Bridging the knowledge gaps

Fast changing technology specially in digital world has increased knowledge gap substantially in the society. While there is shortage of skilled personnel available in market, there is huge battery of unskilled workforce remaining unemployed causing a threat to the law and order problem, specially in large democracies like America and India.

This has also resulted in increasing inequality in the incomes of the households questioning the method of calculating GDP for the nations. With the theory of marginal propensity to consume, the concentration of income in fewer hands lead to fall in demand and ultimately, creation of jobs. The knowledge gap is also contributing towards the income gap.

There are many attempts both at Government and Non-Government scale to address this issue and reducing the knowledge gap, but we are still far away to see the meaningful results. I have also been a part of one NGO for two-three years involved in interactions with students coming from various schools and backgrounds, specially from economic weaker sections. Some of my experiences are detailed hereunder:

1. There is huge unawareness among the students and their guardians about the need of the society and expectations from them, once they enter the real world to earn a living whether by way of business or job.

2. There is misconception among the students about the medium of instruction being the cause of their failing at hustings. Rather we should concentrate on learning the necessary languages to improve our skillsets.

3. Our education system and evaluation parameters do not give strong weightage to communication and analytical skills. It is the communication and analytical skills, which helps in acquiring further knowledge and skills required in fast changing skill requirements.

Based on my experiences above, I suggest following programs to be taken up:

1. Organizing lecture sessions in rural as well as student groups from economically weak backgrounds in urban areas. It will be better, if the guardians also attend the lecture session. As this will require use of  the local language by learned speakers, it will also strengthen the local language in itself. This is important for sharing the required information to the deprived classes about the skillsets required to further their studies and career. The speakers should preferably come from varied backgrounds like bureaucrats, corporate executives and not necessarily teachers.

2. Organizing Group Discussions among students on various subjects like water conservation, rain water harvesting, waste recycling, sustainable development, preparation for competitive exams, entrepreneurship development etc. etc. This will not just impart the knowledge about the subjects, but also improve the communication skills of students.

3. Organizing essay competitions on various subjects as discussed above. Essay writing improve the language communication skills immensely.

4. Organizing language classes. Learning languages is very important for communication skills. We must learn the language of the people, whom we want to serve. There is huge workforce working as translators in Europe.

I hope this will help us to mitigate the knowledge gap crisis to some extent.