Mehendale rues neglect of non- formal education
The settlement commisioner and director, land records (Maharashtra state), Ms.Leena Mehendale, today rued the fact that non- formal education was not being promoted in the Indian eduction system and wondered whether this was being done to protect “vested interests”.
" why does an individual have to undergo schooling? Why don't we recognise individual efforts?” she qieried, while suggesting that the government encourage individual to study outside classrooms and also absorb them in the formal stream after judging them by it's ( government's ) yardstiks.
Speaking on the subject, “Can we stop the mess in the education system?”, at the Vasant Vyakhanmala (spring lecture series) here, Ms mehendale advocated the introduction of short – term vocational courses in education system in a big way to enable the student earn his “bread and butter” rather than “Wasting” valuable years in pursuing formal education.
A majority of the students coming from the economically weaker sections of the society cannot afford to pursue the 15- year- long formal curiculam and hence high dropout rate in the country, she explained, while adding that in a country like India, students could not afford to spend 12 to 15 years in educating themselves.
Ms. Mehendale also emphasised the need to introduce courses on intermediary technology in the present curriculum as there was a dearth of what she called “middle-level technologists”. The country was producing docors engineers and researchers, but there were few technitians who could repair a worn – out washers which was obstructing the supply of water to the parchsd villages, she bemoaned.
She further warned that the social disharmony owing to the denial of education to the lower rungs of the society would ultimately end up harming the entire society, She opined that the middle-class , which had greater accessibility to education , should give due priority to “social gains” rather than “ personal gains”.
Education should imbibe “ moral” values and should not be treated as a mere exercise where one reads books and appears for exams. The lack of moral values was causing a majority of the younger generation go for easy money. Indian universities needed to take the student community into confidence while marking efforts to keep pace with the rapid technological developments, she observed.
She lamented that the bureaucracy had choosen to remain” silent observers” when it was in a position to dictate the policy regarding captation fees and primary school admissions. Finally, the judiciary had to intervene to put a ceiling on capitation fees and the state government had to pass bill to ban interviews for primary school admissions.
