Target-oriented education | Sunday Observer

Target-oriented education

29 August, 2021

“Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” – Will Durant

As countries introduce all types of quarantine measures including lock downs and curfews to restrict the spread of Covid-19, more and more people are forced to make drastic changes to their daily routines. New realities of working from home, school children and university students taking classes and examinations from home, salary cuts and unemployment, and lack of physical interactions with other family members, friends, colleagues, and neighbors will require some time to get used to. Adapting to this, “new normal”, while fighting the fear of contracting the virus and the worries about particularly vulnerable family members and friends can be more challenging than what people would have expected.

Mental health linked to physical health

Schoolchildren and university students, especially undergraduates are perhaps, worse off than other segments of the population since they have to face examinations also while struggling to keep up with the new teaching, learning and evaluation methods. The impact of some of these changes on the mental health of people is a very important aspect of the effects of Covid-19.

Even though different cultures around the world may have different perceptions about it, the basic facts about the mental health of people, such as its intimate connection to the physical health, the social influences and the way of thinking have been in existence for thousands of years. Many cultures viewed (some still do) mental illness as a form of religious punishment or demonic possession. Negative attitudes and fear about it, originated due to lack of knowledge, stigmatised individuals suffering from mental illnesses often isolating them as if it was contagious. Even their own family members abandoned them thinking that a mentally ill person can bring a lot of bad luck to the whole family.

Hippocrates, in the 5th century B.C., was a pioneer in treating mentally ill people with techniques not based on religion or superstition. He focused on the chemical imbalances in the brain and social and environmental factors affecting the thought process of the patient. It is disturbing to see how inconsiderate today’s society is towards mentally ill people even after thousands of years of developments in natural and social sciences. What is even more disturbing is the fact that some of the school teachers and university lecturers are also in this group of people who lack empathy towards struggling people, some of whom may be their own students.

Though mental illness can strike anyone at any age, research show that about half of all mental illness begins by the age of 14.

Teenagers and young adults have many changes to deal with such as: rapid changes in the physical and emotional planes, changing schools, making friends, facing examinations, and leaving home and starting university education or a new job.

-In addition to such changes impacting them directly, other issues, especially during the pandemic, such as: having to take care of sick parents or siblings, having to deal with Covid deaths of family members, friends or neighbors, parents’ financial problems, and the fear of death by Covid and the general concern about the suffering of fellow human beings can be contributing factors to one’s mental stress.

Education among death

If the mental stress created by such issues is not recognised and managed properly, it can lead to depression and other illnesses. Studies show that more than 350 million people (of all ages) across the world suffer from depression and suicide is the second leading cause of death within the age group 15–29. A new study led by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveals that during the first 14 months of the pandemic, at least 1.5 million children lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or other caregiver due to Covid-19, worldwide.

The younger generation of the world could be better served and helped if the educators around the world are willing to be educated about these facts and are concerned about the impact of their decisions and actions on children and young adults who come in contact with them. Education has become just a sequence of targets to meet for the service provider (teacher/lecturer/institution) and a sequence of examinations to pass for the student and the whole process is on the assembly line. In Sri Lanka, it starts with the Grade 5 scholarship examinations and then to GCE – O/L and A/L for the most and to Bachelor’s perhaps even to Master’s and to Doctoral degrees to some others.

If one doesn’t complete the pre-requisite before the next program starts, then one will have to wait till the next term or the year to start the next level of certification. Therefore, some service providers as well as some students can only be focused on achieving some of those targets irrespective of what is happening with the rest of the student body or the country for that matter. Currently, Sri Lanka is losing the battle with Covid-19 and the fear of death is in everyone’s minds. Just because we do not see the enemy that doesn’t mean we are safe.

Imagine a group of terrorists going around the country randomly killing people, almost 200 a day according to official reports, and nobody knows in which town, which street, which house at which time they will show up next. Is it fair to expect and in some cases force students to take examinations under such conditions?

Education targets have become so important in Sri Lanka, that there was a rumor a long time ago that the Education Minister at the time ordered to bring the cut-off marks to be selected to the Medical Faculties of the State universities lower than what it should have been according to the overall results of the GCE-A/L examination that year, so that his son or daughter could enter the Medical Faculty and become a doctor. If that was true, what that means is that not only the politician but also the officials, most of whom have been university dons themselves, involved with the procedure have also contributed to such unethical activities, setting a bad precedence.

Hopefully the decision makers in the education sector, at all levels, have the capacity to understand the gravity of the situation the country is in and the stressful conditions the students are in and think carefully before they make decisions about conducting examinations during this period.

Need of empathy and sympathy

Irrespective of the pandemic, of course, no country wants to see such decisions made for the school system or within universities, depending mainly on the benefits that the son or the daughter of the decision maker could harness by that decision. It is better if the officials can be a bit more compassionate and humane in their decision making especially during disasters like these. It is fair to assume that the phrase “student centered” in the “Student Centered teaching and learning” doesn’t mean the decisions are made centered on just one or two students related to the decision maker instead of the whole student body.

When the students get to know that the decisions were targeting one or two specific students and not the whole student body or at least the majority of the student body, then they lose trust in the adult world which collectively is responsible for the outcome.

Decision makers should be able to place human needs and mental and physical health of the students and their families ahead of the routines and targets. If the voice of the younger generation is not taken into consideration in the process of making decisions directly effecting their lives, then they cannot be blamed for repeating the process when they become the decision makers.

There is no better time than this to break that cycle and focus on training the younger generation to not hate the society for the atrocities they had to face due to inconsiderate decisions the adult world made, instead they will learn to empathise with others and to be compassionate towards fellow human beings. That will be much more valuable for the future world than any other target achieved by anyone involved with the current education systems around the world.

The writer has served in the higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fourteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]

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