New Delhi, in a bid to ensure better career prospects for students, recently launched an ambitious programme, Desh Ke Mentors, for students of the government-run schools. Under the programme, students of classes 9 to 12 will be connected with mentors from various professional and academic backgrounds to help them in their overall growth and personality development by sharing knowledge, skills and expertise. These are the crucial years when students decide on their future career paths. It is more important given the fact that covid-19 pandemic has had a debilitating effect on the education sector.
The schools in Jammu and Kashmir have seen disruptions due to covid-19 as well as during Article 370 revocations. After the advent of the covid-19 vaccine, there was heightened optimism to end the prolonged disruptions. Schools remaining closed is far from ideal in all situations except of course where there is a threat to life to students and teachers. Time has proved that home schooling is all but a poor substitute for professional teaching among the students. The absence of in-person lessons, in classrooms, has had a very bad impact on various fronts.
Everyone wants young people to be educated and those extremely concerned by the prospect of educational inequalities widening are very much justifiable at their own place. Given the schools are largely closed, there is need for innovative thinking. As has been proposed by the Delhi CM, through mentorship program “children will get an elder brother, friend or sister with whom they can share everything”.
Mentoring is vital. But it is a fact that not everyone is fortunate enough to have a support system to guide them. More often than not students from privileged backgrounds enjoy a set of mentors such as educated parents and their extended network, very good schools and their ecosystem, better coaching, and access to career information. These advantages are carried over to their professional lives also. However children from disadvantaged backgrounds do not enjoy these advantages. Often they lack guidance at important junctures. The lack of a mentor limits educational and career prospects, and eventually pushes many students to drop out at an early age. A structured mentoring process can address students’ needs and provide them with a robust knowledge ecosystem that they lack. The J&K government must start thinking on the front and start a similar or other such program to help the students of Jammu and Kashmir get the right guidance at the right time.
