See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.
net/publication/335320624
Re-engineering Education in India: The Power of Knowledge and Information
Conference Paper · February 2019
CITATIONS READS
0 157
1 author:
Mahesh G T
Government First Grade College
27 PUBLICATIONS 20 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
All content following this page was uploaded by Mahesh G T on 22 August 2019.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
Re-engineering Education in India: The Power of Knowledge and Information
Dr. Mahesh G T
Librarian
Government First Grade College, Saligrama
e-mail: maheshgt@gmail.com
Mobile No: 9845727385
Introduction
India has shaped as the largest education systems in existence today. However,
despite the astonishing developments in the last two decades, further restructuring are
necessary. We the citizens of India should realise the true importance of education in the
21st century, which shall have a pledge in creating a knowledge-based society through
legislation.
Globalization brings abundant opportunities for India, which the South-Asian country
could turn to its advantage due to its demographic and economic potential. Majority of the
India’s population is of working age, and according to forecasts, by 2020 one quarter of the
world’s work force will be made up by Indians. Employment creation is of prime importance and
challenge to any government, for its success can become the vital factor of fiscal development at
later stages. In the era of Information and knowledge, however, there is only demand for a well-
educated, professional workforce; therefore education is of vital importance. The education
system of our nation strives to adjust to the challenges, but there is no doubt about the need for
transformation. In the past recent years governments have consciously striven to correct the
errors of the old system, to adopt new development, and to build a knowledge-based nation that
privileges creativity and innovation.
Background
Our Indian education system needs improvement at many levels from primary schools to
higher education and research institutions of national excellence. There is a need to improve both
access and excellence at all levels. Indian Universities are falling behind the best in the world
both in terms of human capital and in terms of physical infrastructure.
The National Knowledge Commission has proposals aiming at improving excellence in
both research and teaching, especially in the frontier areas of science and technology. This is the
time to create a second wave of excellence in institution building in the field of education,
research and competence building so that India is better prepared for the 21st Century. The
increasing extent of services in the economy, the pace of technological changes, the advanced
level of information and knowledge, as well as the size of the industrial and social
reorganizations, all give good influence in favor of the knowledge based society. With this broad
task in mind, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was constituted in the year 13th June
2005.
Education as an indispensable activity in the development of nation has seen most
important transformations, from which the new methods and models of the modern educational
system have resulted. The relationship between the individual and culture becomes multifaceted
via education, as the individual gains the capability to make his contribution that would balance
the benefits of his living among other individuals
Compared to the early 1900’s, when the industrial revolution came where the industrial
output was the deciding factor. Now, in the early stages of the 21st century changes are
happening again in the form of Knowledge. Which means that buying of wealth and power is no
longer linked to land ownership, agricultural production, or industrial output? Increasingly more
manual labor is now being performed by machines and robots. Power and wealth has become
linked to the creation and dissemination of Data, information, scientific discovery and
Knowledge. The old saying: “Knowledge is Power”, hasn’t been more valid than today. When
we buy certain amount of material, more than 90% of it is material, while if we buy a copy of
Window 10 from Microsoft, more than 90% of it is information. Knowledge society is a society
where creating, sharing and using knowledge are key factors in the prosperity and well being of
its populace
The way the core curriculum is discussed and debated in this country has very much
changed drastically over the last decade. Government launched a national curriculum that had
been stripped of knowledge content in favour of skills.
Key Challenges for the Indian Education System
Recently there are many talks and debates of building knowledge based society (KBS) in
India. When a society becomes knowledge-based, it faces challenges on a variety of levels. How
and why knowledge is produced and shared, where it is produced, how knowledge spillovers
affect new knowledge creation and parameters of use, changes in strategic decision making in
knowledge based environments and how public policy can and should adapt all are crucial
issues. The challenges for society are formidable and will require substantial information,
knowledge, wisdom, and above all collaboration between the scientific community, policy
makers and the public. This is reflected in an overwhelming focus on strengthening the telecom
infrastructure and promoting the use of ICTs in all sectors. The government of India has made
five promises to the people: freedom from hunger, development of social structure, development
of physical infrastructure, a national water policy and the fulfilment of an information
technology mission.
The Indian government is concerned about the creation of social opportunities but
opinions differ as to whether these should result from the application of political will or of the
trickle down benefits of the ICT paradigm. A few challenges in India in some areas are as
follows:
74% of the Indian population is literate.
About 10% of the population that goes to school managed to graduate and only about
25% of those who enrol manage to make it to high school and achieve a place in the
higher education system.
About 70% of schools are managed by the government. Private schools are expensive and
out of reach of the poor.
According to the latest edition of the All India Higher Education Survey (AIHES) results
the Total enrolment in higher education has been estimated to be 35.7 million, and country’s
Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in Higher education in India is 25.8%, which is calculated for 18-
23 years of age group.
Infrastructure facilities at schools across rural areas and in slums give out very poor
quality of education. If we consider the new educational challenges, than the new system of
education needs to be an open one, conceived to ensure the equal training opportunity to all the
members of society, so that the able and high-performing may have access to study in order to
get a chance at social ascension, regardless of their origin, income and previous background.
Learning must be a creative process, developing the capacity to solve problems.
Role of Knowledge Based Education
Within the context of above said challenges in knowledge-based educational systems, the
key concept is that information and procedures are represented in the same information structure.
These structures can search for each other in flexible and, consequently, very healthy ways.
In the recent years Research and development in knowledge-based educational systems shows
potential and seems promising in the coming future, not only for helping students learn how to
perform complex tasks, but also for explicitly expressing how students learn to learn. Therefore,
would it not be wise to ascertain a scientific legacy for the development of effective knowledge-
based educational systems which is informed by the research studies of intellect and meaning,
language and thought, rationale and absurdity?
On a global level, education is regarded as an experience, one of those activities that can
favour communication through its very specific functions, as well as establishing close
communication links between various countries, geographic areas and across various cultures.
Any Education system should provide a collection of constructive facts needed for navigating the
world of competitive work. A set of flexible skills to deal with change in a competent future is
very much needed. There is ongoing debate among academicians, should education be about
getting students to know more facts or should it be about encouraging them to solve problems?
Knowledge or Skills?
I firmly believe that learners should construct their own significance and discover new
knowledge by responsibility. Generally it is commonly known that direct instruction is the most
effective medium of transmitting knowledge. So where does that exist inquiry based teaching,
discovery learning, and problem solving? Are they simply superfluous to academic
requirements?
Let us explore the nucleus of what is knowledge and skill, can they go hand in hand.
Knowledge: practical understanding and a familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation
And Skills: ability to do something good, contexts to develop.
We cannot demonstrate skill unless we know the context and content. So knowledge and
skills are inseparable. You can't have one without the other.Thus we have responsibility to teach
content in a way that also teaches skills, character and competencies needed to make our children
indispensable in a changing future.
We have a responsibility to design learning experiences which focus on acquiring
knowledge and then the skill of applying this new knowledge in innovative and fascinating
ways. And in this context this article offers a response from the particular perspective of the
education system.
At present knowledge tends to grow at an exponential rate in the world. In order to create
a world class knowledge society, every one of us has to be knowledge worker for making India a
knowledge super power.
According to Alvin Toffler (1995) “we are living a moment in which the whole power
structure that kept the world together is falling apart and a new power structure is being born,
affecting the human society on every level, and this power structure is knowledge”. Thus, the
developed countries of the world will rapidly evolve on the coordinates of a so-called knowledge
based society, and the new direction of society will be towards knowledge and learning. Given
this context, education stands as the basis for a society focused at the future, and knowledge
becomes the key component of socio-economic growth.
We all want students to emerge from education as curious, creative citizens with the
ability to analyse the world around them and contribute to our society. But how do we get there?
This note argues that a knowledge-based curriculum is best for producing well-educated, creative
people who can thrive in the 21st century, and is also a good way of keeping students interested
and engaged. In this context primary national curriculum should place less emphasis on subject
areas and a greater emphasis on so-called areas of learning and development, personal, social and
emotional development,communication, language and literacy, problem solving, reasoning and
numeracy. Core content is described as activities and skills, rather than detailed subject-based
content.
By a knowledge-based curriculum we mean National curriculum should have these cross-
curricula themes, such as growth as an individual, cultural identity and internationalism, media,
skills and communication, participatory citizenship and entrepreneurship, responsibility for the
environment, well-being and a sustainable future.
The need for a knowledge-based curriculum is not obvious, because it goes against much
of our experience as parents of pre-school children. But the subjects in school are very different
from early developmental skills of movement and language.
Formal education requires a much more premeditated, knowledge based curriculum than
early development for two reasons. First, it is not innate. The alphabet and written language is a
recent human invention. Second, the subjects taught in formal education are cumulative. Most
subjects rest on two cores, which are reading, writing, and numeracy. Without them, you cannot
learn anything else. And within each subject, new ideas rest on the understanding of earlier ones.
The Cognitive Science Behind Knowledge
In recent decades, advances in our understanding of the human brain have confirmed the
need for a knowledge-based curriculum for two reasons:
1. Knowledge frees up your brain’s capacity for thinking: Cognitive scientists have found
that our brain works at different speeds, depending on whether we have learned something
already, or whether we are relying on “working memory”. Working memory is new information
you can keep in your head. It is very limited, you can hold between three and seven pieces of
new information and it is tiring keeping things in your working memory.
We learn new things by connecting them to old things: The way in which the brain stores
new information and makes inferences and discoveries, is by connecting to existing stored
knowledge. You cannot have skills without knowledge, because you cannot evaluate something
you do not know anything about.
Teaching a Knowledge-Based Curriculum
It is not only the content that matters but how you teach it. With high quality instruction:
What students are taught should be explicitly linked to what they already know. You
cannot teach multiplication if students do not understand numbers. You cannot teach evolution if
students do not know what a species is.
This is what is important in schools, and hence is our continued focus for development
over the next few years. Everything is compliant to curricular questions. So pedagogy,
assessment, tracking and qualifications must lead on from us developing further our
understanding of what makes a pupil knowledgeable, and ensuring we get as close to that
understanding as possible.
A knowledge-based curriculum is about harnessing the power of cognitive science,
identifying each marginal gain and acting upon it; having the humility to keep refining schemes
of work, long term plans and generating better assessments.
I am clear that the arts are a vital component of every pupil’s education. Arts and culture are part
of the fabric of our society and we should firmly believe that every child should be taught a high-
quality arts curriculum.
And cultural literacy is a vital goal of a knowledge-rich curriculum. We want children to
leave our school with the confidence that comes from possessing a store of essential knowledge
and the skills to use it. We believe that independence of mind, not compliance with socio-
economic expectations, is the goal of a good education. We believe the main focus of our
curriculum should be on that common body of knowledge that, until recently, all schools were
expected to teach.
This is the background knowledge taken for granted by writers who address the
intellectually engaged common man, the shared frames of reference for public discourse in
modern liberal democracies. Sometimes referred to as “intellectual capital”, at other times as
“cultural literacy”, this storehouse of knowledge will enable all our learners to grow to their
potential. Transferning this knowledge, as well as the ability to use it wisely, is what we mean by
a classical liberal education.
The implementation of a core-academic curriculum currently occupies less bandwidth in
our national conversation, but it is no less important. And the deep subject knowledge of teachers
is vital to the successful delivery of the curriculum,
It is a simple aim, but realising this ambition requires and will require great effort and our
continued joint endeavour. I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who are here and
everyone who contributes each and every day to this educational movement. Together, we are
changing this country’s education system for the better.
References
1. BASU, Deepankar – DAS, Debarshi: A Sad Tale of Higher Education Reform in India.
In: The Wire, 06 July, 2015 http://thewire.in/2015/07/06/a-sad-tale-of-higher-education-
reform-in-india-5664/
2. BLACKWELL, Fritz: India: a Global Studies Handbook. ABC-Clio Inc., 2004.
3. Budget and Education. Reforming Education http://www.reformingeducation.in/
4. CHAKRAVARTHI, Sriya: Future of Learning: Educational Reforms in India via
Technology. In: The Huffington Post, August 30,
2014 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sriya-chakravarti/future-of-learning-
educat_b_5539554.html
5. CHOPRA, Ritika: Budget 2016: Highly education likely to graduate with distinction. In:
The Indian Express, March 1, 2016 http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-
india/budget-2016-higher-education-likely-to-graduate-with-distinction/
6. CHOUDAHA, Rahul: Latest Statistics on Indian Higher
Education. http://www.dreducation.com/2012/06/latest-statistics-indian-higher.html
7. DURAIAPPAH, Anantha Kumar: Government’s New Education Policy will transform
India. DailyO, 22 December 2015 http://www.dailyo.in/politics/new-education-policy-
mhrd-unesco-mgiep-higher-education-digital-india-womens-studies/story/1/8076.html
8. FOX, Sandra J.: The Need for Indian Education
Reform. http://www2.nau.edu/~jar/HOE/HOE2.pdf
9. Govt launches Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan for bouldering Higher Education.
news.biharprabha.com, October 6, 2013 http://news.biharprabha.com/2013/10/govt-
launches-rashtriya-uchchatar-shiksha-abhiyan-for-bouldering-higher-education/
10. India moving forward with education reforms. ICEF Monitor, 23 April
2013 http://monitor.icef.com/2013/04/india-moving-forward-with-education-reforms/
11. Institutions of National Importance http://mhrd.gov.in/institutions-national-importance
12. JAIN, Mayank: Everything you need to know about the big education reform in India.
Scroll.in, May 28, 2015 http://scroll.in/article/729874/everything-you-need-to-know-
about-the-next-big-education-reform-in-india
View publication stats
