| learningnet-india.org The complete educational resource |
 |
| Home | |
| What's New | |
| Profiles | |
| Activities | |
| Announcements | |
| Publications | |
| Articles | |
| Resources | |
|
|
|
Contents
<< Back | Next >>
The Politics of Education
By K Ramakrishnan
The following article is a slightly modified version of Ramakrishnan’s Presidential Address at the Indian Academy of Social Sciences, XXI Social Science Congress (1998): (Parallel Sessions on Education). Prof. Ramakrishnan has been the Director of the School of Management, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. He has also been a member of the Syndicate of Bharathiar University. Prior to his entry into the academe, Ramakrishnan has worked in the sales, marketing and finance areas of Esso Eastern Inc., for a little more than five years. He has been a consultant to the private as well as public sector enterprises and to international agencies. His research interests are largely in the area of management of public systems, particularly in the education sector. Prof. Ramakrishnan, who had his engineering education at the College of Engineering, Guindy, has had management education at IIM, Ahmedabad as well as at the University of Hawaii, Columbia University, University of Minnesota and Pennsylvania State University.
The Politics of Education
There is no need to point out the potential of education as an empowering mechanism, and that now education has been accepted as the fundamental right of children up to 14 years. But have we, in these fifty years since India became independent, really exploited the potential of education or ensured that right to all the children? The answer to the first question may be a qualified ‘Yes’ and to the second a resounding ‘No’.
Unfortunately, the qualified ‘Yes’ is no reason to be even mildly happy. For we have utilized education as an empowering agent of the more dominant sections of society to keep the poor and disadvantaged always oppressed. One might almost claim that India today is what it is on account of our failure on the education front. If we had a sound education policy and met the promises made in the Constitution, chances are that people would not have been taken for a ride through caste and communal politics; they would have also chosen a different path for development. If you think it is a tall claim, so be it; but not a claim taller than that of the present-day economic reformers who are on a liberalizing, privatizing and globalizing spree.
A recent survey by the Unicef and GoI indicates that there are approximately 1.36 crore working children in India. 40000 live on the streets of Chennai city alone. If you think that poverty is the major reason for these children being out of school and working or eking out a living by picking rags, begging or stealing, I must warn you that your thinking is the result of your tendency to look for easy escape routes to wriggle out of problem situations, without attempting to solve them.
You will trace their poverty to their parents’ laziness; their lack of enterprise; father’s drunkenness; and of course their lack of education and a sense of misplaced priorities! You will come to the conclusion that in the long run overall economic development is the solution to the children getting into schools and staying there till they successfully complete their education. As somebody pointed out, in the long run we are all dead! For a change we ought to be myopic; what should we do in the here and now to ensure children (and anybody else who missed earlier opportunities) get quality education which is recognized by society and which enables them to earn a living with dignity? That is the question to which I would like to share an answer with you. I put forth some logical arguments for my vision; if they are flawed, let us discuss them so that the vision becomes clearer and a mission is born.
What is wrong with our education?
I need not dwell on this theme too long. Numerous commissions and committees have time and again reported on what is wrong in our education system. The most recent fashionable trend is for committees to work on reducing the “burden of curriculum”—in most cases, just chopping off a few lessons in textbooks!
The real hidden agenda of education seems to be to stream people right from childhood into the categories of toilers and parasites. The curriculum right from the pre-school stage is designed to condition a minuscule minority to accept theory through rote learning (a la Vedic learning?), eulogize white collar, particularly ‘managerial’ work and look down upon skills and crafts as ‘non-intellectual’ occupations. Some lucky artists (and cricketers?) who form a minuscule proportion of the population are of course exceptions!
Children who cannot stand such slavery in the early years drop out at various stages of the education pyramid. Unfortunately, they are rewarded only with slavery to those who had compromised in the early years to stay in schools and colleges to become Government administrators and business executives. Till recently some artful politicians, despite their lack of education, managed to get into the group who enslave others; but it is becoming more difficult now; hence politicians and bureaucrats have started going after a PhD degree.
Of those who put up with the formal education, not so much out of compulsion, but because they were better endowed than many others, with a capacity to absorb a lot of learning, many end up being co-opted by the globalization process. They migrate to the West or work for transnational companies which are out to suck the third world as much as possible, whether it is by dumping inconsequential products such as soft drinks and chewing gum or by the sophisticated manipulation of financial markets.
The conglomerate of these parasitic groups (some of us cannot deny our membership in them) makes the policy (education policy included) decisions governing the society. What else can we expect but a set of policies which will ensure continued dominance for them and their descendants? So, what is the remedy? The first step is to acknowledge the existence of such a situation and to commit ourselves to fight against it. Those who are willing to so commit themselves may be more open to my subsequent arguments and possible prescriptions to bring about a change.
Education for Life
I challenged earlier the notion that poverty is the major reason for children being taken out of school by their parents and put to work. A study conducted by me a decade back – but still seems not out of date - indicates that nearly 70% of the children who dropped out of schools had done so not on account of their parents’ desire for them to be gainfully employed but for other reasons, all of which are in one way or another related to the schooling process. (These are) children feeling incapable of coping with studies, children afraid of being bullied by teachers or older children, children unable to get into a school in the middle of a school year in a new location to which parents have migrated on account of work, these were the majority. I have found that interesting pedagogy and affectionate teachers make children from poorer neighborhoods also perform better.
Even among those parents who pulled their children out of school for employment, the dominant perception leading to their decision to pull their children out of school was that the schooling does not give any income-earning skill training to the children.
Most of the drop-out children who were working, largely for very low wages, or as a household help, surprised us by indicating that they enjoyed work more then going to school. If this is the case with children of the primary stage age, one can imagine how older children, who probably do more meaningful work and get paid better, will look at the choice between school and work. Do we have a message here? I firmly think so. The learning mode when a young person is apprenticed to learn a skill or craft is very different from the learning mode in the school. Lot of observation of the skill being practiced and some opportunity to practice the skill is inherent in the apprentice mode. This aspect is something which should be seriously considered.
As Mahatma Gandhi envisaged in his Nai Thaleem (later christened as Basic Education), Education must be centered on learning vocational skill of some kind. Depending on the aptitude of the child and depending on the environment of the community in which the child is educated, the choice of the vocations may vary. In most locations (even in some urban areas) some training in agro-oriented skills such as understanding the nature of the soil, tending it for appropriate crops and learning the rudiments of efficient farming or gardening may be one choice. Crafts which do not involve heavy manual work such as pottery, weaving, toy-making, rope-making, drawing, etc., can be introduced in small doses right from the primary stage. The emphasis should be to imbibe a culture of work habits and appreciate the ways in which natural resources can be best utilized. Primary stage children should not be expected to become well trained workers in any trade.
You may wonder as to how the ‘Nai Thaleem’ concept can be proposed again in the new paradigm of globalizing economy while it did not take off in spite of the euphoria of the newness of the Republic of India. Unfortunately Nai Thaleem or Basic Education met its demise even before India became independent. A full analysis of the reasons is beyond the scope of our brief discussions. But, it may be suggested that the implementation of Basic Education by the Congress Governments of the diarchy period was based more on a symbolic reverence to Gandhi’s ideas, rather than being based on a full commitment to the concept leading to thorough planning and adequate support. The class biases of the stalwarts of the freedom struggle have also been dealt with adequately in the vast literature on the freedom struggle. Thus if we retain the spirit of basic education and avoid the mistakes committed in the earlier efforts of its implementation, we will move towards a skilled society, with skills appropriate for a modern yet sustainable economy.
Vocationalize School Education
One of the mistakes to be avoided is that of treating basic education as the choice for the poor and general education (whatever that means) for those who are not! The compulsory and free education provided by the state must be the same for everybody. The choice can be only with respect to the vocation. In order that overcrowding does not occur in a few vocations, a large number of vocations must be included in the elementary and secondary stages. Students must be able to learn at least one secondary vocation preferably related to their primary choice.
Irrespective of how modern we become some of the basic vocations will always need trained people. Masonry, carpentry, plumbing, electrical wiring, repair of simple machinery, ancillary health services, typing, tailoring, and printing and binding (small scale) are but a few examples of the numerous vocations in which personnel will be needed forever.
Unfortunately today most of these vocations are to be learnt – for a majority of those who get into such trades—through long periods of informal apprenticeship (as in the case of masonry, carpentry or automobile repair) or through self-financed and profit-oriented training shops outside the formal school (as in the case of typing, tailoring, etc.). It is a pity that even graduates in computer technology and computer science often choose to enroll in more job oriented computer courses at huge cost in private computer education institutions, though most entry level computer workers can do well with a good high school level education in which computer training is appropriately built in. Isn’t it ironical Madras University feels proud to offer ‘add-on’ courses for their undergraduate students – at extra cost of course – in order to prepare them better for jobs?
Thus, significantly vocationalizing the education right from the primary stage to the college stage is the most important educational reform we should bring about. Of course such large-scale vocationalizing will mean the requirement of resources several times larger than what is being spent today on school education. Imaginative ways of raising the resources must be thought of.
Distance Education: Alternative for the future
Currently distance education has become possible for a large number of individuals through program run by many universities. Setting aside, for the present, the need to significantly improve the quality of such distance education, let us recognize that distant education is going to be the most cost-effective alternative for our society for a long time to come. In fact, in order to give an opportunity to all those who dropped out of school, we have to resort to a massive expansion of the open school system and aggressively market school education combined with vocational training through this mode. That will be a strategy in favor of the poor and the women the most of who, in our culture, have been taken out of school once they attained puberty and become house-bound. The success of the open school education may facilitate the process of breaking the barriers for radical reforms in the formal school system and make that system achieve the objectives of education outlined in the beginning.
Resource mobilization
A frequent argument against vocationalization is that the level of resources required for an effective vocational school education or open school education is far higher than we can afford. I feel that this argument reveals the lack of commitment to strategies in favor of the poor. While we should welcome the educational cess being collected on the sale of certain services, we must collect a cess from people who have had the benefit of state subsidized education and who are currently employed gainfully depending on their level of education and current income. Those who have completed high school through the state-funded system may be asked to contribute half-a-per cent of their annual income; persons with a degree 1%; and those with post-graduate degrees and professional degrees may pay 2% of their annual income as education cess. The employers should also contribute a matching amount. The amount should be exclusively used for education.
Such a scheme will have another effect in favor of the poor. Today, even for jobs which require, say, only a high school level education (e.g. clerical assistants, typists, etc.) graduates and post graduates compete. The levy based on educational qualification will discourage both the employer and the potential graduate blindly going after degrees. In any case when high school education becomes more purposeful through vocationalization for most of the people, mindless pursuit of higher education as a potential
passport for an organized sector job will naturally diminish.
Yet another suggestion, unpalatable to many of us in the academic field, is that of reducing subsidies for higher education. I do not dispute that an ideal society must make available as much of educational opportunity as is desired by the people. But what should be the order of subsidy on a per student basis for different levels of education, in the context of a society where illiteracy is nearly 50% and hardly 10% of the high school aged children have completed high school education? At best the subsidy on a per student basis may be the same for all levels. One may argue that it should be more for the school education, in order to make it more attractive and meaningful so that everyone completes high school education. After that has happened, we can increase the per student subsidy for higher education, across the board.
Higher education must be subsidized on an individual basis through scholarships and sponsorships in return for commitment to serve the government or the sponsoring institution for a specific number of years. All others who would like to pursue higher education must be prepared to pay a significant proportion of the costs. That way the resource crunch for school education can be solved to some extent.
But today we subsidize the professional students the highest, the university students the next highest and the primary school students the least. It should be exactly the opposite for a few decades till we get all the children of school-age, complete school education.
One can even argue that primary school teachers must be better equipped and better paid than teachers at higher levels. After all, the foundation must be built strong. The learning at higher levels of education is more through students own efforts in any case and the teachers are to act more as facilitators.
Teacher Development
In this context we should also seriously consider the possibilities of inducting teachers for higher education from among those with experience in lower stages. Teachers presently at the primary and secondary stages must be encouraged and facilitated to enhance their educational qualifications and preference must be given to such of those who have qualified themselves to move up to the higher levels of education. Experienced teachers must be rewarded and recognized by being made responsible as trainers and resource persons who constantly strive to bring the most recent and appropriate pedagogical methods into the education system. The District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs) in most states seem to be far from achieving such objectives. With accent on vocationalizing school education, teacher training institutions will have to be significantly expanded, equipped and supported. A number of para-trainers must be developed among the various craftsmen and technicians in each community, so that each school has a set of resource persons for various vocations whose expertise can be utilized as and when required. What I have outlined are only sketches of the diverse strategies we have to employ in the field of education to ensure that the fundamental right of the child for elementary education is ensured and the women are enabled to become economically independent too.
Mobilizing People
If these and many more such strategies have to be developed and implemented appropriately, the pressure should come from the people. A sustained movement by the working class for education relevant to their needs as the top priority is crucial if government policies have to be changed from the present elitist priorities in education. Mere reservation of opportunities for an education, much of which does not utilize the natural potentials of the people and prepares them only for vocations pandering to the consumerist culture, should not be considered as the major concession obtained for the disadvantaged groups. Radical reforms as outlined above must be the ultimate objective.
Parents, teachers and educationists at all levels should work to get the education as a priority agenda item at all levels of local government, starting from the Gram Panchayat, every neighborhood school should be supported as well as monitored by the local community through active parent-teacher associations and local education-resources-groups. Teaching as a profession must become one of the most respected professions as in the past through the conscientious work-culture of teachers as well as their behavior as exemplary citizens of the community.
All that can happen only through sustained campaigns akin to the freedom struggle. The time has come to launch another struggle, this time for an education system which liberates all from the shackles of economic inequality, caste and community prejudices, gender bias and unsustainable consumerist culture. We owe it to the basic philosophy of education which warrants it. To quote the report of the Education Commission: “Democracy affirms that each individual is a unique adventure of life. The function of education is the guidance of this adventure to the realization of the potentials of each individual in the face of the actual world of men and things. It aims at the development of the individual; the discovery, training and utilization of his special talents.”
<< Back | Next >>