Whenever we talk about education, we are really discussing the standard of education. The first thing that comes to mind is financial support. To be honest, no one can deny the significance of available funding to support reforms in the education system. The other thing that we need after funding is trained manpower. The purpose of education, apart of providing good job opportunities, is the growth of society with flourishing culture. Implanting any education system from outside, can train the individuals and can provide them good job opportunities, but in terms of social development, it would not make any significant difference.
Any attempt to adopt any foreign education system, without having its roots in our culture and society, can in fact divide the society into fragments. The contrast in the way of thinking in different slots of society that arise due to different education systems within the same society can build up a pool of individuals having confused approaches.
Journalism has always played a key role to bridge the different approaches existing within society. In our case, it has moved a step ahead and educated the people without formal education on different issues.
But this is not the end. We can do far more than this. Since journalism is not a single discipline but in fact a very delicate integration of different disciplines exploiting their applied approach to take up any issue. There is a need however, to generate regional scientific literature keeping in view, the expectation of local education systems.
But unfortunately, we have not yet explored the horizon of journalism in the area of education, particularly in science. We have scientists, but we do not have good science books. We have writers but we do not have good science fictions. We have education experts but we do not have any locally developed education model.
The main reason is we have made the domain of journalism very limited. We have been dealing with journalism as a specialised field but not as an applied field.
The degree in journalism in many other developing countries, comprises of four years and students having a science background or even other subjects are eligible to apply. During four years, science journalism is not introduced as a subject. On the other hand, a science student at many places does not know what else can be done, having done a degree in science as a subject, other than teaching or doing research.
The consequences of this approach is reflected in the youth, but are well aware of communication gadgets, and are fascinated by new technology, but when it comes to biotechnology, most of them find it less rewarding and hence opt for other subjects; a sorry situation.
The other thing that has played a role in creating hindrance towards generating our own literature in science is the policy for promotions of experts associated with this profession, that require experience and/or a number of publications in academic journals with no criteria defining the quality or standard and lacking the efforts to transform the knowledge into content that is comprehensible by our youth.
Writing science literature for the youth is not considered a credit on merit and it is almost same all over the world. Unfortunately, the people involved in writing textbooks are mostly those who are not trained enough for this activity in terms of subject expertise and hence, mainly rely on literature available online and build on it using their communication skills. Whereas actual scientists, who have clear concepts of the subject are seldom involved in publishing at the level of schooling.
Similarly, there is hardly any expert who is involved in writing science fiction for children. We have more of science fantasy then fiction. We do not have any science magazine published on a regular basis. Financers are open to sponsor a media activity but reluctant to invest in science journalism.
The situation is not much different in other developing countries as they have not yet figured out what else can be the pre-requisite for educational reforms other than funding and developing a pool of experts, using the potential of science journalism to generate new ideas yet to be explored.
In fact, our own policies and practises are the main hindrance in striving for excellence, in developing resource personals, having them work at their optimum and encourage them to explore their career in newly emerging science fields like science journalism.
The first thing to do to fix this is to introduce science journalism as a subject from the high school level, up to post–graduate level. We can encourage media houses to launch educational channels for the youth incentivising them to write about their understanding on given topics and build upon stories. Content written by students are better tailored for all who have limited understanding on topic
The policies of promotions for experts needs to be revised with introducing credit for writing science content for youth, get involved in syllabus designing other than their research expertise. Others can use them in stories to give a better understanding and motivation to think in that area.
Science magazines need to be launched. Workshops, short courses etc. can help to build a network of people who can complement their potentials to take up projects to generate science literature including science fiction.
Introducing a section on science in all newspapers can be something, and we can do straight away. Software engineers can be involved to develop games and tutorials using scientific concepts.
The most common complaint of students when they join university is that there is a huge gap between the knowledge they have and the knowledge they are expected to possess in order to be comfortable with the courses we are attending. Some of the scientists who are also faculty members in the university are good as scientists but need to have some training to be good teachers who can convey difficult concepts in simple words. Herein lies the role of science journalism, an expert having science background can help a scientist to prepare reader-friendly content.
Expert exchange programmes need to be initiated with launching joint ventures with advanced countries which in turn would be helpful to develop different working models for effective and meaningful technology-integrated science based communication systems well applicable to other under privileged and developed countries and connect them through bridging them through knowledge flow.