Dimapur, September 9 (MExN): The vision document for quality education designed by the Mayangnokcha Award Trust is an anthology of core values objectifying applicable education useful to the individual and society. Mayangnokcha Award Trust was established 16 years ago and is today a platform on which the Trust’s core objective for educational excellence continues to be reiterated. This year, the Trust designed a document called the ‘vision document on quality education’ and presented it to the chief minister of Nagaland Neiphiu Rio during the Mokokchung state road show in August 2009. Through the document, and its implementation, the Trust envisaged “some desired changes” in the quality of education in Nagaland.
The document has five core objectives: ‘shaping a shared future for Nagaland through sustainable and holistic development of human resources by imparting core-values and skill-based education; to make Nagaland a preferred destination for regional, national and certification bodies on education and training; to expand the assessment coverage from the current 3 districts to the entire state; to institutionalize the school assessment process; to accredit and build linkages with national and international accreditation.
The award’s trustees say: “With a corpus fund of only Rs 3.00 lakhs, the Trust during the last 16 years (1993-2009) has mobilized and spent an approximate amount of Rs 10.68 lakhs in providing incentives and encouragement to meritorious Naga students.”
The main concern of the trust – as reflected in the vision document – is that “there is not much of heavy or even of medium-sized industries in the state.” Nonetheless, what the document envisages to use is readily available means – both intellectual and educational resources – to try to leap over the economic hurdles. “Nagaland can boast of its many highly-talented youth, who when trained and inspired can leverage the state towards even international standards in many fields. It needs to overcome its many other logistical disadvantages by developing and leveraging the soft skills of its people,” the document says. “This can be done only through quality education with an enabling curriculum to ignite the minds.”
This sentiment may be found in what the President of the United States of America Barak Obama told the US Department of Education: “In an economy where knowledge is the most valuable commodity a person and a country have to offer, the best jobs will go to the best educated – whether they live in the United States of India or China.”
Yet, the mission of the vision, according to the document, is not limited to enabling cultivated resources. This cultivated resources through education, may be used as a leverage to make the state centre of learning for others as well. The document explains. “We also dream to see Nagaland as a preferred destination for regional, national and international students for its high quality educational services. School assessment process would be a key means to achieve quality education and the status of a preferred destination.”
On the development of the education sector, Mayangnokcha Trust observed that the challenges are many; chief amongst them is the role of parents in the education of their children. The role of parents is “unrealized” if not a neglected area, the Trust says. “It is seen that there is an increasing awareness among the parents, even in the most interior areas, for the educational welfare of their children,” the Trust says in its statement. But, it says, due to absence or lack of proper information and education, parents’ participation turn out to be counterproductive.
For this reason, the Trust explains, the role of parents basically turns into an interference rather than intervention. “…the child is not a blank slate’ as fashionably held by many… the child is rather like a book to be studied and not like a plain paper to be written on; that the child is a code to be decoded.
Using the latter concept as the springboard, the Trust says, “we see a great need for designing some effective measures for the parents to adopt in coordination with what the teachers and schools offer for the ‘decoding’ process,” the Trust stated. The Mayangnokcha vision document is one measure, a first step towards the ‘decoding’ objective.
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