Education: creativity is missing, (Courtesy : The Hindu)

Given the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest in this competitive world of marks and examination, social status and financial stability, the process of meaning making, action and reflection, the development of critical consciousness, or the right to choose a vocation rather than a profession gets totally lost. Thus as Krishna Kumar, Director NCERT, says: "There is a ‘sense of hollowness’, which a lot of young people today find in our institutional life. They find that nobody cares for them, the learning game is essentially a marks-examination game and the success game is essentially a game which is being played to eliminate a lot of people from the race. Thus, students do not associate purposiveness and integrity to education." There is need for a paradigmatic shift from the ‘banking or depository’ form of education where students are ‘passive containers or recipients’ to more participatory or dialogical ways.

It is important that we recognise the learner as a ‘resource’ and not just a ‘recipient’ of information so that we do not annul the process of creativity and critical consciousness that play an important role in giving meaning to human relationships and, consequently, to education itself.