EDUCATIONAL -

REFORMS

DR. DEVINDER K. KANSAL, Ph.D.

Fulbright Indo-US Scholar (1991).

Head, Deptt. of Physical Education & Sports Sciences &

Principal, Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education (University of Delhi)

8th June, 2012

“Educated people are too frequently behaving like

uneducated today, probably because of the

absence of the Department of Measurement and

Evaluation in the universities, the world over.”

The latest example of uneducated behavior of ahighly educated person is that of an IAS TOPPER,Mr. Lalit Sharma who used 19 names for himself,to amass white money by converting black moneythrough 19 false names and addresses for oneindividual to avoid tax liability.

- A Newspaper Report

SPECIFIC EDUCATIONAL

CONTENT

In the simplest terms, education shouldbe defined as the product through manmaking process to make one truthful,selfless, benevolent, humble, strong,humorous and caring rightly. One’sbehavior of body, mind and soulshould be adequate. This alone canmake one responsible for one’s‘educated training’ in any other subject.

WATCH TESTThe acronym ‘WATCH’ should be used to test one’sWords (language), Actions (ability to do), Thoughts(ability to know) Commitments (ability to become)and Habits (synonymous use of ‘To know’, ‘To do’,‘To be’ & ‘To live together’). e.g. Smokers can neverbe educated people, they can be trained machineswithout having any knowledge to self-welfare, self-control and humanism (caring for social health).Currently, smokers & persons following inactivelifestyles are also being awarded university degreeswhere as balanced education should ban smoking andinactive lifestyles which are ruining our environment,personal & social health and social interaction & loveto God).

CURRENT STATUS OF EDUCATION Currently, graduate degree is based on unbalanced

education.

We are yet to create any agency to look after theaward of graduate degrees based on balancededucation or on standardized educational pillars.

This is inspite of the existence of standardizededucation by the UNESCO’s Delors Commissionreport in 1996 recommending four pillars ofeducation i.e. ‘To know’, ‘To do’, ‘To be’ and ‘ToLive Together’.

Our youth is being given unbalanced educationthrough unaccountable & un-standardized streams ofuniversity education system under the banner ofautonomy and misused democracy of non-educationists experts’ majorities in academic bodies.

UNBALANCED EDUCATION

All innocent children and youth are yet to beimparted balanced education as per standards ofUNESCO Commission due to the absence ofcognitive teaching (Fundamental knowledge) ofsports (which alone include all the four domainsnamely Cognitive, Affective, Psychomotor andSpiritual).

This is because the pre-service teachersare yet to be given balanced education.(There is no obligatory paper of physicaleducation in B.Ed. Course of majority of theuniversities in the world).

TSUNAMI DUE TO

UNABALANCED EDUCATION

Millions of people are dying due to hunger in the worlddue to man-made Tsunami. None on earth canremain poor because by nature the human bodyis so equipped that it can produce much morethan the cost of it’s maintenance &consumables. Poverty, illiteracy and ill-health maybe greatly mitigated if we create work centres forfeeding poor on work for food basis.

Once each poor person is given opportunity towork, he will certainly remain producing more thanhis genuine needs and will get literate and will educateone’s children.

STATUS TO EDUCATION

The education should be considered as a separateand specialized subject and as a “product” whosequality must be measured by specializededucational measurement experts through valid,objective, reliable and provable methods ratherthan by agencies like “NAAC” whose methods areevidently invalid, due to the use of nominal scalesinstead of interval scales needed for measuringbalanced inter-disciplinary educational deliverythrough the trimester/semester system withproper weightage to updated resource materialsand teaching lessons used.

EXCELLENCE AS EXPERTISE

Excellence must be considered asan expertise in producing betteroutputs rather than basingeducational contents on majorityvotes of academic bodies which arebound to give mediocre contents inplace of excellent ones

STANDARDS NEEDED FOR

EDUCATION

Presently used term of education stands forchange in skill behavior. It must be replacedby the term ‘training’ and the word‘education’ should be restricted for over-allchange in one’s basic humanistic behaviorwhich can easily be tested from one’s natureof “performing one’s duties (of hand, headand heart) even in an unsupervisedenvironment”.

MAN MADE POVERTY

The educated must remember thatpoverty can be eradicated in a shortspan of 5-10 years through theparadigm change, by changing theparadigm of giving financial help toneedy, to giving opportunity to

work and get validly educated.

RIGHTS VS DUTIES

We must recognize the present situationresembling to a traffic jam where the socalled educated advocate only for therights commission with no concern toduties. They forget that all rights requiresomebody to perform honest duty forproviding those rights to others.

UPDATING COURSES FOR

BALANCED EDUCATION

Training course contents for each subjectbasically need to be revised in theirquantity and duration.

Wrong taxonomy of educational subjectsand redundant course contents taught toeducate youth have resulted in increasedduration of education and in impartingunbalanced education.

THE CLASSIFICATION OF SUBJECTS

NEEDS TO BE REDUCED BY

SCIENTIFIC TAXONOMY COVERED

BY THE ACRONYM PALM OPT

Wholistic Personality Development of head, heart, hand & spirit.

Art of Living (also inclusive of General Education and Environmental Studies).

Language/s

Measurement and Evaluation (including Computerliteracy and Management basics).

Opted Professional/Vocational Training.

say, PALM OPT

RECOMMENDATIONS

Each university be under obligation to impart‘Balanced Education’ of Head, Heart & Hand toits students through faster, multidisciplinary &interdisciplinary undergraduate semester systemof education. Annual system cannot deliverbalanced education of head, heart and handeven to B.Ed. students.

This alone can mitigate some of the problems ofhumankind if not to entirely ward-off all theproblems of ill-health, mal-nutrition, poverty,injustice and man-made tsunami due tounbalanced education.

RECOMMENDATIONS Contd.

Each university should have ResearchCentre for producing modules for theApplication of Existing Knowledge(CAKE) in priority areas of a nation.

The entire research should be focusedon our national priorities (ofunemployment & illiteracy eradication andeconomical housing for the poor etc.)rather than doing un-directional &circumstantial research work in majority ofvoluntary research projects.

RECOMMENDATIONS Contd.

To start with, each pre-service trainingcourse say, B.Ed. should have an obligatorycompulsory paper of Physical Educationcovering first hand training of psychomotor,affective and spiritual education. This ispossible through the scientific teaching ofphysical activity technology for life longactive & wellness way of life, in a manner asone competes in sports keeping one’s mind,body, heart and soul focused at one’s sportsperformance.

RECOMMENDATIONS Contd.

Admissions, Examinations andrecruitments should be assigned to theacademic department of Measurementand Evaluation to be created ateach university.

Each university must have a ‘Work ForAll’ centre for fund generation andunemployment eradication where youthmay be recruited as apprentices.

RECOMMENDATIONS Contd.

There should be optional provisionsfor the faster and smaller educationaltracks. Faster and smaller durationtracks should be optional to theextremely poor. Longer tracks shouldhave optional streams for themediocre & rich.

THANK YOU

FOR YOUR PATIENT HEARING

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