How do parents think about the cost of education?

Today afternoon, my son gave me his quarterly fee slip and I was a bit shocked to find the increased fees increase totaling Rs.10,000/- for a quarter. It means Rs.3,333/- for a month. This is not a small cost per month by any Indian standards. The figure irritated me a bit but I had no better option or the option to opt out. Somehow, I managed the discomfort within and remembered the good old days when I was myself a student as my son is. Suddenly, a question surfaced in my mind “What were my fees in the similar class way back some 32 years ago?” A bit of recollection helped me and I found that mine was Rs.30/- per month. My school was one of the top five schools of the city and it enjoyed fairly good reputation among the public. My parents were pretty satisfied with the school teachers and other related activities. In last 32 years, the fees jumped over a hundred times and my kid’s school should be rated not among the top five rather among the top twenty schools of the city. I cannot say that my son is really being trained for skills of the future or his teachers are really great or committed teachers. It means that the cost of my son’s education is over hundred times more than that of mine despite the fact that I consider the important factors of quality on the declining side.  In a period of 32 years, the hundred times increase seems huge. I enquired the same from a fellow friend who calculated his similar situation and said that his comparative ration of father and son was 1:110. In order to be clear, I enquired the same from couple of more acquaintances and this figure turned out to be nearly above 1:105. What does that mean in economic terms? The inflation figures of foodgrains, fuel and electricity may be disturbing but have we ever bothered to think of cost of education and hidden inflation inside it. If calculated properly, this item would turn out to be the most inflation-prone one in last 25-30 years. During 1970s and 1980s, the factors like regular off-campus tuitions, coaching for competitive examinations, capitation fees etc were not very prominent but if these factors are added to the current cost of education, the actual financial burden of education would be really heavy for a middle-class family. The cost of educating two kids can sometimes take even more than one-fifth of a family’s total budget. In America, the student debt burden of the entire country has gone beyond $1 trillion and average debt per student is over $27,000. In India, the average of student debt may not be there because bank loans for education are not a regular practice here but if parents’ debt for kids’ education is calculated, it would not be less in terms of comparison. This is the debt that has to be paid back by skills and competence but are we really gaining in capacity for that? Are we really getting a good education?  Are our students really earning hard enough to pay back their parents’ loans? The skills deficiency is increasing day by day. Whatever we invested in our education is being sucked by inflation of degrees. Marks are turning less and less the hall mark of a good and talented student. How to handle this situation of perfect storm? This is a question for all the schools and colleges to answer. 

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

This is not a good question to ask. After all, a school is meant to make you better in all terms- learning, talent, health, computing, communication, designing etc. All these things collectively decide how creative a person can be. If schools don't help in these basic parameters of life, there is something seriously wrong. But hardly, any school bothers to go beyond what they are doing as if everything they do, is on the right track. A good teacher and a good school cannot be called a villain but can turn a villain if it goes out of sync with times. In my city Amritsar, the schools that ruled education scene 20 years back, are pretty average schools today and the schools that ruled education 40 years back, are below average schools now and the schools that ruled education 60 years back, are almost dead or dying slowly. What does that mean that the reality changes but what kind of schools would gain public attention in next 20 years. It won't be a CBSE school or an IB school. These labels don't matter much because they have already encashed the premium attached to them. The future belongs to those schools that make learning a fun, where problem-solving would be central to the learning process. Can there be a school where no heavy school bags are permitted? Can there be schools where no need of any additional tuition outside campus is required?Can a school promise today to pay back entire tuition fees if a child needs tuition outside its premises? Can a school claim to create writers, film-makers, speakers of tomorrow? There is needed a disruption in the current model of schools. Teaching only for medical or engineering would not be the main attraction now rather multi-disciplinary skills would be the real magnet of the future. How many schools are thinking on these lines is the real question? The time is to find good teachers particularly the teachers with high quality inspiration quotient. We need not just B.Ed graduates rather we need the ones who can motivate a student in the digital age. Are we listening?

Sugata Mitra's new experiments in self-teaching

Why it is important to think of education? When we send our kids to schools, it is a given thing that we assume that our share of duty as parents is now over. Most of us who do this don't come back to realize whether they made the right decision. The fact is that a kid is being made ready for something that lies in the future. For example, a kid who was admitted in year 2008 was to turn a responsible citizen in roughly around 2026 after achieving a learning age of nearly 20-21 but what kind of world 2026 would be? Would it be a world where current skill taught in our school would be relevant? Would it be a world where technology would be more dominant than any other form of human intervention? Would it be a world where we would be living the way we are living today? The fact is that a school is meant to prepare the kid for future but do we really have any idea of future in our schools? Can we say that our teachers are really ready for teaching our kids for future? It means that the teachers themselves should be leading in the use of technology and the value-system of the future. Is this really true for our schools? Is the level of skills future-ready in our students? Can they handle an ecology already endangered with pollution? Can they handle a city already full of traffic jams and air pollution? Can they keep on living in localities where garbage is littered all around and water table is already down to dangerously low levels? Are they ready for a world where boundaries are increasingly disappearing and world is moving towards a globally connected and accountable network of citizens? Are they ready for handling job pressure coming out of multi-tasking and multi-lingual & multi-cultural work environment? These are the questions that are centric to all the educations systems of all the countries. A school is a nursery of the future but if it is not ready for upcoming challenges, we are doomed. Here is available a series of beginnings in this direction.