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Elitism in education
OVER THE past 54 years, education policies and pronouncements have invariably projected social justice, equity and equality as the basis of educational plans and programmes. Critics term it exclusivity in socialist rhetoric. What children of India today have before them is a dual system, one for the rich and another for the poor. At one end of the spectrum are large, well endowed and well equipped schools with facilities comparable to the best anywhere. At the other are damp, roofless hovels lacking basic facilities. The former represent India and the latter, Bharat!
It is as if a grand conspiracy was at work to perpetuate this injustice. Some superficial tinkering attempted by pro-changers only further complicated things. Take for instance the step to abolish English in the primary stage in government run schools by some States. This step was taken after the government run schooling system was properly done in political and bureaucratic apathy. The middle class upwards had by then deserted the state schooling system in favour of privately managed English-medium schools. The State Governments' writ did not run supreme over them. So, the slogan "Mother-tongue is best for students — like mother's milk to infants" which offered the leitmotif for the campaign to do away with English was only half-baked. It created a mass of products from the government (read poor) schools inarticulate in English, while the old elite which went through the private (read rich) institutions, remained firmly in grip of the levers of the economy, controlled all the lucrative jobs and, almost by design, governments collected political Brownie points for "abolishing" English but left the "need" for an English education intact. So, at the end of the day, products of both systems competed for the same few jobs. It is evident who is winning.
Any initiative towards the change of the content and process of school education must obviously consult all the volumes penned in the 54 years by numerous government appointed committees on education which were headed by renowned figures like Servapalli Radhakrishnan, D. S. Kothari and Acharya Ramamurti. All of them had stressed the need for equity in the school room. If the girl child is deprived of equal opportunities, it may be held as proof of state sponsored gender discrimination. In 1990, the Ramamurti Committee's findings revealed that "vocational education" for the girl child was being interpreted in all the States as "women oriented" education — they were being taught cooking, interior decoration and steno-typing. The Economic Survey 2001-02 revealed that the drop-out rate of girls was 42 per cent at the primary level and 50 per cent at the elementary level. Does this not call for correction on a war footing?
The inequities have their role in other sectors as well. For instance, the academic performance of a child has much to do with his parents' ability to pay for additional coaching. Look how coaching classes, postal tuition schemes and, now, website coaching programmes where you have to pay to join, have proliferated in the last decade. The backers of the "free market" principle in education are usually drawn from the very class which benefits from this.
Pass-fail system
Therefore a new culture, characterised by hedonism, thrives. Privilegocracies, in the first stage, display characteristic lack of articulation and disunity. But when faced with competition to their domination, the elements within these closed societies tend to come together as a block which, by virtue of its stranglehold over the various institutions of state and media, prove far more effective than the forces of equity. I noticed this during the debate over the recommendation to end the unscientific marking and pass-fail system in school examinations. This is a discarded system of evaluation and weeding out the uncompetitive. Much of it is based on human objectivity which has its limitations. Many young lives are crushed by this cruel system every year — quite a few suicides result too. The pass-fail system is uneven, where only the student pays for the collective failure of both himself and his teacher. In my innocence I presumed every one would welcome sweeping reforms in this sector. But alas. The privilegocracy went ballistic. "Why should my child who gets 98 per cent be on the same level as yours who gets 92 per cent?" is the typical refrain.
Even after 54 years of Independence, less than five per cent of schools in the country had adopted vocational courses seriously. Children from economically backward regions should relate to what is taught in schools. If the child's parents perceive that the subjects taught in the village school hold out no future to his charge, they may reject the system. This is justified. One look at the course content of schools and anybody can tell that the regime is tailor made to expel from the system all those who cannot afford a large number of textbooks and substantiate whatever is taught in the school (poorer the school worse the teaching standards) with expensive tuition. The fierce competition for the few openings in professional colleges has bred a big business in postal tuitions. Can a poor man's son afford that? Why, even middle-class parents draw advances on their provident fund deposits to subscribe to these expensive courses.
A comprehensive national debate is the need of the hour. We cannot hope to play our dream role as a world power in the family of nations in the new century if more than half our productive population is kept illiterate, inarticulate and unskilled.
J.S. RAJPUT
Director, NCERT
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