"Students want only diploma. They are not interested in learning anything", are the assertions that you commonly come across from teachers as well as students in Georgia, or almost everywhere for that matter. Why is it that our students care only about getting a diploma? Maybe it reflects what they observe around in the society they are a part of. It might not be a good idea to blame students for such an attitude towards education. We, as a system, are responsible for this state of affairs. After all, the sole aim of our education policy has been substantially reduced to making students ready for labour markets that may or may not have the number of jobs that are needed to absorb in the labour force joining the marketplace upon completion of education.
It is pertinent to mention that one needs to acquire skills and use her knowledge for earning money in order to sustain herself and her family. However, the objective of education policy has shifted from learning to improve quality of life to acquiring skills for the sake of frivolously competing in society. If education, in principle, becomes restricted in this regard, the measure of civilization no longer remains the mind that continuously progresses acquiring knowledge and using it for the welfare of individual as well as societal interests.
In a highly competitive world, almost everyone is struggling through life either to make ends meets or to make it big. This gives one neither enough time nor requisite mental leisure to play with different ideas and develop original thought process. Creating too competitive environment for students is likely to tilt the balance in favour of quantitative or mainstream qualitative measures of success rather than diversity of ideas that forms the basic foundation of human intellect. Education system should afford students an academic structure conducive to their intellectual development and that encourages them to come forth with unconventional ideas to solve the world’s problem and make human life much better in terms of every aspect.
In order to encourage students to acquire knowledge, focus of education system should be on making them question everything they read or hear. J T Dillon of University of California, has often pointed out the relevance of questioning in advancing the prowess of human intellect. Lawrence Maxwell Krauss, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, once said “if we live in a world where certain things are not subject to question, we live in a world where thinking has stopped”. Chris Hedges, in Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, said “we’ve bought into the idea that education is about training and “success”, defined monetarily, rather than learning to think critically and to challenge. We should not forget that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.”
Note: The purpose of this blogpost is to bring forth relevant topics for academic debates. The views presented here do not necessarily reflect the views of the author but merely one of the perspectives that he seeks to put forth.
