Education is most valuable component of national growth as well as the growth of humanity. The level of comfort, enhancement of quality of life and technical advancements are all associated with the degree of education. People often believe that poverty, overpopulation, corruption etc. are biggest challenges and biggest hurdles, in fact the biggest problem is having a large fraction of uneducated people, which is the root cause of all the aforesaid hurdles of national growth. Want of more money, readily available degrees, poor teaching methodologies, under qualified teachers and education curricula without values are the primary factors that lead to the poor education system and thus root cause of any other secondary problem of any nation striving to grow. Here are some personal views on improving the national growth by providing a better education to countrymen and not merely distributing degrees but including the values to education would help to fasten the development of entire human race.
Investing in Education is most profitable investment
Laozi (老子), ancient Chinese philosopher and writer, known as the reputed author of the Tao Te Ching. He is the founder of philosophical Taoism and is worshipped as a deity in Taoism and traditional Chinese religions. He had a very impactful thought :
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.
Hence, rather than investing more on poverty, corruption, and other hurdles, more emphasis should be given on providing valued educations. If we educated a large sect of people with values, they will begin to think on socio-economic issues, and if such people are promoted and motivated, they can lead to a butterfly effect, which can eradicate social problems in much less time. As per the World Bank investment is education is most rewarding which is realized by a very few people and they prefer to invest in trivial business activities. Overall, another year of schooling raises earnings by 10 percent a year. This is typically more than any other investment an individual could make. In fact the fraction of educated people also dictates the degree of national growth. The value of human capital – the share of human capital in total wealth – is 62 percent. That’s four times the value of produced capital and 15 times the value of natural capital. Globally, we – governments, private sector, families, individuals – spend more than $5.6 trillion a year on education and training. Countries spend 5 percent of GDP on education or 20 percent of their national budget. Education employs about five percent of the labor force. Moreover, private returns to schooling – what individuals receive in the labor market – have been increasing. Returns are increasing by more than 20 percent in Africa and more than 14 percent in East Asia and the Pacific. The big change recently has been that the returns to tertiary education are now highest. [Why education matters in economic development worldbank.org]
Business contributing more to national growth must be given preference
Many people believe that investing in gold, in business or other activities would rapidly increase their money and In fact many succeed in becoming millionaire and billionaire. They may have a very comfortable life style and others may consider them as successful. But this is not justified if they have not contributed enough to national growth based on their intellect and skills. People often begin to invest a large proportion of their earnings on improving lifestyle, which is fine to a great extent.
Business is certainly the backbone of economic growth of a nation, but several business do not really contribute much to national growth, but merely recirculate the currency across hands.
A person who is lending his home and earning a rent is not contributing much by that money, while a person creating pottery , or collecting garbage is contributing much more than a house owner, despite the fact that latter earns much less than him. A lot of middle men (Dalals), merely contribute to the national growth but mint a lot of money by simply easing the process for users. A large fraction of middle men various strata of middle men based activities must be discouraged and direct systems should be introduced.
A scientist or innovator who develops a breakthrough is merely given an award or recognition, but businessmen who use his idea generate millions of dollars out of it, which does not justifies their contribution. However, intellectual property rights and similar agencies have tried enough to improve the condition. Yet in the national interest each such contribution must be highly subsidized and must be paid well for further developments. Developed countries have much stringent intellectual property rules and more stringent conditions for quality assurance in business to prevent unskilled entering in business that does not contribute much to national growth.
Do we need educated politicians?
While I was teaching human genome project to students, I realized that in early 90s when president of USA and prime minister of UK were suggested to fund the human genome project they agreed (although after a detailed discussion with scientific advisers), should it been the developing or underdeveloped countries, the project would never been sanctioned, as the political system is merely based on improving the basic amenities rather than upliftment of science and supporting more visionary project. It is still difficult to convince, the scientific advisories and burocrates on futuristic and visionary science projects. There is no dearth of talent in developing countries, but the support provided by political is extremely poor and scientist find it really very hard to convince government for such project. This certainly questions the educational status of politicians. I do not suggest a degree based criteria, but at least some educational values must be considered for qualifying as a politician.
Educated people usually avoid entering in this field as they find it highly challenging to compete with corrupt system and usually prefer a more peaceful, less challenging life. Being a politician may be tough and may also require a lot of hard work, but lack of interest in intellectuals to enter politics accumulates to the pool of uneducated peoples in political system which is national threat.
Elections in colleges and universities were promoted by the government to augment and solve this problem, but as bright students find it uncomfortable to enter in that domain defies the very purpose of this system. If a value based criteria could be set forbidding the less-educated people into politics can enhance the political scenario. Similarly, most uneducated people find it easier to earn and survive by becoming sub-ordinates of successful politicians, also attract a lot of uneducated crowd towards politics, which is a threat to nation.
Education does not mean degrees Its a paradox, that education system relies on degrees and most of us evaluate the educational status of an individual by degrees, but there is lot of difference in the level of knowledge despite of same degrees, perhaps the quality of education has a high degree of deviation across institutes and unwanted factors such as corruption, reservation, nepotism greatly influence the efforts made by education system to education people.
The values of education lie in the fact that if an individual is capable of transmitting and amplifying the knowledge to uplift the socio-economic status of the community he lives in.
Equivalence of degrees or marks irrespective of the how the degree was obtained, also contaminates the more educated with less educated people and thus harms the nation by enabling them to reach good positions. I will not talk more about corruption, and nepotism as they persist merely because most of us are not educated well and look for shortcuts to sustain ourselves in this competitive world. If education would be able to provide values that aforesaid anomalies are deleterious to national growth and therefore upliftment of life of everyone, the conditions would automatically improve. At present no education institute in the country includes value based assessment for providing a degrees, but mere academic accomplishments which need to be quickly revised. A person with no degrees inventing a high value machine or device that could be of use to society must be considered equivalent to a PhD, as he already achieved the purpose of Ph.D. A social contributor educating students with best of his efforts irrespective of degree must be considered equivalent to professor or teacher as he already achieved the purpose. This would certainly motivates the creative minds and slow down the race for degrees, rather people may start working for valued efforts that benefit society and human race. Indeed that’s the very purpose of our education, which is lost in this race of jobs and degrees.
Education system must include values along with routine coursework
I experienced more than a dozen countries, most in the west, I realized that they have some values which must inspire developing nations like India. People there respect traffic rules to a very high degree of seriousness, they will even stop a speeding car for a pedestrian, and they would possibly follow each and every traffic sign, not because they have strong rules, but it is due to values they got. We do also have similar rules, but they are seldom followed. Most of the people are not even aware of basic rules. If such fundamental things could be added to routine education and rather than marks based evaluation, the violations of traffic rules, must be used to judge intellectual levels, would certainly improve the situation. There are many such examples, cleanliness, open defecation, copyright violations, plagiarism etc. Although it is challenging to assess, but with emerging information technology and advancements, it may be possible in future that assessment of fundamental values could be incorporated into the academic profile of an individual and during any assessment for job, or interview weightage should be kept for ethics and values, so that such people could be promoted and people may remain motivated by such practices. Hence, enhancing valued education could solve almost every problem of society. World economic forum report says
Education is a human right. And, like other human rights, it cannot be taken for granted. Across the world, 59 million children and 65 million adolescents are out of school. More than 120 million children do not complete primary education.