Prof Sandeep Sancheti,
Director, NITK Surathkal
Children should be encouraged to develop skills
Vocational Education focuses on imparting some specific job related skills to the students. Vocational training is not part of higher education, it stands somewhere between schools and higher education depending upon the case and the need of the job.
In school education, we do not nurture and help the children, instead we kill the creativity of the child by setting rules for everything. Right from Kindergarten, teachers take complete control of the child’s mind. Instead of allowing the child to develop his own brand of creativity, the teachers fill him up with their own ideas.
It should come as no surprise that after some amount of this kind of training, the child starts following a prescribed way of doing things. Creativity is the fountainhead of any skill. Skills will not develop in children, if they are not allowed to showcase their talents from childhood.
In India, our engineers do not get to open and rebuild things, so problem solving approach is never developed. The students are great on paper, but hands on knowledge is missing and students don’t have the courage to join bits and pieces and learn in the process.
Another important change that needs to be implemented is that our system of education should focus more on enabling students to develop right kind of skills, rather than on simply awarding degrees.
Diplomas should be given to students who have acquired a specific skill. Students who have higher skill set should be given degrees. There should be a modular structure where entry is given to vocational education based skills. When a specific skill set is prescribed, then even 12th exams will not be necessary and people with skills will be given lateral entry.
