. Education is treated as the means to be successful in life and the motto is “nothing succeeds like success”. A doctor who works selflessly and most professionally as a government servant in a remote village, curing the poor, marginalised people, fails to be branded as ‘successful’ and there are two possibilities in such a case. First and most uncommon is that without bothering about anything he continues with his service, drawing immense satisfaction out of it. The other option which is more frequent is that he shifts to private practice and caters to the urban and rich, moving towards ‘success.’ The same applies to all other professions, viz., teaching, administration, legal consultancy and so on. It is a pity that our young children even in professional colleges are extremely conscious of the caste tags and they carry them along. Within the class they make a mockery of the Constitutional values of secularism and fraternity and often they are encouraged in doing so by none other than their esteemed teachers and parents. There has to be a deliberate effort on the part of those at the helm of affairs to transform this hollow system of education churning out trained but ‘heartless robots’ into a system that injects positive values into the impressionistic minds, so that they retain the natural emotions of patience, kindness and self-denial. In absence of such an education, the slogans of human rights, equality and gender justice are bound to remain a farce. Let us admit that education per se cannot make society a better place to live; rather it has to be a particular kind of education for that to achieve. Moreover, education is not restricted merely to formal institutions; it actually comes from family, peers and routine interactions taking place in ordinary life. If not for our own, at least for the sake of our children, let us make education a more wholesome experience that produces good human beings, and that would be the first step towards formation of a civil society. The writer is Chairperson,
Departments of Sociology and Women’s Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh |
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Inner-city college success story
AN inner-city college serving some of the UK’s most disadvantaged areas is celebrating getting record numbers of students into the top universities this year. Around 250 teenagers — one in four — from Newcastle Sixth Form College are bound for universities in the elite Russell Group, which represents 24 of the most research-intensive institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge. One reason for the success, said Steve Gibson, the college principal, was that it had ploughed £1m from its own budget into funding education maintenance allowances — axed by the Government — for its pupils. The allowances of up to £30 a week are credited with helping to persuade many young people to stay on in full-time education after the age of 16 who otherwise would have been unable to afford it. “I’m delighted with the results the students have achieved — given some of them have come from very difficult backgrounds,” Gibson said. Callum Easton, 19, won a place at Cambridge to read history after getting two A*s and an A grade in his A-levels. “It will be a completely new academic experience,” he said. “You will be taught by lecturers who are world-class in their field. Some of it has got to rub off on me.” For Kelly-Leigh Cooper, 18, her two As and a B did not quite meet her conditional offer to study history and English literature at Edinburgh University. But after an agonising two hours calling the university, her place was confirmed. She will be the first in her family to go to university. — The Independent |
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Campus Notes A
human
resource (HR) summit on the theme “HR Challenges of Managing New Generation Employees” was organised by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) on its campus recently. Industry representatives from diverse sectors, ranging from consulting to consumer electronics, attended the summit and shared their views and experiences, providing an enriching learning opportunity to students, professionals and other participants. Delivering the inaugural address, Professor P. Rameshan, Director, IIM, Rohtak, said: “It is important for organisations to channelise the energy of new generation employees towards attaining organisational goals and it is the intrinsic responsibility of premier institutions like IIM, Rohtak, to evolve new management practices to address this challenge.” Six sessions were conducted as part of the summit, each highlighting some important aspects of managing new generation employees. Moderating the first session on handling new generation employees during business slowdown, Aparna Sharma, HR Director, Deutsche Bank, drew parallels from the ‘ant philosophy’, noting that “business slowdown calls for actions to be taken by organisations to be prepared, keep employees informed, invest in training and promote employee innovation”. During a session on social media and new generation employees, S. Ramesh Shankar, Executive Vice-President, Siemens Ltd, and Rajesh Jain, MD, LPS Bossard Pvt Ltd., stressed on utilising social media to connect, communicate and collaborate with employees and the related concept of social HR. Maharshi Dayanand
University, Rohtak There is need to change the patriarchal mindset of society, and work for gender parity in society. This was stated by Dr Rajesh Gill, sociologist and Professor, Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, in her special lecture at a seminar organised by the Department of Sociology of the university recently. Dr Gill dwelled upon the growing incidences of violence against women, increase in female foeticide, malnutrition in girl child, etc., to portray the pitiable state of women in the Indian society. She said sociologists have an important role to play to create a gender-sensitive society. Professor Jitender Prasad, Head, Department of Sociology, said need of the hour was to sensitise society on gender issues. Professor Amrita Yadav, Director, Women Studies Centre, MDU, also spoke on the occasion.
Guidance programme
The university has launched an SSB (Services Selection Board) guidance programme under the aegis of its Youth Center for Skill Development. Students interested in the guidance programme can contact its coordinator Lt Col (retd) D.S. Deswal at the Students Activity Centre, said a spokepsperson. As many as 34 male students and 18 female students, who underwent training, have been selected in defence services so far, the spokepsperson claimed.
Anti-ragging measures
The university has constituted an anti-ragging committee to keep a vigil over and clamp down on ragging incidents on the campus. While MDU Proctor, Dean, Students Welfare, Provost (Boys) Provost (Girls), Registrar, Controller (Security), and In charge, Police Post, PGIMS (Rohtak) will form part of the centralised committee, each hostel and teaching department will have its own anti-ragging committee to ensure non-occurrence of ragging-related incidents. Further, students have been asked to submit affidavit to the effect that they will not take part in ragging. A spokesperson said all necessary measures were being taken to make MDU a ragging-free campus. — Contributed by Bijendra Ahlawat |
Rajesh Gill