“One nation One education” A backward move by the union government in the age of AI

One nation, One election has become the old policy of the Union government, the new policy is One nation, One education. The CBSE Board has expressed its strong opposition to the new policy of the union government in the Supreme Court. Tamil Nadu, starting from the earlier times opined that education should be a matter of concern of the state and should be transferred to the State List.

Two educationists share their opinion about the effects of One nation, One education policy; its upside and downside etc.

Educationist Nedunchezhian's opinion:

The One nation, One education policy of the union government is an impractical policy. Politics should not be conflated with education which are 2 different domains. Inhabitants of India speak a number of languages, making India a multilingual country. Different states have different language subjects apart from English. For example, in Tamil Nadu one of the language subjects is Tamil which is not a common language subject in Kerala.

Every language has its own specialty, uniqueness and literary resource of its own. If one language is made as a common subject in a multilingual country, the richness of other languages will be lost over time. For example, Tamil and Bengali languages have more literature compared to Hindi language.

If a language is made universal in all states, then a child in a particular state will be forced to learn that language which is an alien language to that child. The ramification of this, results in affecting the cognitive development of children who are the future of India. The scientific approach to development is paving ways for children to learn from the surrounding environment and known language.

A child residing in Mylapore should learn about Mylapore in detail and about the state and environment where the child is growing up. It does no good for the child to learn in detail about an area in Bihar. Globally, education has taken many steps forward and foreign curriculum has been updated to include AI (Artificial Intelligence). In such a time period, India should not move backwards by sticking to policies such as one nation, one language and one nation, one education etc.

In 1974, Malcom Adiseshiah said that a single policy should not be introduced in India owing to its cultural and linguistic diversity. In India there is unity in diversity which should not be disrupted for political gain.

Global countries are contemplating on efficient utilisation of human resources for progress and development, in such a time period India should not contemplate on wasting human resources. The need of the hour is a vision for population growth. As evident from various sources, India's population growth is still continuing which should be a concern for India but the global countries are concerned about it.

The global countries believe in economic growth by providing good education for individuals. The theory behind it is, an individual's education will result in personal income generation which in turn will contribute to the economy's growth. In India, education of an individual is tampered with for political gain. It will make more sense if education is separated from vote politics. Like the Supreme Court, the education and health sector should function independent from politics.

Educationist Jayaprakash Gandhi's opinions:

The Union government's one nation, one education policy is opposed even by the CBSE board. The reason being, prevalence of diversity in the states of India. Diversity lies in environment, politics, land area, culture, capacity of students, poverty level, higher education enrolment ratio etc. All these diverse factors should be taken into account before fixing the curriculum which is not possible in the union government's one nation one education policy.

Equity is more important than equality in education. Moreover, the implementation of a uniform curriculum is extremely difficult in a diverse country like India. Realising this fact only, political forefathers opted for separate education departments in each state. Now also, more support should be given to state-wise education. Apart from this, education should be transferred to the state list which will tremendously raise the standard of education which in turn will brighten the future of students.