Birth of a human being brings a new series of challenges, responsibilities and opportunities. Education is one of them. Education simply doesn’t include the schooling and formal ways of giving someone the knowledge and expertise in a specific manner. But includes the major step of personal development.
Why is education important?
Education doesn’t only brings you the livelihood but your whole life in depended on education. Education helps to shape one’s personality and future. The whole character of one is typically explained by the type of education one have.
As it is said;
“Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave.”
History is full of people emphasising the role of Education, as Plato has regarded education as a way of achieving social and individual justice. Aristotle following plato laid the importance of education making a school for this purpose by the name of lyceum. Jean-Jacques Rousseau laid much importance on education that it gave rise to a modern movement known as “open education”.
Education plays the role of the foundation of a society Enabling it to grow it’s trunks far away touching heights of a sky.
State and education
People and resources are they key of development of any state. As Better use of resources is dependent on the people, hence people are the real assets any nation state can have. Education of its people brings the progress and illiteracy cause the downfall of the building of state. As education is important for the state, so it is prime responsibility of the state to provide its people with efficient education and opportunities.
For a nation state to prosper, conquering all the technology and moving with pace of world is required and this can only be done if the citizens are well equipped and have all the necessary skills to build their nation.
Illiteracy brings a lot of stuff along with it, such a poverty, increasing crime rate, and much more economical problems. Due to this very reason, illiteracy should be curb by using all the ways and means necessary because if it is left uncheck, it can cause the slow decay of the whole state even jeopardising its whole existence.
What are the hurdles in education?
Unfortunately, education now a days isn’t delivered the way it should be. Education is faced with the problems that are needed to be cured as soon as impossible before it gets into the roots and destroy our generations, leading to a huge loss.
Following are the major hurdles that are destroying the way to a better education system.
- Poverty.
Poor states are unable to provide quality education to their citizens as there are already a lot of problems to deal with. People who are facing the scarcity of basic needs ignore the education. In this case, education is neglected badly and leads to the loss of huge talent at the hands of poverty. Children who are from the low income families, usually does not have the better facilities to prepare them for school and social skills to deal with the school education. Many low income families tend to put their child in work in order to fulfil their necessities. - Poor Parenting
There is a huge crowd of people who doesn’t focus on the education of their children due to either the lack of more facilities or due to the fact that they are not aware of the developments that require education as necessary. Parents are often seen to be less supportive about the education related problems of the children. Many parents are unable to support the child financially during the educational time. Many high school students are seen to be working along with the education to fulfill their needs this decreases there chance of flourishing themselves. Many students are even compelled to to work for the families during their educational career which leads to the burden neglecting the educational needs of the children. - Poor funding
Poor funding is one of the main hurdles leading to poor education. The education budget of some states are far less than required, thus creating less educational opportunities. Usually the government, pay attention to the visible and short term works that will provide them with the more chances of staying in government. Work such as road development, can provide any political party with the Votes But are off less use by the students. The education budget is often ignored in many states leading to the decline of education sector in the first step. Poor funding leads to expensive education which is not afforded by everyone in the society. People who are financially low tend to fulfil their needs other than education . - Poor governance and politicization of education
Poor governance and political instability also drives the state towards illiteracy. All the political parties seek their means by targeting the slogan of better education but end up rejecting the educational reforms given by the other party. Ruling party halts the steps taken by the previous government in education sector and take the country towards decline without even noticing it. Political unrest in any state can also lead to the poor educational environment. In the ready games played by the political parties, students are often crushed and neglected. Political instability in any nation state can also lead to the fall of education system by political power being the most important. - Changing educational curriculum
Frequent change of educational curriculum also paves the way of instability as education setup as a whole is required to change with it. Poor or underdeveloped countries did not have much resources to bear the weigh of this change yet try to bring change (that is not even necessary) and again push the country into more burden. Often it is seen that Change in curriculum is of no use and even bring more damage due to the fact they are less teachers of the new curriculum. Teachers who are trained for the old curriculum cannot easily adopt the new one. Many institutes even reject curriculum Hindering the process. - Weak infrastructure
Education facilities are also week due to the fact of weak infrastructure. Less facilities provided by the state to the students as well as the teachers lead to the less interest in education. Lack of schools and other facilities develop far reaching results encouraging illiteracy. Absence of proper labs and libraries erode many students who are willing to work for their betterment. Students face the grave problem of difficulty in accessing to the information. Lack of labs lead to the less research which ultimately brings the result of less advancement and more conservative lifestyle. Similarly, lack of hostel facilities lead to the loss of huge number of students that are willing to travel far to acquire knowledge. - Poor teachers welfare
Everyone works in the environment that fits them best. Teachers are not provided with enough motivation to help students develop their personality and self being. Not only teachers are provided with the less pays but are also not provided with the basic facilities such as transportation. Teachers are the builders of the next generation; the kind of respect, honour and privilege that should be given to them is not present. Thus they are not motivated enough to give their maximum productivity. Due to this, educated people tend to choose other reward wining professions then teaching creating huge vacancies in this field and more space for the incompetent persons. Usually it is seen that in underdeveloped areas, people who are usually not willing to do any other job choose this profession to earn and not to give anything to the society. This type of motivation yields less productive results. - Game of paper qualification
There is much importance placed on the paper qualification than on inculcating real knowledge and skills. Much of talent is lost due to fact that they are unable to fit in the typical criteria of marking. Skill development is reducing day by day and higher emphasis is paid to the better paper work. Cramming is a great winner. People who are talented are left far behind in this. Space should be created in this regard. Paper work is the test of learning skills and not the test of developing skills. - Corruption
Corruption is an evil eating up the whole state including The education sector. The funds that are required to raise education sector, are used somewhere else or are gone in the pockets of corrupt politicians or officers. Not only this but the bribes paid by the rich parents hinder the access of equal education. In addition to this, the sexual problems faced by the female students as well as the female teachers is also a big hurdle in the way of better and advanced education system. - Social constrains
Not only government is the one creating problems but social and cultural orientation of the people is. Overcoming this is really important because people usually tend to follow their social and cultural values and do not prefer to deviate from them. The people who are opposed to the government and their policies usually do not go for the education provided by the government thus increasing illiteracy. - Natural hazards
Natural hazards such as floods, earth quakes, diseases badly disturb the education system. Recently covid-19 pandemic has far reaching effects on all the sectors. Education is Most badly affected by COVID-19 pandemic. Shifting of schools to the online system lead to huge loss of time and effort. Not all the regions are well equipped to deal with this sudden transfer to online system. Students are unable to read with the online classes and online classes also did not yield the same results as a physical one. The places that are less technologically advanced badly failed to adopt the online classes producing a huge loss of studies. Students were also not happy with online shifting and also did not feel the online system as productive as a physical one.
How to deal with these hurdles?
Poor education system is a problem of many states and should be dealt seriously and immediately. Many serious steps are needed to overcome this ever present pandemic of illiteracy.
First of all, proper planning of education sector should be done. Education success should be placed under the competent and loyal to the state people, who not only wants the better for themselves but also for the citizens of the state. A transparent planning of education should be available along with the equal opportunities of education provided to all the citizens irrespective of the class, creed, sex, and sect.
Educational budget should not be neglected and should be put in first priority of any government and people should not settle for less. Education is the matter of future of the state and it should be manage carefully and precisely.
Cheap education facilities should be provided by the state so that people choose to educate their children anyway.
Proper guidance programs should be launched for the parents that are uneducated and does not understand increasing need of education and technology. It is the responsibility of a state to raise the awareness among the people.
Various free programs should be launched for the students and better infrastructure should be developed to create a better state.
More scholarships should be issued by the government in order to raise awareness among the students.
More facilities of every kind should be provided to the students to create a learning environment.
Matter of corruption should also be direct seriously and should not be lead unhandled especially in this sector.
Teaching staff should be provided with more opportunities and should be hired carefully under strict supervision. They should be provided all type of facilities they need, so that the education of the citizens is not at stake.
Anyway, importance towards advanced and technical education should be given to pave the way towards prosperity and success.
