Trends of Contemporary EducationA session for the members Rotary Club

At National Burns Centre on 30th July 2011By

Dr. Nicholas CorreaDirector, New Horizon Scholars School

Education is undergoing constant changes under the effects of globalization.

The effect of globalization on education brings rapid developmentin technology and communication are foreseeing changes within learning systems across the world as ideas,values andKnowledge.

It’s changing the roles of students and teachers, and producing a paradigm shift in society from industrialization towards an information-based society.

It reflects the effect on culture and brings about a new form of cultural imperialism.

The rise of new cultural imperialism is shaping children, the future citizens of the world into ‘global citizens’, with a broad range of skills and knowledge to apply to a competitive, information based society.

Globalization and technological advancements are delivering and increasing access to the world and subsequently subjects should reflect this global outlook.

“We face an unprecedented crisis of global dimensions, a social crisis and ecological crisis.

I believe that they are linked and that if we are to find solutions,

those solutions will only come out of education and education of a particular type”

“ We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national achievements by GDP, since GDP includes air pollution, cigarette advertisement and ambulances to clear our highways after carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for people who break them. GDP includes destruction of redwoods and of Lake Superior. GDP grows with the production of napalm and nuclear warheads. It does not include the health of our families, the quality of their education, it is indifferent to the safety of our streets... In short, GDP measures everything except what makes life worthwhile.”

R.F. Kennedy

Education across the world needs a immediate debate.

Globalization on the one side and career based education on the other do not go hand in hand.

Globalization runs at an accelerating pace whereas changes in the pattern of education move at a snails speed.

The contemporary education is dominated by information technology and communication.

It stresses on facts and information and to a certain extent on knowledge and hardly anything on heart and wisdom.

In the contemporary education the human mind is a warehouse,

schools, colleges and training institutes are factories producing one type of chocolates, tablets, vehicles, etc.

It gives you information and teaches you various competencies and helps you to get a job but doesn’t help you how to live.

It stresses on individual achievement.

Today, the education imparted to our children is almost solely limited to what Sri Ramakrishna characterized as ‘education for bread and butter’.

Students are led to believe that by developing the ability to gather, store, and retrieve vast information, they stand educated.

According Rabindranath Tagore the great educationist of India,

“Education means enabling the mind to find out the ultimate truth…. Making truth its own and giving expression to it.”

Students are led to believe that by developing the ability to gather, store, and retrieve vast information, they stand educated.

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and many other super achievers never finished grade school. They succeeded because they knew how to research, collect information for a selected project and process knowledge. Classroom environment does not work that way, it focuses on the collection of knowledge without a clear purpose, other than high-class grades

Someone once approached Blaise Pascal, the famous  French philosopher and said,

“If I had your brains, I would be a better person.” 

Pascal replied, “Be a better person and you will have my brains.”

Let’s accept the reality of our nature

Edutivity

Think out of the box

Imagine what you can create out of this?

Cauliflowers

Brinjal

Banana peal

Cabbage

Pencils

SOLDIER : SIR WE ARE SURROUNDED FROM ALL SIDES BY ENEMIES ,

MAJOR : EXCELLENT ! WE CAN ATTACK IN ANY DIRECTION.

WHY WE HAVE SO MANY TEMPLES ,   IF GOD IS EVERYWHERE ?

A  WISE MAN SAID : AIR IS EVERYWHERE, BUT WE STILL NEED A FAN  TO FEEL IT .

Education is beautifully described by Khalil Gibran in his book

‘The Prophet’-

“And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said.

Speak to us of Children. And he said:Your children are not your children,

They are sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You may give them your love but not your thoughts.For they have their own thoughts.You may house their bodies but not their souls,For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.You strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon

the path of the infinite,And he bends you with his might

that his arrows may go swift and far.Let your bending in the archers’ hand

be for gladness;For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so he loves also the bow that is stable.”