Strictly speaking, the education policy in force today was adopted in 1986. That it has not been implemented honestly and faithfully will become clear in the course of the lecture. Also, as is much too evident, there are certain obvious gaps in it. Three of them may be described as follows:
- Inattention to secondary education. The best definition of education is that it consists of three parts. (a) Knowledge (b) Skills and (c) Insight. While insight comes much later in life, both knowledge and skills are acquired as one goes along. Since, as a nation, we look down upon working with our hands, vocationalisation has not been given the importance that it deserved. No wonder there is a lot of de-emphasis on vocational education Parallel to it is a serious neglect of secondary education. This in turn has had an impact upon higher education.
- The University Education Commission which reported in 1949 observed that, if it had to make one recommendation, it would be to attempt to modify the system of examinations. To what extent this recommendation, reiterated by the 1986 Policy, has been actually put into effect calls for some discussion.
- A criminal neglect of distance education. That the country is faced with widespread lack of skills and there are consequent problems, we should have paid more attention to promoting distance education at different levels. Details regarding this neglect will be gone into in the course of the lecture.
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