On the 22nd July 2024 the Minister of Education, Government of Meghalaya, Rakkam Sangma, announced at a seminar in Shillong College that Meghalaya was headed for a new education system – a “Bookless Education.” The platform was at the inaugural function of SWAYAM in the context of The National Education Policy 2020.
Are we ready for a Bookless Education System in Meghalaya? The fact of the matter is that technology has advanced in leaps and bounds and is likely to advance at a greater speed in the years to come and in the process, it will dictate the terms on which many other social needs will have to adapt. The old systems will have to be replaced by newer systems for the simple reason that everything that matters in education and its objectives now, have been lost sight of by the educational system in Meghalaya, and perhaps in India as well.
The present education system basically serves the purpose of a college degree only: the end and the means towards that end need to be far more oriented towards other skills as well – technical skills – so as to provide the community with educated and trained artisans that are ripe and mellow products of a culture at every moment of their lives in word and in gesture – and not just degree holders like “superior wet nurses” that are now forced upon the youth by the schools and universities. And SWAYAM is precisely opposed to that.
With rare exceptions, what we lack in Meghalaya is the first prerequisite of education…that is to say, true educators, hence the decline of our culture. What we are doing in Meghalaya for now, is brutally educating a vast crowd of young men and women, in the shortest of time possible, by awarding them a degree to paint a picture of higher literacy on a national scale, when what we really need are educated artisans who can take up every task that is essential in social life so that we become self-sufficient in every sector.
It is skilled, educated people with morally sound inputs at this level that the State is lacking in. Vast crowds of degree holders are not what the State is in need off, in fact it is the cause for a high unemployment rate because there is no way that we can employ everyone who is a degree holder. A degree holder was once considered exceptional – a privilege that only the deserving had a right to. All great and beautiful things cannot be a common possession, but that is exactly what we are confronted with right now.
We are plagued with cheating in exams because invigilators no longer maintain that vigil that is expected of them and this defeats the very purpose of education itself…viz that there are people with a higher caliber who deserve to rank among the toppers, but a cheater gets ahead instead. Education is no different from cultivation in that some yield higher and better than others and if society is to benefit from education the higher yielders must have the opportunity to display their innate qualities…we have to remember that the educator like the cultivator is required for this end, and not just someone whom the government has picked up and who takes the job as a means to make a living forgetting that the real objective is to wean the best from the general.
What is the use of a Bookless Education System to us in this age and time? It is the monumental contemplation of the fruit that we will get as opposed to what we are getting from a system that was meant for the past and which is hopelessly trudging along bringing about nothing but depravity and unfit men and women to run the State.
The time has come for a change and therefore I endorse, not only endorse the Education Minister’s proposal, but would add that something else also be simultaneously introduced. After all, what would be the gain of a Bookless Education system if the product from the educational system remains the same as it is today? That is what we need to reckon with…a change that will bring with it a change for the better of the products from our educational system.
As long as the soul of the educational system is still in the pulse of this bookless system, as long as the past is used as a model for imitation, this new system will always be in danger of being a lip service change, a cosmetic change, so that in the final analysis the whole exercise becomes one nearer to fiction than to material. What I have stated above is a description of a feeling that has often troubled me: I revenge myself on it by giving it publicity. There may be others who have had the same feeling as I, and so my way of expressing it may miss out on the ripe certainty of experience, but I must go on.
Considering the opportunity that the government has at this juncture it is necessary that I revive a memory which will be a hundred times more painful to us than just the thought that we will miss out on this opportunity as well. We, Khasi, Pnars and Garos, have destroyed the benefits that were to be gained from the reorganisation of the North Eastern States in 1971 which was essentially to be garnered in our favour – we have destroyed the objective of the Reorganisation of States. Are we willing to admit, are we willing to try to understand what the reorganisation was meant to bring about? – the transvaluation of tribal values, the measures taken with all possible means and all values and all determination to make our tribal values triumph. Have we triumphed?
And if we think we have, are the current figures released by the Niti Aayog a confirmation or a condemnation of that reorganisation? Answer these questions in your heart and keep it there, the answer would be too stressful to bear in the head. There has never been a more fundamental, and a more severe and a more direct attack delivered with a battering ram upon us than the answer to the above question. We knew then that our tribal culture was far better than the culture of the non-tribal and so we demanded for an opportunity that we be given the opportunity to govern ourselves. Are we proud of what we have become? It was then that we saw before us the possibility of a perfectly magical reincarnation of what our ancestors dreamt off, a dream that one can never ever experience again even if we waited from this millennium to the next.
The system of education in Meghalaya, flawed as it is, has gone on for too long. For almost fifteen years now the government has tangled and confused everything it has laid its hands on in this sector. The government has in its conscience all the half measures of which we are sick. The policies much as they are needed have only added cosmetic value to education, something far more serious is required – an overhauling of the entire system.
To be frank, this bookless system is already recommended in the degree courses so what new can we expect from the announcement of the education minister? Basically, that a change is essential, after all isn’t it true that a snake that does not shed its skin, is bound to die? I am at all costs venturing on describing my feelings which are decidedly in the interest of propriety.
The government must keep abreast of these changes and in this announcement of a “Bookless Education system” there is a ray of hope that the government is embracing a preparedness which is noble and a welcome process that everyone should support and prepare for. The New National Education Policy does provide for technical training till the degree course and this should be the focus that the government should train its resources on. There will be a limited need for books and an unlimited need for “hands on” with the latter having greater emphasis on the award of a degree.
The change however must be in all levels of education. The State must keep in mind that basic education must be assured to every individual, perhaps this can be brutally enforced upon every individual upto the Bachelor’s degree stage, so that the State has people who can become useful inputs at various technical functions that a society depends and exists upon as well.
From there on, or the stage that the system should regard as “Higher Education” should be exclusively for those that have a capacity for higher and superior education. Not all people are privileged to have this capacity for superior education and if the State deliberately allows it to be available to all and sundry the entire purpose of education would have been defeated. And in this regard, I know that in stating this fact, I gain an advantage for myself – the attainment of a frank and a correct point of view with regard to the times that we are in. The overcrowded universities and our accumulation of undeserving lecturers and professors and educators have become a scandal and maybe we have the most ridiculous reasons and motives for defending this state of affairs, as is so evident from the fact that educated, they are, but productive they are not, and this is what I hope that the Bookless Education will attend to.
A degree does not necessarily fulfill the criteria we expect from those seeking public service. Far more than just the degree is the character of the person, the integrity of the person to stand up to the requirements of serving in a system where the politicians who themselves are unqualified demand that things be done their way. No degree can certify the personality of the candidate, and if we assume that it does, we are bringing about the decline of the culture of the society.
An educational system that incorporates higher education only for the higher individual can reverse the ill effects of the mistakes that our education system has caused in the present society, and this, if integrated into the “Bookless Educational System” our government is planning will ensure that the superior persons are handed the job of altering the course our society has taken, and bring it to that course where the deserving (the higher personality) will then get the opportunity to steer the course of society towards genuine tangible and intangible progress.
