In our culture, education is not just about literacy, skill, or employment; it has been a system to transform a child who enters an institute with nothing in him/her into a moral, valued, and dignified human who could contribute to the betterment of the society. Since ancient times the educational institutes had been considered as temples and the teachers (Guru in Bharatiya culture) as nothing less than the God. In Indian philosophy, writers like Kabira have considered a guru (teacher) to be worshipped before Govind (God), as he is the one who enshrined us with wisdom to understand the God.
The evolution of any society, or even the formation of a civilized society, is largely based upon the importance of the education in that society. Hence, all of the major philosophers or thinkers of all the streams have emphasized the significance of education in any society. Plato, in his philosophy, viewed education as the cornerstone of an ideal state, essential for shaping virtuous citizens, nurturing the soul, and cultivating philosopher-kings. He believed education should be state-controlled, focusing on moral, physical, and intellectual development to achieve justice and align individuals with the “good.” Education is the tool through which we shape the minds of our future generations, so simply put, we curate our tomorrow with education.
However, human civilization and the societies of the world have evolved much since ancient times. In the modern era, we can’t say that the role of education has become any less; nevertheless, its form and medium have been changed. Akin to all the major sectors, education as well has been largely shaped by the capitalism of today’s world. Now, as the majority of educational institutions are privately owned, the obligation to provide quality education to the society has been divided among different stakeholders. So, the state is not the only responsible body for the kind of education that has been provided to the society. Nevertheless, the system of education is still created by the state, and the state also runs educational institutions at all the levels. But its form and method are majorly market-controlled. One thing to make clear is that in this discussion our focus is on school education and its kind, not on higher educational institutes, as they build upon a foundation, and here our concern is more on that foundation.
Privately owned educational institutes have brought a revolution in the society in both good and bad terms. It has hugely boosted the educational infrastructure, the quality of classrooms, and the competitiveness among teachers. Impliedly, it has uplifted the overall bar for the standard of the education. But as we know that everything comes with both pros and cons, so do these privately-owned, market-driven, and capitalism-based educational institutes. Indeed, it improved the standard of the education, but very soon the focus of these institutes started shifting from imparting education to making profit. This is the very fundamental nature of any commercial setup, but the integration of this setup in education has not gone well for the morality and values of education. It may have improved the quality of study of any discipline but at the cost of diminishing the virtue of education. Due to it, the meaning of education has shifted merely to exams, grades, and ranks from intellectual depth, human values, and life learnings. The character of competition has taken over the cooperation; everyone is in competition with everyone. Institutes are competing with each other, as are the students, and in that competition, we have lost our very purpose of education. Here, I’m not trying to philosophize the matter and also not undermining the benefits of this competition, but my concern is only for the cost that we paid for those benefits.
As globalization has set its foot in the world, multinational corporations (MNCs) have created a huge employment demand for trained and skilful individuals. This also led to the surge for those institutes that train the students and make them employable for those MNCs. Hence, everyone wanted to get into the best possible institute, because the better your institute is, the more chance you have to get into a decent company at a decent pay scale. Now it flooded the number of aspirants for the exams that will get them into the topmost institutes of the nation; it created a new industry in itself, the exam preparation coaching industry. These institutes charge lakhs to help the preparation of students for the exam that will get them into those institutes, which will train them to be employable. But the story doesn’t even stop here; now the number of such coaching institutes has also increased in the hindsight of the profit-making industry. These institutes also started competing ruthlessly, reflecting the very trait of capitalism. The problem with capitalism in education is not about the competition; it is that it changes the student-teacher relation to consumer-producer dynamics and transforms a sacrosanct and dignified institution into a transactional commercial one, which apparently leads to the deteriorating virtuous spirit of the education.
Another major development in education occurred in the last decade when the internet and technology led to a very new phenomenon called EdTech (education technology). Earlier, when the big players used to charge heavily for their coaching, several new players came forth with the online education, where they claimed to provide better guidance at a nominal or relatively lower cost. Society reacted in a very optimistic manner to this development, and very soon this led to a huge edtech industry and culture. But as we already discussed, the nature of capitalism is that it creates a ruthless and blind competition among the ever-increasing number of players; the same happened here as well. It obviously made many impossible tasks possible, like making quality guidance regarding any major examination accessible to the remotest places of society. There must be appreciation for this sector for creating such an impact, but again, the cost is something that is concerning.
As this culture of online education peaked, it blurred the line between an educator and an actor, comedian, or social media influencer. To increase their viewership so that they could beat their fellow competitors, teachers started lowering their standard of behaviour. They started behaving more like a social media influencer who dances on reels or does comedy than like a serious educator who caters to the minds of the future generations. And the interesting thing is there is nothing wrong with them, as they have to do it if they want to stay in the competition, as students have turned into customers, and they will definitely like something that is more entertaining to them than something serious or perhaps boring. This phenomenon brought social media glamour into education, where it is more about getting high viewership, trending over reels, and getting engagement than thoughtful deep discussions and virtuous education.
The schools have also become participants in this culture; every school has its own social media page, where they post content that is trending. They compel students to get involved in such activities, who also enjoy this thing, as they are already more than influenced by it. Thus, the gurus (educators), who used to be the guiding light of the society, seem lost in the light of glamour. All this to compete better in a blind and brutal race, and in this race the very motive of the education was lost long ago.
— Saurabh Srivastava