Whenever I feel depressed in life.. I open my G-Mail inbox...I find:

1) 6 banks are giving me easy loans. 2) 10/15 banks waiting to delivered my pre-approval credit card. 3) I have won £ 10000000 and USD 500000 for unknown reasons. 4) 8-10 Job companies have best jobs for me. 5) 3 matrimonial sites have most suited matches for me. 6) Dr. Batra has claimed that he will cure my hair fall. 7) 5-6 universities are giving me degrees in random subjects. And *8)Approx 20-25 emails from Riya, Priya, Neha, sahithya and rohith who are feeling lonely and want to meet me.* Aur kya chaiye zindagi me..!!!!!!

TAKSHASHILA UNIVERSITY

At least 2,800 years ago, circa 800BCE, there existed a giant University at Takshashila (often called Taxila), a town located in the north-western region of India (in today’s Pakistan). According to references in the Ramayana, King Bharata founded the town in the name of his son, Taksha.

The site initially began to develop as a loosely connected group of buildings where learned persons resided, worked and taught. Over the years, additional buildings were added; rulers made donations and more scholars migrated there. Gradually a large campus developed, which became a celebrated seat of learning in the ancient world.

·         Not only Indians but also students from as far as Babylonia, Greece, Syria, Arabia, Phoenicia and China came to study.

·         68 different streams of knowledge were on the syllabus.

·         A wide range of subjects were taught by experienced masters: Vedas, Language, Grammar, Philosophy, Medicine, Surgery, Archery, Politics, Warfare, Astronomy, Astrology, Accounts, Commerce, Futurology, Documentation, Occult, Music, Dance, etc.

·         The minimum entrance age was 16 and there were 10,500 students.

·         The panel of masters included renowned names like Kautilya (the author of the “Arthashastra”), Panini (the codifier of Sanskrit into today’s form), Jivak (medicine) and Vishnu Sharma (author and compiler of the Panchtantra).

When Alexander’s armies came to the Punjab in the fourth century B.C., Takshashila had already developed a reputation as an important seat of learning. Thus on his return Alexander took many scholars from there with him to Greece.

Being near the north-west frontier of India, Takshashila had to face the brunt of attacks and invasions from the north and the west. Thus the Persians, Greeks, Parthians, Shakas and Kushanas laid their destructive marks on this institution. The final blow, however, came from the Huns (also the destroyers of the Roman Empire) who, A.D. c.450, razed the institution. When the Chinese traveller Huen T’sang (A.D. 603-64) visited Takshashila, the town had lost all its former grandeur and international character.

Education of Women: A high standard of learning and culture was reached by Indian women during the Vedic age. In addition to training in the arts of housekeeping they learnt music and dancing. Like boys, girls had to undergo the upanayana ceremony. There were two classes of educated women, Sadyodwahas– who prosecuted studies till their marriages and Bramhavadinis who did not marry and pursued their studies though out their lives. Women were also taught the Vedas and Vedangas, but the extent of their study was restricted only to those hymns which were necessary for the Yajna (sacrifice) or other ritualistic operations. Women sages were called Rishikas. The Rigveda mentions the name of some of some of the famous women seers like Ghosha, Apala, Lopamudra, Visvavara, Indrani, etc. who composed hymns. During the Upanishad period we find scholarly women like Maitreyi and Gargi taking part in public debates and discussions with philosophers and sages.

                                                   INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM

In ancient India a child followed the occupation of his father, either religious or professional and his training in that particular field was provided by his father in his house. Over a period of time two system of education developed, the Vedic and the Buddhist. As the name indicates in the former system Vedas, Vedangas, Upanishads and other allied subjects were taught while in the latter system, thoughts of all the major school of Buddhism was taught. While Sanskrit was the medium of instruction in the Vedic system of education, Pali was the medium of instruction in the Buddhist system of education. But both system offered vocational education apart from religious education of their respective faiths. There was also a purely vocational system of education wherein master craftsmen and artisans taught their skills to students who worked as apprentice under them.

Uniqueness of Ancient Indian Education: From time immemorial, India has explicitly recognized that the supreme goal of life is self-realization and hence the aim of education has always been the attainment of such a fullness of being. But at the same time it was also recognized that different individuals have naturally different inclinations and capacities. Hence not only the highest philosophy but also ordinary subjects like literature and science as also vocational training find a place in ancient education system. The education system of ancient India may claim to be unique in the world in many respects like-

• The State and the society did not in any way interfered with the curriculum of studies or regulating the payment of fees or hours of instructions.
• Another special characteristic of ancient Indian educational system was it was fully and compulsorily residential. The student had to live in the house of his teacher for the whole duration of his studies and learn from him not only what was taught but also observe how his teacher responded to different situation arising in daily life and learn from it.
• Stress was laid on having a personal relation between the teacher and the taught. Each student used to meet the teacher separately and learn from him through separate instruction and guidance.
• Education was absolute free and the teacher looked after the primary needs of the students including food and clothing.
• The Indian system of education upheld the dignity of labour. Hence even a student aiming at the highest philosophical knowledge was duty bound to do some manual labour daily such as collecting fuel, tending cattle, etc.
• Education in ancient India was more of seminar type where students used to learn through discussions and debates.

·         Aims of Education: The aims of education were to provide good training to young men and women in the performance of their social, economic and religious duties. Also preservation and enrichment of culture, character and personality development and cultivation of noble ideals were the other aims of education in ancient India.

·         Commencement of Education: In the Vedic system, education of a child commenced at the age of five with the ceremony called Vidyarambha. It was marked by learning the alphabets for the first time and offering worship to Goddess Saraswathi. But it was only after the ceremony called Upanayana that a child used to leave his parent’s home and go to stay in the house of his teacher to commence his study. He was now called Brahmacharin. Upanayana ceremony was held to Brahmin boys at the age of eight, for the Kshatriya boys at the age of ten and for the Vaishya boys at the age of twelve. In the Buddhist system of education, a child commenced his education at the age of eight after an initiation ceremony called Prabrajya or Pabbajja. This ceremony was open to person of all castes unlike the Upanayana ceremony where only the Brahmin, Kshatriya and Vaishya caste were eligible. After the initiation ceremony the child left his home to live in a monastery under the guidance and supervision of his preceptor (monk). He was now called Sramana and used to wear a yellow robe. In the Vedic system of education a Bramachari after finishing his education was eligible to become a Grihasta or householder, in the Buddhist system of education after finishing his education, a Sramana was given a full status of monkhood or Bhikshu

"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.
                                                                 
      

Lord Macaulay

The person who changed INDIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM.....

Make schools work for all children.

Level the playing field by reducing stunting and promoting brain development through early nutrition and stimulation so children start school ready to learn. Attract great people into teaching and keep them motivated by tailoring teacher training that is reinforced by mentors. Deploy technologies that help teachers teach to the level of the student, and strengthen school management, including principals.

This is what i am

I can’t even remember anything I wrote in college even though I normally got pretty good grades.

The problem with this current model is that your education is divorced from real world value creation.

College made me to hate education

In the book he writes “a Google image search for the word [education] results in desks, chalkboards, letter grades, stressed kids, regimentation, classrooms, and kids sleeping or with pained looks on their faces.”

He asks this of people because it’s a good reminder that most of us treat school and education as the same thing.

Picture a world where this wasn’t the case. I like to think Google would show me images of exciting projects people have made, passionate producers, people learning while doing, and people of all ages engaged in the process of self-directed improvement.

When I enrolled in college, I thought it would be like this. Instead, I got a place where students actively tried to avoid learning.

Administrators, parents and the media regularly lob criticism at these students.

Personally, I don’t blame the students at all.

College and school more broadly teach you to hate learning.

It taught you to ask for permission

If you’re in school or you’ve gone through school, you probably remember asking questions like “can I use this source in my essay?” or “is it okay to read this book for the project?”

This is what we at Praxis call the permission based mindset. It’s the mindset that defaults the responsibility of creative thought and action onto some third party authority. “They,” you think, “will tell me what is and isn’t okay.”

It’s easy to see why over time this mindset makes learning into something that is not enjoyable.

By the time a student finishes elementary school, he or she has been told “no” to their interests so many times that they start to see “education” as more about checking off boxes and people pleasing than a process of self-interested improvement.

Instead of asking for permission, start asking “what do I want to learn?” Then do it.

Education Promise

1. Education is the most empowering force in the world. It creates knowledge, builds confidence, and breaks down barriers to opportunity.
2. For children, it is their key to open the door to a better life.
3. However, it is a sad reality of our world today that millions of children will never receive this key.
4. They are destined to stay locked in cycles of disadvantage and poverty.
5. I think Malala described this heart-wrenching situation best when she said:
6. “In some parts of the world, students are going to school every day. It’s their normal life. But in other parts of the world, we are starving for education … its like a precious gift. Its like a diamond”.
7. This cannot continue.
8. All children deserve to receive the ‘precious gift’ of education. In fact, we have promised to give it to them. It is time to deliver.
9. Under the Sustainable Development Goals, the blue print for progress the whole world has agreed, we are committed to give all children an inclusive and quality education by 2030.
10. To get the 263 million children currently out of school, back in.
11. To make sure the 130 million children currently reaching Grade 4 without learning basic reading and maths skills, become masters of both.
12. To stop girls being excluded, or married off.
13. Right now, one girl under 15 is married every 7 seconds. They should be starting a new year of school, not starting a new life of disadvantage.
14. I know this sounds a bit bleak. But we have to face up to the fact that we are in the midst of an education crisis and are running well behind on our promise to the world’s children.
15. I have just returned from the World Economic Forum in Davos where I gave world leaders this same message.
16. However, instead of acting fast to address this crisis, our efforts are slowing down. Development dollars spent on education have declined in the past decade — from 13 per cent to 10 per cent since 2002.
17. The challenge is also not getting any easier. Two billion jobs will be lost to automation by 2050. Access to quality education will therefore be even more critical to prepare young people for the challenges of a changing world.
18. If we continue with our glacial pace of action, up to half of the world’s 1.6 billion children will still be out of school or failing to learn by 2030, and we would need an extra 50 years to reach our global education goals.
19. Yet, as we face up to this crisis, we should not be tempted to despair.
20. We can turn things around if we are prepared to step up now.
21. I am proud to be part of group doing just that, the Education Commission. We are a group of government, business and cultural leaders who have produced a roadmap for how we can live up to the education promise we have made under the global goals.
22. A vision for how to create a Learning Generation.
23. It will not be easy to achieve. But, it can be done.
24. We know this is possible because a quarter of the world’s countries are already on the right path.
25. This top 25 per cent are already delivering. They are improving their education systems fast and equipping their children with the skills they need for the future.
26. What we have to do now is focus more effort on the remaining 75 per cent of countries that are not yet hitting the mark.
27. In these countries, we have to dramatically scale up investment in education systems to improve both the availability of education, but just as importantly, education quality.
28. To achieve this, the Education Commission report calls for a Financing Compact. The Financing Compact means that countries commit to invest and reform.
29. In return, the international community offers leadership and education finance, and both are held accountable for their commitment.
30. To fulfil the compact, countries need to take on four education transformations.
31. First, performance. This is about putting results front and centre. Successful education systems must invest in what works.
32. Second, innovation. We must develop new and creative approaches. Education systems must innovate rather than just replicate.
33. Third, inclusion. We must reach every last child. We will not close the global learning gap unless leaders take steps to include and support those at greatest risk of being out of school. The poor, the discriminated against, girls, and those facing multiple disadvantages.
34. And fourth, finance. We need to mobilize more money and ensure that we spend it wisely.
35. Total spending on education must increase steadily from $1.2 to 3 trillion by 2030 across all low- and middle-income countries. The 75 per cent that are falling behind.
36. This includes mobilising more domestic resources for education. Public spending on education must rise in these countries from 4 per cent to 5.8 per cent.
37. And by mobilising more support from the international community — governments, financial institutions, business and philanthropists.
38. International finance needs to increase from today’s estimated $16 billion per year to $89 billion per year by 2030.
39. These are certainly huge amounts of money.
40. But we must not forget that by investing now, we will also create huge benefits.
41. In developing countries, $1 dollar invested in an additional year of schooling gives back $10 back in economic benefits.
42. What a rate of return!

IN 1931 Mahatma Gandhi ridiculed the idea that India might have universal primary education “inside of a century”. He was too pessimistic. Since 1980 the share of Indian teenagers who have had no schooling has fallen from about half to less than one in ten. That is a big, if belated, success for the country with more school-age children, 260m, than any other.

Yet India has failed these children. Many learn precious little at school. India may be famous for its elite doctors and engineers, but half of its nine-year-olds cannot do a sum as simple as eight plus nine. Half of ten-year-old Indians cannot read a paragraph meant for seven-year-olds. At 15, pupils in Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh are five years behind their (better-off) peers in Shanghai. The average 15-year-old from these states would be in the bottom 2% of an American class. With few old people and a falling birth rate, India has a youth bulge: 13% of its inhabitants are teenagers, compared with 8% in China and 7% in Europe. But if its schools remain lousy, that demographic dividend will be wasted.

India has long had a lopsided education system. In colonial times the British set up universities to train civil servants, while neglecting schools. India’s first elected leaders expanded this system, pouring money into top-notch colleges to supply engineers to state-owned industries. By contrast, Asian tigers such as South Korea and Taiwan focused on schools. Of late, India has done more to help those left behind. Spending on schools rose by about 80% in 2011-15. The literacy rate has risen from 52% in 1991 to 74% in 2011. Free school lunches—one of the world’s largest nutrition schemes—help millions of pupils who might otherwise be too hungry to learn.

However, the quality of schools remains a scandal. Many teachers are simply not up to the job. Since 2011, when the government introduced a test for aspiring teachers, as many as 99% of applicants have failed each year. Curriculums are over-ambitious relics of an era when only a select few went to school. Since pupils automatically move up each year, teachers do not bother to ensure that they understand their lessons. Overmighty teachers’ unions—which, in effect, are guaranteed seats in some state legislatures—make matters worse. Teachers’ salaries, already high, have more than doubled over the past two rounds of pay negotiations. Some teachers, having paid bribes to be hired in the first place, treat the job as a sinecure. Shockingly, a quarter play truant each day.

Frustrated by the government system, and keen for their children to learn English, parents have turned to low-cost private schools, many of which are bilingual. In five years their enrolment has increased by 17m, as against a fall of 13m in public schools. These private schools can be as good as or better than public schools despite having much smaller budgets. In Uttar Pradesh the flight to private schools almost emptied some public ones. But when it was suggested that teachers without pupils move to schools that needed them, they staged violent protests and the state backed down.

Education system in India is worse than foreign countries including US, countries of UK and Gulf countries. This is the known fact. We all know it; but why? Why foreign education system is better than Indian education system? Today I will list out few differences between Indian Education System and Foreign Education System. Have a look.

Difference between Indian and Foreign Education System

• Indian education focuses more on theory rather than practical. Indian education system doesn’t allow creativity. Whereas in foreign countries; they focus more on practical based learning. And they allow creativity in education.
• In India; education is a formality, part of routine; every Indian must get a degree of Engineering or Medical stream; whether you learn something or not. In foreign countries; education is taken as a learning process.
• Foreign education curriculum contains everything taking from arts to sports along with studies. US has arts, sports, music and theatre in syllabus. Australia focuses more on sports; they have cricket, hockey and boxing in their college curriculum. Where as Indian education system only emphasize on studies. There is no room for extra curricular in our education system.
  
• In Dubai;  primary and secondary education is free and it is made compulsory in law. Where as in India education is becoming business. Taking from privatization of education to tuitions and coaching institute; education is generating good money. So business minds are now moving towards education.
• In India students are not given choice to select their field of interest. One must become an engineer or a doctor! Sports and arts are considered to be made for leftovers. If you don’t get admission in science of commerce stream; you choose arts. This is what Indians feel.
• In India; students are admitted into streams which have higher pay scale or higher number of jobs. And in foreign country; students are admitted according to their field of interest.
• In India; students take admission seeing the trends. So if in a particular year, majority of students are rushing towards Mechanical Engineering, you’re bound to take admission in Mechanical Engineering. Students are not given choice to select their field of stream.  In short in India; we go with the flow. Where as in foreign countries, students wait until they get admission into their field of interest.
• In India, students are required to memorize facts and figures. Thousands of equations of mathematics, birth dates and death dates of freedom fighters, chemical reactions and hundreds of other things. We emphasize on theory. And in foreign country they impact knowledge in students through practical implementation.
• Indian education system teaches old technologies. Education system hasn’t changed much after independence. Indian education system is very bad in adopting latest technologies in curriculum. In foreign countries; curriculum changes everyday according to upgradation of technology and requirements of the industry.
• And lastly we believe in grades and certificates. We believe in taking admission in IITs and IIMs. Foreign countries believe in skills. They don’t care about the institution of education more, all they see is what you learnt during your schooling.

There are lot of reasons why foreign education system is better than Indian. I was able to list 10 out of them here. We seriously need change in education system! And not only in education system; we need change in the mentality of Indians (so called society) as well. Together we all will have to work hard to bring change in education system! How can we change it? I will share ideas in my next article. Keep checking  

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