The month of June brings in a sense of study over most of our country. It is a time when schools and colleges re-open, X, XII and some other results are declared and there is a rush for admission into higher education and so on. The journey to being educated is on. Keeping with this sentiment DNC Times (De Nobili College, Pune, India) presents “Education – Kindling of a flame.”
Over the past few decades a lot of measures have been taken to increase the literacy rate of our country. Huge sums of money have been sanctioned to make India cent percent literate. The Right to Education Act which came into effect on 1st April 2009 made education “free and compulsory” giving it the force of a right to the child and the duty of the government to educate children. The RTE has done a lot to see that Education reaches every child. The results are evident. Statistics show more children are enrolled in schools, primary schools are opened in almost every village and school teacher’s salaries have more than doubled in the past few years which have definitely taken the literacy rates higher. As of 2011 India was 74.01% literate, which is good.
However, even with such improvement the quality of life does not show much of change. Crime rate has increased, stress levels have increased, soared couples have been separated and more families have broken up. Our value system seems to have gone down rather than up in spite of all this education.
An ancient Greek Philosopher, Plutarch said “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” A truly educated mind is free. It is trained to reason out, critically analyze, understand and lead one to appropriate action in total freedom. It seeks for the good of humankind. Education has been happening since the dawn of civilization. It has evolved and today we have a very formal structure of education. Since the recent past we are so embedded in the structure that we have lost sight of the goal which is to create an educated mind. We are creating more intellectuals but something is lacking in training people to live their lives fully for God’s glory. The church has been instrumental in the past for imparting value based education but today church run schools are not so much in demand. Is it that we are not meeting the needs of today’s generation and we are living on our past glory? We also have tried to explore the implication of real education! Though we claim to be so educated we don’t seem to realize what we are doing to our own planet. In India education is still a dream for many girls even though the government is making an all-out effort to woo girls to schools. In our interview section Sunny SJ speaks of how we may have become complacent in the running of our institutions. At the same time, we face a lot of oppositions from the Right Wing forces within our country. The challenges are numerous and we have to face them in a creative way. We cannot do without education and so we must find the right way of imparting education that instils values and not just transfers information.
Is our education kindling a flame? Read on to know what our writers have to say about the education we receive. We are all a part of this system.
DNC TIMES is a web cum E-magazine from De Nobili College, Pune. De Nobili College is a Jesuit Formation House, in the campus of Jnana Deep Vidyaapeeth – A Pontifical Institute for Ecclesiastical Studies.
DNC TIMES is an attempt to venture into the field of writing by the staff and students of De Nobili College. It’s a mixed bunch of writers beginning from renowned writers to the beginners. It’s also a stage for all the creative works of DNC Scholastics.
