The dream and the reality of education

“Learning should be holistic, integrated, inclusive, enjoyable, engaging...” says the new National Education Policy 2020, while visualising an India where children of every caste, class and colour will study in schools whose teachers are kind, environment friendly and study, fun. Where children come laughing to school, where there is no discrimination, where learning matters more than marks, where grades do not label children as bright or dull. Schools which do not leave parents in debt; which do not load pupils with homework and private tuitions; which do not make ranks and grades the hallmark of success. Where children learn the value of kindness, consideration and cleanliness.

It’s a remarkable policy paper that hopes to see a new India with an infallible system of education that will ensure a future generation of ideal citizens. While, presently what do we see around us?

School principals of reputed institutions sacked for serious offences. Teachers meant to protect children from sexual abuse themselves guilty of the same. Again, private schools affiliated to all India councils and boards violating every prescribed norm. Government schools in remote places with no books, no blackboards, no desks, no water, no bathrooms, no buildings and worst of all, no teachers.

The authors of the NEP were certainly well intentioned. They want all these deficiencies repaired and high educational standards restored. But, how? That’s the million dollar question. It will take plenty of resources, both financial as well as human, to establish those flawless schools that can provide an idyllic learning environment. It will also require political will and intention to plough money into schools rather than on weapons of war.

How many governments in this country understood the value of establishing good schools in the country to bring up a whole generation of useful citizens? How many legislative bodies considered the holistic education of every child meant creating a strong society of responsible citizens? Seventy five years of freedom from foreign rule (that has always been touted as a cause for all our ills) has not improved our education system. Every few years, a newly elected government dreams up a “new” education policy which is nothing but a mish mash of the older ones.

Take the concept of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE). What is it but a poor imitation of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) launched by UNICEF where the concept of the Anganwadi was first mooted. That programme (the first of its kind in the world) aimed at providing education and health services to infants in the vast slums of India where state governments worked with the slum dwellers to provide a package of services that included early childhood care like proper nutrition, immunisation and education. The last was not about teaching the alphabets and numbers but about observing good hygiene and cleanliness to prevent infections and life threatening diseases. The classrooms were not in schools but in public places like temples and in their own homes. The ICDS took education right into the homes of children where their parents themselves delivered the goods and also got educated in the process.

Borrowing this core idea with modifications of its own, the NEP declares that its ECCE programme would ensure that the young beneficiaries would be “school ready” having developed “social capacities, sensitivity, good behaviour, courtesy, ethics, personal and public cleanliness, teamwork and cooperation.” A tall order that can be accomplished with a magic wand. At least, in the case of the ICDS, the likely obstacles to the programme were kept in mind all the time. Similar changes incorporated into earlier education policies, make the NEP a weak imitation of earlier policies. Change for the sake of change like altering school education from 10+2+3 into 5+3+3+4 is a meaningless exercise.

This is not to flog the authors of the NEP or its intentions. When school education has become a nightmare for parents, both rich and poor, with its plethora of problems starting with admissions and followed by promotion practices (read as malpractices) meaningless home assignments (done largely by parents) and private tuitions conducted by the same teachers in the same classroom. A pragmatic strategy that can easily be translated into practice is what we need at the moment. Until that is accomplished, school education will continue to be a trauma for parents.

Ironically, a country where education is crucial for its very survival among nations, cannot boast of any government in these last 75 years which prioritised this sector while allocating its budget. While we are ready to plough money into defence or sign contracts for weapons of destruction, no regime has shown the will to spend freely on health or learning. We have yet to recognise the power of the chalk and pencil which are the only weapons that can take a nation forward.