The Irony of Indian Education

“Irony is the gaiety of wisdom and the joy of reflection.”

In India however, irony seems to be the daily staple of our lives as we reflect on the happenings in the country.

The best defense to a false degree accusation.

From being a country where pissing on the road is fine, but kissing/any form of PDA isn't and where moms want their daughter to control their husbands and expect their sons to control their wives, the latest in a long list of ironies is that Smriti, Irani, the cabinet minister for Human Resource Development, responsible for education in the country herself has extremely murky education credentials.

In the ongoing furore that followed this revelation, one could not help but wonder, how education came to be such a controversial topic at times.

Even before the above mentioned incident occurred, a massive “fake degree scam” in Bangalore was unearthed where offers of degrees and certificates were openly advertised. The ads, posted on various websites, claimed to provide degree certificates from various varsities in no time to (un?)suspecting netizens. Another popular example of disrespect for our education system was the famous  IIPM or Indian Institute of Planning and Management issue, where a complaint by the University Grants Commission UGC, revealed that the institute is ‘cheating’ and ‘fooling’ its students as it is not recognised by any regulatory body.

Scams are more staple in our country than rice and wheat.

Even despite outright illegal acts, a  lot of activities in India’s education sector have been in a certain grey area; these include the system of “donations” to gain entry into universities, the setting up of universities and educational institutes without accreditation etc.

The main reason for a general sense of disrespect and heedlessness towards the education sector, is mainly that education is either viewed as a simple means to an end; students look at degrees from colleges as one way tickets to placement with an MNC and lifelong series of foreign trips and a priority savings account with Axis bank, or education is viewed as an inconvenience to be dealt with before entering the job sphere.

Education is neither of these two; it is meant to be an enlightening experience, to prepare you for the numerous challenges that you are inevitably to face in your later life.

Rural areas have particularly low literacy and education rates

A degree is meant to be nothing but a proof of these efforts, and a sign that you have the knowledge required to survive in the world, instead of being a “employable” stamp.

The moment that we as a country realize this, education and fake degree scams will cease to exist, and rural parents will start sending their children to schools 57.8 million children are out of primary school globally with India, ranking among the top five nations with 1.4 million children being out of school.

In the meantime, one can only hope that our other ministers make more educated claims henceforth.

- Anand Banerjee is a  creative intern with +Citizens Association For Child Rights, a non profit working in public schools on India to improve the standard of education and well being of children.

www.facebook.com/CitizensAssociationForChildRights

www.ngocacr.com

Are we really educating India?

"After my 13 years of education I still don't know how mortgage or taxes work but at least I know about the cells inside a leaf" - this is the story of every 18 year old in the country.  The Indian education system focuses more on theoretical knowledge than any kind of practical education that will actually help most of our population to get jobs in the future. Providing hard skills or understanding of practical know how will empower a very large section of students coming from a lesser-privileged background.  The point is not to do away with what is already being taught in our classrooms, the point is how to incorporate life skills and lessons within the already set and existing structure.  It is important to nurture the young minds of India with both education and the ability to be employed.

Government and Education

If we take our private and government sectors expenditures, we are spending a 4.8% of our GDP on education (even though the target set by the government was 6% , which is still a long way to go) where can we see the effects of all this investment. The tragedy is not that there is no money. The tragedy is that we do not know what to do with the money that is available; that we do not have structures through which we can channelize it.  There is no doubt that in many areas the schools have been given better infrastructure and new technology. But the lack of maintenance and basic knowledge as to how to operate such systems is absent. This causes a lot of wastage of precious resources and capital.

In order to tackle the loopholes in the education system, the following things can be undertaken. The first points of contact for any education society are the teachers. The government has a tremendous challenge of expanding the school system and at the same time putting resources in training teachers.  Across India around 25 per cent of teachers remain absent everyday. Improving the method by which the teachers teach can be a solution to education reform in India.  It is important to motivate and support the teachers so that they become quality-conscious and feel responsible for the improving the system.  One way of doing so is by identifying and implementing no or low cost teacher led practices that have the potential to make a significant positive impact on student learning. The best part about is that there is almost no cost involved in this method as it is something that is already existing within the system.

Children learning while playing 

Another thing that can be done in order to reconstruct the education system, is adding innovative life skills sessions within framework of the classroom. It is important to provide students with a set of skills that are going to help them deal with situations that may arise in the future. This will help them battle such times aptly. Students from underprivileged backgrounds, who may drop out of schools at later stage can use this very knowledge to their advantage in some way or the other. This set of skills can range from how to tackle your debts to even carpentry. The list can be vast.

One of the most important and grass root method that can be adopted to improve this system is letting the citizens of the locality taking charge of the schooling system near them. This is what we do at CACR.

Citizens Association for Child Rights-CACR , is a network of like minded citizens concerned about ensuring child rights with specific focus on ensuring good quality of education and health for all children. The network comprises of citizens who visit neighbourhood municipal schools and clinics, and participate in various programmes like School Management Committees, Computer Literacy Programme and Virtual Classroom projects, etc. and oversee the overall functioning and quality of education in municipal schools. We at CACR believe that regular interaction and discussions with the hierarchy of the Education Department and sharing of observations and suggestions with them periodically will ensure improved accountability and proper distribution of facilities and amenities for children enrolled in these schools. Citizens Association for Child Rights very strongly believes in supplementing the system and does not believe in creating parallel systems. We believe that the urban privileged public has immense power to influence and impact the lives of affected children for the better through government interface and participation.

CACR volunteers helping students get creative 

All the above will help us change the face of the education system in India.
Irrespective of all the cons in the system I believe that education is something that takes time to build-up but we should be hopeful on that count. 

-by +Meesha Gandhi is a intern with CACR , a nonprofit startup working to improve the education and health in public schools of Mumabi,India . Edited by +Richa Singh 

The politics of education

“In line with the goal of nation building, India has been committed to providing free and compulsory education to all children. Towards this end, Indian Parliament has enacted a legislation making free and compulsory education a Right of every child in the age group 6-14 years which has come into force from 1st April, 2010- The RTE Act. Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan has been launched recently as a step to universalize secondary education. Simultaneously, efforts are being made to create a robust and vast system of higher and technical education.”

Or so reads the inaugural paragraph of the website of the Union Ministry for Human Resource Development.

While our central as well as state governments have always purported to be active supporters of the cause of education, announcement of policies and schemes and commissions is simply not enough for progress to be made in this field.

“The Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) is the highest advisory body to advise the Central and State Governments in the field of education. Recent years have seen certain important committees and commissions deliberate on education. National Knowledge Commission (2006) Report on higher education supports a strong reform agenda through public investment. Recently, the report of the committee on renovation and rejuvenation of higher education (Yashpal Committee) has recommended protecting the intellectual autonomy of educational institutions and the creation of an all-encompassing National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) to replace or subsume the existing regulatory bodies.“ 

 While all these initiatives may paint a rosy picture, one begins to wonder about how much is actually being done to enforce these actions.

The ‘strong reform agenda’ through public investment is a stellar idea, though it is one that lacks the backing of ancillary facts and supportive ideas.

In a first in over 30 years, the Modi government announced it’s plan to launch India’s ‘Education Policy,’ something that was last done only in 1968.

A slew of reform measures like public-private partnerships (PPPs) to finance education, seeking ways of upping India’s spend on higher education to 1.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) from less than 1% now, and emphasize on research and development etc were announced, with no concrete steps to follow so as to achieve the targets mentioned.

The current central government has been earmarked by political pundits and scholars as being a ‘show and tell’ government,  that does little to act upon, and more to talk about. One can only hope that this does not turn out to be the case when it comes to government policies on education.

Other than the measures announced, the Education Policy should also ideate about possible measures to increase enrollment in existing government run schools, through schemes such as the phenomenally successful ‘Mid-day Meal Scheme,’ and about improving quality of existing schools as well.

The PPP model for education and granting of further funds for research and development to institutes of higher learning are concrete ideas that are capable of being implemented with ease.

CACR sincerely hopes that along with the new promises that are being made , we are also blessed with some action that will be taken in this regard.

No government can ignore education, and we hope that the current one uplifts it to the levels of importance it deserves to be at.

- Anand Banerjee is an intern at NGO CACR, an education startup working to improve the functioning of public schools in India. 

To view the presentation on RTE-Right to Education Act CLICK HERE

Connect with us: -
Facebook -www.facebook.com/CitizensAssociationForChildRights
Website- www.ngocacr.com

The Paradox of Present Education System

  

                               

The above quote cheerfully assumes that the basic purpose of education is all round development of a person.

But does this actually happen in the world today?

This question casts a shadow of speculation on our entire education system.

Education is supposed to be a process through which an individual becomes a better person & empowers himself. Which begs the question, what is the use of an education where a person is not taught moral values to be implemented in life? Instead he is taught the concepts of corruption, black money,and other social issues without any comment on their moral and social ramifications.

The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

There exists a stark contrast between what we read in our books and what we see in real life.

Education should also hone one’s skills for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively, independently and profoundly for oneself is very difficult. This is due to our susceptibility to let our mental faculties be invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and propaganda.

Even the press, our teachers in our classrooms, the pulpit etc.on  myriad instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths.

This again begs the question whether education is actually serving its purpose? Great majorities of the so-called educated people do not think logically and rationally.

If we are not careful, our institutes will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with banal thoughts and recycled ideas. These people will have no civic sensibilities, no respect for women and their elders, no personal actualization or self developmental goals.

To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, should be one of the chief aims of education.

The intrinsic purpose of education is the penultimate development of one’s personality.

Everyone is endowed with certain capabilities and talents, which remain dormant, until harnessed. Our education system only aims at harnessing this pre-existing potential rather than developing further moral and social sensibilities and ethics. 

This total development of human personality includes intellectual as well as moral development. Most of our present day institutes aim solely at the intellectual development of pupils.

Getting educated should not just be equivalent to getting capable, intelligent, and job-oriented. Getting education should include education of ones minds, ones heart as well as ones moral and spiritual notions.

For the majority of us, anywhere between the first 18-25 years of lives is spent pursuing education. In all that time, is it prudent for some sort of moral and social conditioning to occur?

Yes, the current system may produce brilliant engineers, doctors, lawyers and workers.

But then again, what about kind-hearted, morally upright people?

- Anand Banerjee and Hitesh Wadhwa are interns at Ngo CACR a education startup working to improve the functioning of public schools in India. 

Connect with us: -
Facebook -www.facebook.com/CitizensAssociationForChildRights
Website- www.ngocacr.com