Introduction
Education is universally accepted as the 'ray of hope' for everyone, particularly for those forced to remain in the 'back rows' for generations in the social, economic, cultural context. The debilitating impact of several such discriminations has been acknowledged and numerous initiatives have been launched to ensure human dignity to one and all, irrespective of any diversity of caste, colour, race, region, or religion. Education for all is the most potent strategy to overcome the clouds of ignorance, superstition, and inhuman discrimination that have engulfed the lives of millions for ages. The decade of the 20th century gave great impetus to the global efforts to attain the goal of universal elementary education. Although the target is yet to be achieved, global literacy is now above 84 per cent, which is very promising. Education policies have already moved far ahead from offering only literacy and numeracy to ensuring good quality education integrated with skill acquisition, and along with that promise, comprehensive growth and personality development for every individual.
Education is the fundamental human right of everyone without any discrimination due to any social, cultural, religious, economic, and racial diversity. In a fast-changing world, every individual deserves multi-faceted development of all of the five domains of human personality: physical, intellectual, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. These are the major contributors in determining the objectives of education in terms of acquiring knowledge, skill, balance, vision, and identity. Human understanding of the forces of nature has enhanced manifold during the last ten to twelve decades, and it is indeed intriguing that human beings have self-inflicted disastrous results on humanity, leading to serious concerns on the very existence of Planet Earth and life on it! Human existence today confronts conflict, tension, hatred, distrust, violence, and war all around.
After WWII, especially after the annihilation of the atom bombs, concerted efforts were made to create global platforms such as the UN and UNESCO to encourage dialogue and deliberations to banish wars and violence, hunger and poverty forever, from the face of earth. But ironically, the World Wars did not put an end to wars and skirmishes around the world. Therefore, the goal, yet unreached, appears far more elusive at this juncture than it did some eight decades ago. Practically every country is facing crises of the ideology of progress, economic crisis, and to a great extent, some sort of moral crisis. There could be many such crises at diverse national levels. Significant demographic changes in several countries have resulted in serious social, cultural, linguistic, and religious conflicts. As things are becoming more and more complex, education policies are being examined very seriously by practically every nation.
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