Education system - when will the change come ?

I finished my school 10 years ago ; I changed 5 schools during the 14 yrs of schooling , we always had same kinda classrooms with desks and benches , playgrounds cramped with kids .We had textbooks in which the 'stuff to be learnt' was present , we got new textbooks every year and there was notebooks in which whatever learning happened in class was 'recorded' . Initially we wrote with pencil on notebooks ( with double lines , there was even something with squares , one with 4 lines in a group to improve your 'cursive' writing ) then gradually moved from pencil , eraser , sharpener era to ones with fountain pen , Brill/chelpark ink , ink filler , blotting paper/piece of cloth to counter a spillages etc to better pens , finally in my case it was a Hero pen which contained a flawless nib and u just had to put in the ink bottle and it would drink up necessary fuel :) ... then gradually towards the end started using ball-point/micro tip pens. Then there was that geometry box (isnt tht the name ? ) which contained protractor , divider (which was really a mystery device and was never really used ) and compass and a couple triangluar scale like things .. ofcourse in class we had blackboards with duster and white chalk ... there was teacher who was mostly strict , mostly carried a cane around and did not hesitate to use one if needed . Physical punishments i hear is not present tht much these days. Ofcourse there were homework , exams , midterm tests and other gory stuff which was balanced by games period , sports and other competitions in equal measure !

What i described must have been what most of us had in 'class room' the bare basic stuff ... my older cousins had the same , my parents also had the almost the same stuff ... my Grandmom who was a teacher would also say the same when asked to describe school ... i dont know how different is todays classroom in fancy schools in big cities , but rest of India would mention roughly the same on the topic of classroom and learning ... Oh I almost missed it ...there was something called Computer lab which was added to schools in mid 90s ...

Which brings me to the main point of writing this post , how has education system changed over last few decades ? Isnt the way we learn , the way we ' show' how much we learnt , kinda unchanged over last few decades .. but when you look at the outside world for which these kids are 'prepared' in school , there is a whole lot of difference in the kind of jobs and the way the jobs are performed . Todays workers are lot more smarter , more tech savy , tech oriented than the ones before , thats the way it has been always and that is how it will be. When you go to buy provisions , previously the guy at small store used to write something on piece of paper and total it and tell you the amount . But now we buy stuff from supermarkets where smart looking youngsters use bar code reader and determine product code and price and give you a consolidated printout of the bill and use cash register. This is just an example , any field of work for that matter, computers have found a way to make themselves useful. Cellphones have been accepted by people of all strata and have been put to good use to make their lives better. This is the age we live in , where entire population have started embracing technology to lead a better life.

But shouldn''t our education system also evolve much more in tune with the changing world ? im not saying it is exactly the same , whatever changes have happened are cosmetic ones. Im talking of Radical changes not just in select schools , in the whole system ...when we are living in an age where technology is available for masses , shouldn't the education system wean itself away from the traditional 'textbook - notebook' routine with 'board exams' which has existed for ages now ???

Now im not shooting in dark , i do have a few more thoughts inc the main reason for this post , will put it in part-2 of this post ... coming up sooooon