One of what will be an enduring divide, in terms of impact, is that which has fallen through the cracks. So much fuss and bother has been made about loss to businesses, food shortages, and mental health that the often overlooked area of education has been glossed over even further now.
Two years isn’t necessarily a big gap in the wider scope of things, but it will come back to bite us. Prior to the new world of pandemics and senseless armed conflicts, there were worries about education and its quality. The debate had been healthy enough. Investment in basic education or adding the spice of quality education had been the question for a long time. Too many countries focused on the basics thereby widening the gap with countries where education was changing, and had even changed in shape and form.
Genetically, the new learners are more gifted and generously endowed by nature. The trick was to appeal to their instincts of being more hands-on rather than push traditional bookish education. Even specialized fields recognized the changes required at the basic level. While Germany focused on revamped science and technology curriculum, Italy had stuck to the traditional form of education. Economically, Italy is in a mess today. So much so that, with the added misery of high energy costs, some are actually rethinking departing from sanctions against Russia.
It doesn’t have the luxury of looking for alternatives to plug the 40% dependency for energy on Russia. Instability that has seen 40 governments since the Second World War has prevented long-term focus on sustainability. Unlike Germany, that took embarrassing blows to the chin and still uses the pacifist route forced on it to invest in education, technology, and peaceful nuclear options.
The worry lies elsewhere. Negative population growth in the West, especially Europe, has required intake of skilled migrants much to the dismay of nationalists. Spreading like wildfire is nationalism, fast heading towards an almost neo-nazi style resurgence within the public sphere. The latest examples are Sweden where Christian democrats have been eked out of power by a coalesced opposition that is frighteningly driven by neo-nazi trends of thought.
Then again there’s the curious case of Hungary where, despite the trappings of democracy, the process of people’s opinion forming governments has come under question by the European Union. In that respect there’s more than just a shade of similarity with developing countries. That’s where education and the two-year gap begins to pinch. The softening of urge on liberal arts and philosophical dialogue is losing out to technology.
That one can’t exist without the other is becoming a rampant attitude.
Governments falling over to prevent a session jam are using truncated syllabi and exam procedures, thereby further weakening the required thrust on quality education. High school stars are failing miserably to pass entrance examinations at universities and higher education institutions. The quality of which was already under question, meaning standards will erode even further unless strict interventions are made.
The roads to the future are narrowing for minds that seek to broaden their horizons. The previous battle had been to realign basic education with new forms of learning. Added to that has been newer approaches created by technological advancement and sciences. That the notions of nationalism must be duly tempered is just as important an aspect to the learning cycle. Individually tailored nationalism can’t work and won’t work. If that were so, the Saffron movement, strongly influenced by religion, in India and the Nagorno-Karabakh dilemma of a region existing in a country with different nationalism realities wouldn’t be a simmering hotpot of conflict.
A well-structured education system might just find a way out of bridging the two-year gap. Others have a struggle on their hands; not insurmountable but formidable to say the least. There aren’t shortcuts to religious education where gaps just aren’t allowed. Maybe that’s where informative intervention can be sought from. Provided there is the will and acceptance, that is.
Mahmudur Rahman is a writer, columnist, broadcaster, and communications specialist.
