Education is probably one issue that is extremely close to me as a person and a professional. And for some reason I never end up discussing it on the blog. Perhaps because the way we perceive education, unlike say other issues has too much variance built into it.
Education has never been an issue on any elections agenda. Never. Sometimes not even the cursory note! And if Education does become an issue on something like The Big Fight, they conveniently step over Primary Education.
Primary Education is the greatest leveller. Because you cannot yank out a person at the age of 17 and tell them they can go to the best of colleges after passing an entrace examination, that quite often has no relationship with the course material of their senior secondary exam. Because in the first 6 years of a child’s life, a child learns to love learning, and not fear it or fight it.
One of the best documents to get hold of to understand how and why Primary Education is not uniform or accessable is the PROBE (The Public Report on Basic Education in India). The book is a collaborative effort backed by extremely thorough field based research, and offers an insight into regional similarities and differences in the way primary education is treated by the government and received by the community. While the document was released pretty long back, it remains extremely insightful into the myths of primary education in India.
The document demolishes three major myths that the Government has propagated to excuse itself from its own pathetic performance and blame those of a lower class or less inclined towards education community.
Myth 1- Parents are not interested in Education
Myth 2-Child Labour is the main obstacle
Myth 3- Elementary Education is free
And the best – The myths are broken with field based data, which the government has never bothered to collect anyway. It profiles specific states that have done better than other states, and have been almost secretly improving their numbers and giving their children a better opportunity.
This train of thought is provoked by reading Nitin Desai’s article on Rediff today, connecting social mobility and Education. While I am in most part, in agreement with him, I believe the article is superficial in its treatment of the real issues that prevent access to Education, or the reasons why children from less affluent backgrounds seem to be doing well in State Examinations. Because I don’t believe it quite ends there. The real ordeal for most children is getting through to the right Undergrad course, in the right college. There are barriers of finance, geographical distance, gender and community that are still glaring at us. The mobility promised by Higher Education has been a far more difficult task in the Northern Belt for instance.
But the thing that really got me was the blanket statement against Metros, stating that the Mofussil does better as though it was a moral victory of sorts against hyper-urbanization. Because there is so much about the peri-urban and rural that remains hidden behind a few good results. Because Education patterns are not gleaned through the number of toppers, but by calculating averages and means, by which you understand the aggregate of performances and can forecast. But then again that is my take.
Posted on July 22nd, 2005 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Random Links
