Education is an age old concept. The change that has happened in education relates to the content and extent of education. Today we speak of universalization of education. India was concerned about the education of its citizens because the majority was illiterate. Hence India started with literacy mission and fixed deadlines but the goal has been evasive. Today we also realize that education means more than literacy because education is worth its value according to the relevant knowledge it can impart to contribute for the development of the nation. Education is not meaningful unless it ushers in good quality of life which makes the life of a human being meaningful, complete and worth living with dignity. A valued education transforms a human being into a wise person, able to engage with the realities of one's life and use them to achieve the best quality of life. This is our dream.
Education and language are linked intimately. It is now recognized that the best way to start the pilgrimage of education is to start with the mother tongue which will enable an individual to migrate to multi-language education process. Education has no peak point. It is a chain process that has to be initiated in a child's life and if done well it would continue to develop for years to come.
New Education Group – Foundation for Innovation and Research in Education (NEG-FIRE) is an NGO that aims to promote genuine education to the poorest and to impact it on the masses. In its journey for the last two decades NEG-FIRE has tried several methods and by critical evaluation has been searching for the most appropriate methodology to realize this goal. NEG-FIRE focuses on initiating the education-imparting-process so that the child engages in a process of learning which can lift him/her and provide the capacity to probe into the various spheres of human life. Unfortunately education is only thought of a process of preparing a person to enter into a job market. But once a person is initiated into a proper process of learning, they will be able to go beyond employment and thereby enrich the employer as well as make continuous progress in search of new knowledge. India has a history of wise men because they were able to go beyond the threshold of college education and enter into the process of life-long education.
Before Industrial Revolution, education was restricted to the priestly class in society because they need to be literate in order to read and recite the rituals. The Industrial Revolution engaged both parents leaving the children un-engaged. In order to engage the children, schools were thought of so that they will be kept occupied and become literate because this was a pre-requisite for the children to join the labour force needed for the factories. A good education should not determine the fate of the students to end in factories. Unfortunately this is a narrow view of education. Education should aim at creating a best human capital. Let me end this message with the quotation from Rabindranath Tagore:
Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Chairperson, New Education Group – Foundation for Innovation and Research in Education