Introduction:
“Education is the manifestation of perfection already present in man”, these wonderful words by the great Swami Vivekananda quite encapsulates the need for education in everybody’s life.
It makes one’s birth as a human being complete. It makes living dignified, makes one wise in worldly matters and keeps one away from evil.
Thus, education should not be seen as an option, but it should be cultivated as reality.
Adult Education- Need of the hour:
A lot of people, due to economic or social causes, do not have access to education. This is particularly true in India where centuries of societal oppression created a rigid filament between the upper and lower castes. The lower castes did not have the financial or social means to be educated. Consequently, as the outcome to this detestable tradition, India has the largest number of illiterate people in the world. Adult education thus, must be incorporated in every government’s agenda. Educating the adults will create responsible and informed citizens which will benefit both the economy, by mass skilled participation, and the society by reducing the incidence of crimes. There should be no gender discrimination against women who want to be educated. In fact, women should be educated first because it’s the mother who is the child’s first teacher. Educating adults will ensure their children don’t remain uneducated.
Initiatives taken:
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Our government has fortunately realized the plight of harboring a gigantic illiterate populace and therefore has come up with numerous plans to educate adults. The pioneer programme is the National Adult Education Programme. It generally considers its base to be the rural population where the incidence of illiteracy is much more common. The National Literacy Mission has also succeeded greatly in imparting education to stratified sections of the society, especially Dalits and poor women. Non Government Organizations specifically provide education to adults in villages, slums in cities and the labour force. The private sector also has come up with such initiatives. There are programmes in which school and college students teach unprivileged adults in villages as part of social work credits. For people who had to discontinue education owing to various causes there is the N.I.O.S. – the umbrella organization of open schools.
Conclusion:
It is one of man’s fundamental rights to be educated. We, the educated people should utilize our learning towards it as adult education will set the wheels of development and social uplifting in poor and downtrodden families in motion.