The good old Radio: The new educational change agent?

During my MBA induction, we were made to form a team and come up with an idea of a product or service and present it. We came up with the idea of creating our own FM radio channel.

Sadly, our idea flopped, as we had no concrete factual data to support our idea and no plan on profits and ROI (return of investment).

It was our first step in the world of management and our first lesson was to be creative.

Today I look back at this incidence and realize how important that one simple lesson is, for one to  survival in today’s world. Every generation is facing the same problem; food clothing, shelter, and poverty. And every generation is the same, only a select few wish to be creative and find a solutions, while the majority fall by the wayside and simply follow the creative ones.

Today, CACR has taken the initiative to come up with ideas to solve the problem of “access to education”. My monthly articles are focused on finding these ideas. One such idea came to my mind when I was watching the show “50 Gadgets that changed the world”.

Can you guess the top two gadgets?

They were mobile phone and radio. Radio has been an influential gadget since the early 20^th century. It had solved the problem of communications then, but has it now?

So, I started pondering as to its usefulness in the current scenario?

 I was sitting in my father’s office and listening to music when the thought struck me of creating an FM School channel.

While aspersions may be cast on the originality of my idea, how many of us have seen this idea actually come to fruition?

The next thing after television that has huge penetration in rural India is radio. Why not use it as a virtual school?

If mobile phones (the Idea Internet Network) can be used a learning tool, can’t we use radios too? The FM channel can teach the same subjects that are taught in school; history, geography, science, and languages.

Remote villages do not have access to school or teachers. Children drop out of school because it is difficult for them to travel long distances. It is also not possible to set up school in every village and there is also the issue of availability of teachers.

If we can access banks from home, communicate with people overseas, isn’t it time for Digital India to get access to basic education at home?

Go into villages, and you will see people traveling with a transistor wherever they go. They have a radio in their farms so they can listen to music while working. Can’t they learn maths or language while working?

Your notebook is your field, and your stick is your pen.

What  I have mentioned here is just a seed of an idea. I truly hope we can get together, brainstorm and help it blossom into something great.

- Author: JZ  a volunteer with +Citizens Association For Child Rights                                                                 Editor: Anand Banerjee is an intern at NGO CACR, an education startup working to improve the functioning of public schools in India.

Images are used only for representation purposes. 

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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

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