ARE WE PREPARING STUDENTS FOR FUTURE ?

People say that the education system in India is obsolete and demands a revamp. Our education system is working exactly how it was supposed to. If we are trained to memorize for quick recall, we were a great asset to work in a factory. We do not need to think and just have to focus ourselves on the task at hand.
There is a mismatch between the skill and the needs of the society. Today’s class rooms often operate the same way as they did in the past decades or centuries. Our system promoted memorization and rewarded it too. The curiosity, learning through experimentation was discouraged. Learning from failure and exploration has not been allowed at all and such practices have hit the creativity, curiosity and innovativeness in students. Such a system produced workers and not thinkers or philosophers who could think and act differently. Now the time has come, when we need to shift the focus to learn on about what has so far not happened but is likely to happen in the coming days/years/decades/future.
Our education policy must embrace the changes at all levels – Local, State & Centre. Leaders and Intellectuals in the field of Education, Government, Business, Industry and Technology must sit together and ponder over as to what skills would be needed after a decade or device/ frame the curriculum accordingly. The Academicians should replace the irrelevant sections of the old curriculum with the newly designed curriculum. When the students learn new curriculum, they would be ready with the skills-sets, which market & industry would need and this would definitely benefit the society at large.
We need to redefine and rework on the skills required for complex problem solving and innovation in order to succeed. We need to prepare our students for creative, collaborative and contemporary problem solving skills of the future.
Computer Science enhances creativity, exploration, problem solving skills, collaboration, ethics etc. These skills are important for careers not only in technology but in all careers across different occupations / professions. Schools necessarily teach Computer Science as a part of core curriculum to develop skills of coding, computational thinking, interface design, data analysis, machine learning, cyber security, and robotics. School should remodel their curriculum in a way which develops the skill sets needed after a decade so that today’s students when they come out after their graduation / PG, they are market ready to meet the future challenges.
Majority of teachers themselves ought to update / train themselves and acquire proficiency in skills required in future. Schools should recognize, update, improve networking, connectivity of their computer labs so that all students get access to computers. When technology is learned at a young age it removes fear & inhibitions and apprehension amongst students and enhances their  confidence as well.
One thing is certain that computers have already influenced / touched all walks of life and in return Computer Science is in great demand hence every student should learn the basics of it. Every student should have an opportunity to access and learn the computers as part of core-curriculum.
With the use of Artificial Intelligence, autonomous cars, reusable rockets the world has become one village. Any happening in one corner of the world affects/impacts the whole world but still teaching learning process continues to take place in an old school manner / way. Now is the time when we ought to focus on the challenges of tomorrow and prepare our students to face these future challenges.
Entrepreneurial education teaches the important skills of innovative, creative thinking, which help people to develop a flexible mindset. What mindset does an entrepreneur have? How does he / she stay motivated? Innovative, creativity and problem solving are the major skills required. Creativity should not be limited to activities such as brainstorming, mind mapping but should be a continuous process throughout learning period so that mind remains flexible to new ideas / experimentation and exploration.
Learning is ineffective unless you can relate and link it to practical world. Creativity is about thinking differently / in divergent ways and finding unexpected ways and solutions to problems. Creative and innovative thinking can be helpful in areas such as developing creativity as a skill, creating innovative business models, contributing to higher youth employment, creating new markets & jobs, finding solution to the complex problems and in developing various predictive models which can help in to take preventive and timely action before the issues escalate.
When we prepare our students with future skill sets, it will be a win-win situation for students, society, Industry, business and eventually Nation would achieve greater heights.

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Dr. Shobha Tyagi
Executive Director
Maharaja Agrasen Vidyalaya