Is employability problem in India the right question to be answered?

The timeless Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” comes to my mind when I think about this problem. Employability is linked to education systems and those systems in our country existed as a ‘demand and supply’ phenomenon for the industrial markets. Skills were supposed to be matched to jobs; however the focus turned into completion of degrees. The current education system which is supposed to make you employable has a lot of noise and the signal just gets lost somewhere. But, is it really a problem about how the education system is?

Before coming to the solution, the key thing is to identify the problems we have. Many students lack job role related skill sets and critical soft skills. Students are designed to think individualistically and not as a team, thanks to our board exams and other higher exams. Students, who consider competitive exams as personal achievements, get confused as to what to do with their lives when one exam gets over. Herd mentality of scoring higher marks and rote learning prevails in every facet of education. We have a problem of getting ‘degrees’.

The common solution that comes up in everyone’s mind for solving employability problem is to bridge skill gaps in this country. For that, we can increase training capacity and increase funding for training. However, I want to approach employability problem in a different way. The fact is that we are teaching a man to fish to feed himself, but is it fish that he wants for a lifetime?

The true success in solving employability problem ties back to approaching this problem in a bottom – up fashion. Education is a truly personal thing, a one size fits approach for dealing with education doesn’t work. The solution would involve working on bettering two aspects. One, understand the aspirations of a human being and develop individual plans according to that. Second, give him/her a rule book to play life if possible.

Let me explain in some detail the first part. During the formative years of your life, brain starts making connections and associations based on what you are exposed to in life. If it is hardships and poverty, you can either turn out to better your life through hard work and perseverance or be an antisocial. If you are exposed to music, you might just find your passion there. Formative years are very important for any human being and almost always decides what he/she does in future. If you try to club every student in the same class and make them go through the same process and make them pass the same hurdle it will look like this.

It took me some time to understand what the things that really tick me are and what I am passionate about. Was I not intelligent enough to understand these things a little earlier? This is easier said than done. Most of the times, parents decide what their offspring studies. The other angle is about herd mentality that kicks in, making the kid lose focus on one thing which he/she cared about. Do we really need to know advanced thermodynamic reactions and differential calculus to lead life as a person who is in the food or transportation industry? The key here is to identify and nurture skills of a young student, cut them off the noise and focus them on one or two things. The way that is nurtured is also extremely important, cognitive sciences should be used to find out the best ways to teach ( I am no expert here, but for e.g., lecturing is the worst form of teaching according to neuroscientists  - and I found David Helfand’s (Quest University) pedagogical method highly interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J8PcPC7l5U )

The second part of solving this problem involves the rule book that I mentioned. Rule book would be a strict word, but the essence is to have a system of beliefs. Many see religion as the way for it, which is totally fine. It would be good to follow three things – mindfulness, emotional intelligence and long term thinking. Humanity exists as long as the connections between humans exist. To understand that we are all part of the same reality and to realize that we are all connected is what mindfulness is about. To be mindful, is to be aware. If you can instill this in a kid of 10 years age, imagine how powerful the societal transformation would be. Emotional intelligence is the logical next step to being aware. Human brain is wired to connect to people (at least most of them). If we can instill emotional intelligence and the power of relationships in young minds, we can avoid unrests, catastrophes and make them better human beings. The last part is long term thinking. The idea of striving for short term milestones is attractive, but it just makes life a little boring and unfulfilling. If we can dedicate your life to things which are long term, we will stand unshaken during periods of adversity. The greatest stories mankind has heard is of true resilience and grit in times of adversity and the basic input for all that is long term strategic thinking. These 3 things can be imbibed through humanities texts and classical literature. There are lots of lessons to be learnt from the Analects by Confucius, the Prince by Machiavelli and Shakespearean plays. Of-course it will be difficult to read these at a young age, but we can definitely communicate the essence through stories and cartoons of the same or through a gamification process in that age.

All these seem ideal principles; however educators need to commit to influence these changes. So, instead of just being profit minded, they need to fundamentally change the thinking styles. I think it’s upon educators and other stake holders including parents to influence the true meaning of education so that our society prospers itself. Employability problem eradication will be a by-product of these efforts :)