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Pls rate this essay on educational system shortcomings
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22 Dec 2014, 01:29
I have just started to prepare for the GMAT and plan to take the exam around April 2015. I am aware that there is a writing assessment section in the exam and to prepare for it I have started by picking an easy topic from Indian b-school prep material and writing an essay on it. Undoubtedly this is pretty bad because I have never been a great writer and this is probably my first proper attempt at essay writing since high school. I've written research papers in Uni but those felt completely different. I would appreciate some feedback on the following parameters among others that the audience might deem important from the point of view of the GMAT exam
a) content (maturity of thought)
b) grammar and vocabulary
c) readability (flow of thought)
Thank you in advance.
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“The educational system is killing creativity in Indian children.” Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with this statement. (550 words)
The purpose of education is to enable students, the youth of our nation, to acquire the requisite skills and qualities to function as positively contributing members of society. It should ensure that the students not only learn skills relevant to a profession for the purpose of employability and, in turn, financial well being but also abstract knowledge, such as critical thinking and moral values, that will enable them to make judicious choices when faced with complex situations in every day adult life. However, one finds that the educational system in place in India today would require a fair amount of overhauling in order to achieve these objectives.
The educational system in India borrows heavily from its Western counterparts. Similar to the systems adopted by USA and UK, India has, broadly speaking, a standardised mode of imparting education to its students. A few common modules or disciplines are taken up by educational institutions and are taught to groups of students as a whole. This mode of teaching is then followed up by assessing the groups of students on the taught content via an end of term exam. While no part of this system as implemented in India is flawed per se, there are several shortcomings that render the current educational system suboptimal despite its best intentions.
The first shortcoming is the shortage of variety in the modules or disciplines offered to students as options. Due to the semi-developed nature of our country’s economy, certain educational qualifications carry more weightage in the professional world and, hence, are accorded more importance by education institutions. In the process, many students lose out on the opportunity to take up a subject that they might be inherently gifted in, which renders them less creative in their second-choice discipline.
The second shortcoming is the poor quality of the educators that are entrusted with the all-important task of educating India’s students. Cases of under qualified teachers, especially in rural areas of India, are rampant in the media and this point needs no special discussion. Once again due to the evolving nature of India’s economy, not enough impetus is placed on educating our educators and this skill gap consequently results in a failure to bring the best out of students across various disciplines.
Lastly, our educational institutions stifle creativity because they fail to encourage original thinking and independent analysis by students. This malaise is brought about by a cumulative effect of resource shortage in India. Except for the few premier schools in the country, most do not have access to sufficient funding for promotion of original creative work. Moreover, schools across the country are let down by educators who do not lay enough emphasis on independent coursework without plagiarism and collusion.
In order to improve the current situation of the educational systems in India, State and Central governments must increase the course options that are available to students, schools must become more selective regarding the quality of teachers being recruited and facilities to train educators on global best practices should be made available in abundance. This will require concentrated efforts by all the stakeholders not only in terms of deliberation and planning but also in terms of funding and implementation. Without such efforts, however, the educational system of India will continue to kill creativity in children as it unfortunately does today.