File Photo: Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia
Expressing his concern over the education system turning into a "data transfer system", Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today said schools have been reduced to "factories" which pass on the same data from one generation to other.
"Our education system has become a data transfer system today. One generation has particular data which factories named as schools pass on to another generation. We are trying to stop this practice and address these issues in our education policy," Mr Sisodia said during an interaction with experts and teachers at the state level consultative meet on New Education Policy.
Mr Sisodia, who is also the Delhi Education Minister said, "How should education be imparted? What content should be taught? The answers to all these questions will keep on changing but why education is important is perpetual...we have to find an answer to it."
"If our classrooms will be boring places how will the students progress. We need to make our classes interesting and interactive and this agenda needs to be part of our education policy," he said.
Sharing an anecdote, the minister said, "when Salwa Judum (a militia mobilised peace march deployed as part of anti-insurgency operations) was in news I went to Chhattisgarh. I met a tribal woman there who had stopped sending her kid to school. When I asked her about the reason she sternly told me that he refuses to collect tendu leaves when he goes to school and it is their basic source of earning."
"She asked me if her son has to be unemployed after he finishes his studies then why she should not ask him to continue working right from this age? Our education policy should have an answer to that woman's questions," he said.
"Till the time answers to such questions are not explored, our education policy will be incomplete," he said.
The one-day state level consultative meeting on the New Education policy which was organised by SCERT in collaboration with NCERT, was attended by government school principals, teachers from Education department of Jamia Millia Islamia and Delhi University and NGOs working in the sector, among others.
The themes of the New Education Policy discussed during the consultation include ensuring learning outcomes in elementary education, extending outreach of secondary and senior secondary education, strengthening of vocational education, reforming school examination systems, revamping teacher education for quality teachers and promotion of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in school and adult education.