BANGALORE, India—Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.
So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.
India projects an image of a nation churning out hundreds of thousands of students every year who are well educated, a looming threat to the better-paid middle-class workers of the West. Their abilities in math have been cited by President Barack Obama as a reason why the U.S. is facing competitive challenges.
Typical syndrome across the 3rd world, yet some people are courage enough to speak about, not to justify their own awful bitfalls..
Thanks Rashid Shukul for sharing
Rashid Narain Shukul:
ReplyDeleteThe bane of our education system is deeply rooted in our failure to keep pace with latest developments in various academic fields, world over. We still teach from redundant texts. The traditional government sponsored institutions of learning are slowly crumbling into oblivion due to lack of funds and infrastructure. Moreover, Un-regulated privatisation of education in India is another major issue. Further, today, students seek a piece of paper called degree and are largely oblivious of the need to pursue knowledge and benefits of being well educated. Worse still, the schools and colleges are busy chasing profits – it’s just another business! They refuse to provide decent wages to their army of workers. Interestingly, just a decade ago these workers used to be called educators. The result is that we have teachers who take to teaching because they could not manage any other job. There is no passion or calling – just substandard human work force.
There is a new corporate culture which has overtaken the education sector and subverted it into a regular profit centric industry with little or no ethics and moral qualms. The quality of students passing out each year has been steadily deteriorating by the passage of each academic year. These jewels are burgeoning as our new intelligentsia. These newly spawned intellectuals, products of privatised individual consumption and capitalist hegemony, form the capital that will decide the fate of our country – a frightening thought, indeed!
Yet, all is not lost! Despite the all-pervading bleak scenario – there is hope. Once in a while, we do run across a youngster studying with unadulterated thirst for knowledge; a gifted educator teaching with burning passion – a mortal who took to teaching out of ‘calling’; and a business man chasing a selfless vision for better tomorrow decides to setup schools and seats of higher learning. Yes, there still exist a certain percentage of people who realise that all private institutions are always better, efficient, and professionally managed than public institutions is a myth of modern consumer based market. It is time when we all reign in the downslide by contributing our mite before this sign of dwindling hope is lost for ever.
This is not an Indian characteristic, but a global one across the 3rd world.. Symptoms are the same, as well as the results..
ReplyDeleteIn these growing and developing economies, people seek earning living rather than earning appreciation or pride.. Therefore, schooling is only meant for better earnings, not for better understanding..
It is the call of visionaries to empower the search for public culture which businessmen, politicians and statesmen would adhere to.. Despite how the need would drive persons to excel.. it also would drive them to stay within the bottom lines...