Please click HERE to access the external link

Educable is a blog on the Times of India website on Education and Skills. It is a journey into the world of teaching and learning at schools, colleges and institutions of higher learning – and even within the home. It seeks to raise awareness of key issues for parents, teachers, administrators, governors, vice chancellors and policy makers by inviting discussion and dialogue via this platform. The issues in education have implications all along the chain of teaching and learning, skills and employment, self worth and empowerment and here we speak out to see how each resonates along this chain. Part provocative, part conversational, the blog brings you stories and analysis from the world of education the world over.

A copy of all the EduCable posts is here for your perusal.

(http://eduvichar.wordpress.com/)

My first post on ToIBlogs:

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/educable/entry/exploring-education

Exploring education

Meeta Sengupta
22 September 2011, 12:51 PM IST

Welcome to the EduCable.. where we explore the world of Education and skills from a holistic perspective. Education traditionally has meant the process of training a child to form a productive unit of society via schools and colleges.

Yet such institutions have existed for only a short part of the history of mankind and are constantly evolving according to our needs. Education often has been in the fields, in factories or even in boadrooms and families. Schooling, as we know it is evolving away from teaching factory models to more inclusive models. Textbooks are no longer the mainstay of knowledge, nor the lone teacher in a village the fount of such knowledge.

Education is about creating a better society for us all through a process that provides a shortcut to the greatest teacher of them all – experience. Not just a shortcut but a more reliable process to creating a sensible human being we can be proud of. And depend upon.

Then where do schools and examinations and certifications come in? We have seen enough fools burdened by heavy degrees and enough wisdom from the illiterate and uneducated to wonder whether this education gig is really all that it promises to be. Actually, for years, we have struggled to get the data to prove that education really provides value – we know it does, of course it does, does it not? We know that better educated mothers bring up healthier children, and higher literacy leads to better productivity – don’t we?

In specific instances, from stories we know that to be so. But on the whole, for society can we prove that education made things better?

In fact, can we show, even for a school, how much value was given by the education it provided? Or whether one school adds more to a learner’s worth than another? Can we then hold schools to account and make them deliver more? Do we want them to deliver more or better?

Who polices our teachers? Should teachers be policed, or should they be trusted to be ideals in our corrupted world? Can they inspire, lead? What do they see themselves and their roles as? Do school heads matter?

Why do we have colleges and universities? To create employable skilled youth or to create a thinking, reasoning society? Can we not have both? Who ensures that our young ones are given the right values? Do we even agree what values they should imbibe?

I am looking forward to so many of these conversations.. and hope you join in the debates.