India, April 15 -- Mushrooming schools and minimum learning, aggressive students and school violence, unskilled teachers and irrelevant curriculum, vacillating administration and inadequate state-funding, congested classrooms and poor infrastructure, lopsided urban/rural divide in the distribution of schools and teachers, unrealistic parental expectations and irresponsible media, score-oriented education divorced from life skills are all symptoms of the multiple ailments that afflict the public school system in India. Caught up in such a quandary, education in India has come to be a national crisis which is conveniently overlooked by all stakeholders: parents, teachers, students and the community.
Education is indispensable to individual a...