What Is Education?

Should there be a centralized education board in India? What will be the benefits and pitfalls of ending state boards and abolishing the difference in medium of teaching, and establishing a unique education system throughout India?

• In India, schools have different medium of education i.e. Hindi medium (or any other regional language) and English medium. This creates a difference in the basic level of education. Most fields of higher education require sound understanding and ease of using English as a medium of education. Now, a Hindi-medium student has to work very hard to obtain the expertise in understanding English. Many student fail to get into a good college due to this reason only. Many remain insecure and afraid when it comes to interaction and interviews. Many competitive exams have their entrance exams in both the languages but after getting into the college, everything is taught in English only. That is just unfair. Mostly, poor students can't afford to get into English-Medium schools, due to their high education fees. That further widens the divide between poor and rich. And students who go to English-medium schools are mostly bad in Hindi. Many of my friends can't even write their own name in Hindi. This also causes the decrease in popularity of Hindi Literature. It is a serious issue. And my mind ponders why don't many people discuss it. Are all my thoughts valid? If yes, then what can we, and the government do about it?

• Answer:

  Having a centralised board is always a better option. No matter how hard each state will try to improve the education system in their respective ones there will always be a difference within students from two states or from central board.India is already lagging behind in education. Hence,if any state implements better changes, it should be applied to other students of country as well. Further, if curriculum of a particular state is that much better that its students are always better equipped with knowledge compared to other state's students, then its benefits should be accessible to other students also. What I would like to say is that if there is uniformity, managing,changing,improving and providing education to all will be much easy task. Also if we can bring end to state boards and bring the CBSE or another well supported board then it will boost up confidence of state board students who always feel inferior to the CBSE, ICSE(ISC) students. Also this implementation of central board is a long term process. We cannot suddenly impose central board. Government can make it mandatory that all the student who are admitted in first standard from a particular year, will have to follow central board curriculum. Because then only students and more importantly their parents will come out of fear of higher difficulty level of CBSE. Govt. of INDIA is surely going to face oppositions against this decision. But anyhow there should be a common board for whole country, be it CBSE or any other board. And as per my knowledge, I will suggest CBSE.