Education or Edutainment?

Education or Edutainment?

Education aims to a holistic development of a person. It needs earnest efforts and practices. It is not meant for only earning bread and butter but gives a way to meaningful life. Presently, education is taken primarily for earning money. Not only students but those who are running and working for educational institutions want to mint money out of it. It has been called now ‘Education Industry’. The teachers have become facilitator or rather entertainer because education should be a fun. In fact, it was a concept for little children to make them feel at home but it has become the part of higher education also. Think about this if ‘Research studies have become fun’. Commercialization has brought this concept as the philosophy of it swings between profit and loss. It treats students as consumers and by hook or by crook they want to gain profit only without caring the effect on the lives of the students. The students are kept in comfort zone. They should not face any problem. Therefore, fun and entertainment has become a prominent part of education. Indian films have promoted this concept to a great extent. Young generation wants to see their institutions as a fashion mall. The teachers are compelled to be interesting and presentable. Their knowledge and simplicity attracts neither employer nor students. Pomp and show is appreciated. If one knows manipulation, he is a valuable worker for employer. In this way it is gradually digging the roots of education which could add some meaning and values to life.

I have visited or worked for many schools, colleges and universities but I felt a void as I found no urge for learning in majority of the students. Above all, the pedagogical practices and researches are trying to find the ways of how to entertain these students.  In the name of making class interesting, they are seeking the ways how to overcome the suffocated atmosphere of a classroom. After a B. Ed. Degree and bearing many training programmes and workshops on teaching and training the students, I have come to the conclusion that education is not for the sake of education now but a business item which has to be sold anyhow. The commercialization of education has made mandatory to entertain the students as they are paying a huge fees and dreaming a life of a thick package, luxury and status, dozing off in the classrooms.

Whatsoever progress we see on the earth is the efforts of genius ancestors. The progress in science and technology, literature, art and music is the result of sincere endeavors and sacrifice. In ancient system of education, one who wishes to get education, used to go to Gurukulas. He had to go through an acid test for getting education. He was not accepted just for fees but he had to show the urge for learning. If he was able to pass then only he could stay in Gurukul. Therefore, the Vedic education was given to only those students who had deep urge of learning.

At last it is also noticeable that in the name of technical and vocational education; the thinking minds are made crippled by so called architects of modern education system of our country and abroad. In India, the fashion of English medium schools has already played a fatal role to prevent us from radical thinking in our own mother tongue. Now technical and vocational education is making the generation not less than a human machine without intelligence and liberal thinking. The education in social science and humanities is being demolished so that young generation cannot think on radical issues of individual and social life and raise the voice against the wrong going on in the society in the name of progress and prosperity. The young generation might be employed, but for whom that is a question?

By Dr. Vivek Agrawal