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Indian Education System is creating a dumb generation: Tushar Gandhi

Anees Kutty of Evergreen Education Foundation speaking at Hotel Conrad in Pune
Anees Kutty of Evergreen Education Foundation speaking at Hotel Conrad in Pune

A large number of academicians participated in the meet intiated by Anees Kutty of Ever Green Foundation

PUNE: The great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and acclaimed author Tushar Gandhi on Sunday launched a scathing attack on the education system in the country and said that it was creating the dumbest generation in the history of the nation. Painting an alarming picture about the downward slide in education,  he said,  “  We are trying to turn students into robots who are regimented in their thinking. Do we really  need that?” Tushar Gandhi questioned while addressing a mammoth gathering of  over 150 educationists  from all over country during the  National Edu-StartUp Conference 2016 organized by educationist  Anees Kutty of Evergreen Education Foundation at Hotel Conrad in Pune on Sunday.

Gandhi who was the keynote speaker further lambasted  higher ( university ) education in the country terming it as commodified. “ Attempts are being made for complete centralization of education and it should not be done .

Education has to be customised according to the needs of the people in a truly democractic way as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi. It must be liberating and not aimed at making slaves ,” he said.

Gandhi further added  “ The education system is controlled by insensitive bureaucrats and illiterate politicians who have no concern for human values and ethics. Hence, the education being imparted under their supervision has not only dumbed the old and new generation but has become a factory of producing slaves looking out for jobs in the market ,” he added.

Taking a dig at the engineers, Gandhi said that the time has come for  promoting liberal arts as an important area of education. “ Liberal Arts and Humanities provides a solid base for relearning and becoming rationalist thinking beings. An engineer is required to be thinking for the society and not a factory slave  ,” he suggested.

Evergreen Education Foundation President Anees Kutty outlined the core agenda of the conference and said that the conference was at creating a uniform integrated curriculum from Kashmir to Kanniyakumari based on the cardinal principles of Creativity and Experiential Learning to the core Academic Curriculum.

He further said “ Our aim is to revolutionize education in India by providing worthwhile informative sessions for educators, educationists and students attending the conference and more importantly following it up with Practical methods. The conference also hopes to promote those start-ups that are completely and fully focused on improving the education sector through innovation ,” he added. The utcome of the conference will be reduced into a handbook and sent to HRD Ministry.

Amongst the other distinguished speakers were Vishwas Mahajan,Manjiri Desai, S G Suryah, Allan Das, Kirthi Jaykumar and Akash Chandran. Former Minister Shashi Tharoor addressed the gatheing via webinar.

Evergreen Education Foundation was instituted in the year 1997 under the aegis of Mr. P Mohammed Kutty whose vision was to provide young students from the minority and backward communities’ quality education. For this his eldest son Anees Kutty, a Professor of Mathematics began to work with him. By then Mr. Anees Kutty had established himself as a Math wizard in Pune and was coaching students for the National Defence Academy, India’s most prestigious academy for Defence Coaching in Pune.

It was at this point that both father and son decided that it was time to “Reach the Unreached” sections of society. It was in pursuance of this dream that both Father and son decided to work for the community and for the underprivileged sections of society. In furtherance to this they instituted a small school in Wagholi area in Pune for Muslim students. They work for orphans and students. The duo has since helped hundreds of students from the backward communities by providing them access to quality education and coaching.

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