Education: Then and Now

In this pandemic, the world has come to a halt. With ‘Ramayan’ serial broadcasted on Doordarshan has garnered a lot of attention and depicting Indian culture, the show has clearly shown some instances of the history allowing one to ponder over the past. Students being given education and life lessons under the banyan tree is one of them. How has education changed since then? Is there a shift in the context of teaching or all together the methodology has changed? This article will let one to think on some of these aspects and will give us a new dimension in the way learning has been obtained.

Let’s begin by knowing the difference between learning and education, the two words are often used interchangeably. In simple terms, education is imparting of knowledge and ideas whereas learning is how much one has gained after being educated. For instance, when a ten-year-old is given tips on how to score a goal in football, he is being educated. But how much he has understood and gained actually is called learning.

In the recent past with advancement of technology, education has been formally transferred to students in schools, universities and colleges. The typical mode of delivery was a teacher standing in front of bunch of students and teaching with the help of a blackboard. After sometime when internet reached schools, e-learning and videos were shown to the students in classes for experiential learning. Informally, it is now being spread with the use of internet such as how to bake a cake, how to make a doodle, how to make a pony-tail or in fact how to raise a child. The online means of transferring knowledge is now being used globally helping both tutors as well as learners. It is becoming more popular among working professionals, students and other learners as they find immense convenience in the autonomy and flexibility that the courses offer.

With the free flow of information, there are multiple risks also associated leading to degradation of education system as a whole. One of them is the invalidity to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong. A fact-check is not something that people are familiar with and most of them fall for the manipulative information that is visible to their eyes.

Now with the amalgamation of offline and online learning, learners are able to upskill themselves and are trying to stand out from the crowd. Discussion forums via email tools, video conferencing and video lectures and live lectures are all possible through web. The craze for e-certificates has hit the new generation with multiple educational websites offering online courses and sessions. On a brighter side, the existing situation has given multiple options to learners to decide their tutors. If someone is not comfortable with one particular teacher, they can easily switch to another one. The previous attitude of learning within classroom walls is no longer relevant and slowly the fact that learning practical is more effective than gaining theoretical knowledge is being acknowledged by the masses.

The dissemination of knowledge is bound to happen and let’s hope in the coming future, there will be more creative and innovative ways for it. At the end, I would like to say that:

“A baby born is like a clay. It is the insights that they get from grasping education that gives them an opportunity to become whatever they want to be and shapes their future.”