Voltaire had famously said that the body which called itself the Holy Roman Empire “was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” We can probably say something along these lines about schools that describe themselves as inclusive and as offering holistic, future-ready education.
When schools claim that they provide ‘holistic’ education, people presume that their children will be given academic instruction, physical education with opportunities to play sports and some grounding in music, visual and performing arts as well as public speaking. Parents thus look for schools that offer a wide range of co- and extra-curricular activities. But this seemingly complete package doesn’t signify holistic education. A definition of holistic education is the development of social, physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual aspects of an individual. We are yet to devise means by which we can systematically foster and measure the steady development of social and emotional skills. What has been happening is that much of students’ characters and personalities developed in an organic way through the school community. It is the students’ talents and skills rather than their minds that are consciously sought to be trained and honed in school. We are yet to be mindful of the true meaning of holistic learning.
‘Future-ready’ is a trendy, 21st-century expression to reassure parents who worry about their offspring’s career path from the time they are admitted to the pre-primary school. It is not enough for schools to prepare students for the all-important Board examinations. They have to help students with college admissions and career choices. No matter how hard we try to prepare our students for the future, can we honestly say that we are succeeding in doing so? The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable. It is futile to try to teach students skills which may be redundant tomorrow or to insist on imparting defunct knowledge that will turn out to be irrelevant to their lives. Future-ready education is one that will help students adapt to ever-changing circumstances, prepare them for the drastic fallouts of climate change, teach them the importance of maintaining a balanced ecology and help them to be genuine global citizens.
Science and technology prepare students for the future. Just as computer education is a must, the ability to deal with Artificial Intelligence is fast becoming imperative too. Current students will be the first generation who have to cope with machines that can make their own decisions and even create ideas of their own. These students and the following generations will have to learn to get these machines to work for them and not become slaves. This does not mean that chatbots should write their academic essays. Used wisely, ChatGPT can be of enormous help to students in their academic research or in locating a variety of thoughts.
Another buzzword is ‘inclusive’. I doubt that any school is genuinely so, because inclusivity is a far wider term than it is taken to be. Currently, when a school claims that it is inclusive, it means that it admits differently-abled children. However, being inclusive implies that the school also embraces children from different socio-economic backgrounds, communities, cultures and faiths.
Far from being inclusive, in present times, we are busy being exclusive. Our country has always been ridden with caste and class divisions. Till recently, Christians were dominant in the education field and now minorities are at the receiving end. How can we ever be inclusive, in the true sense of the term, if we are not willing to integrate? Despite the admirable social work being done by students, I am yet to see any social interaction between children from different economic backgrounds. In fact, parents take great pride in sending their children to obscenely expensive private schools that are unabashedly exclusive.
Let us hope that we soon have many genuinely inclusive schools delivering holistic and future-ready education. Only then will students be ready for life and be equipped to promote peace and save humanity from self-destruction.
Devi Kar is director, Modern High School for Girls, Calcutta
