Education today:
moving towards commercialization
and saffronization
Since the early periods of human
society, education has been a tool to set norms and values according to societal
demands. At first it was learning to hunt, then to rule the land, and now to be
able to participate in a democracy
Education is not just a process aiming to achieve a single concrete goal,
but a transformative process for constructing equitable and sustainable social
development. Education should promote nation building, upholding constitutional
values of secularism and non-discrimination between different religions,
languages and ethnicities that form part of Indian democracy.
Education is therefore a process
that is fundamentally societal in the broadest sense of the term. As experts
have said, “within the highly complex world of human activity in the given
social environment, the child enters into an infinite number of relationships,
each of which constantly develops, interweaves with other relationships and is
compounded by the child's own physical and moral growth."
However, archaeological,
documentary and other historical evidence tells us that education in earlier centuries
was very elitist and biased in favour of upper echelons of society especially
so-called higher castes. Teachers belonged only to some sections or castes, and
students from some sections were privileged enough to receive any form of
education. Contemporary education is, or should be, in principle accessible to
all sections of society so that society as a whole, rather than just a small
elite section, can benefit. Rather than advancing this goal, and striving to
overcome the many barriers to widening the social base of education as will be
discussed in this booklet, the New Education Policy recommendations of the TSR
Subramanian Committee as released by the present government seeks to put the
clock back, hailing Vedic Education and the Guru-Shishya Parampara as an example of “knowledge
sharing between the teacher and the student.”
The British colonial period saw modern
public education controlled by the Inspectorate. The Macaulay Commission framed
a new educational policy for British India with the objective to “do our best
to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern;
a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in
opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine
the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of
science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees
fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.” The
freedom struggle and its stalwarts like Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, Ambedkar
however threw away the colonial yoke and called for a National Education
system.
After Independence, Dr.Radhakrishnan’s University
Education Commission (1948-49), National Science Policy (1952), Sri Mudaliar’s
Secondary Education Commission (1952-53), Dr. Kothari’s Education Commission
(1964-66) which was made into National Policy on Education (1968), the National
Commission on Teachers I & II (1983-85) and The National Policy on
Education 1986 (revised in 1992) were the major government policies in
education. Now the Government is preparing a new National Policy on
Education-2016, thirty years after the
last policy.
Despite the many efforts made, the
effort for education in India to be inclusive for women, dalits, adivasis and
minorities has remained a distant dream.
The earlier Reports and policy documents stressed the role
of education as a process of human liberation and all-round social development,
dissemination of scientific temper, secularism and democracy and advancement of
the knowledge, skills and capabilities of all sections of population. Education
was seen as primarily the responsibility of the state, with private institutions
playing their role. However, a shift could be seen in the later documents.
Under the growing influence of the neo-liberal ideology permeating governance
systems in India, the government began to gradually withdraw from its responsibility
and private institutions, particularly those with an entrepreneurial
disposition, being assigned major responsibilities.
Considerable changes have taken
place in the structure and functioning of the education system during the past
two decades. However, an examination of the actual performance of these schemes
shows that there is much to be desired.
Literacy According to government data, literacy rose
from 52.2% in 1991 to 64.8% in 2001 and further to 74% in 2011.
The Peoples Science Movement in
India, and its specially-created arm the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, played a
seminal role in placing literacy as a paramount agenda of the nation. A huge
public mobilization campaign was organized all over the country through a Total
Literacy Campaign which resulted in seeding the government’s National Literacy Mission
in the 1990s.
The number of illiterates declined in absolute terms by 31
million and the number of literates increased by 218 million. Literacy rate of
India in 2011 was 74.04%. The
Male literacy rate is 82.14% and
Female literacy rate is 65.46%
according to the Census. Increase of Literacy rates for women reduced the male-female
gap from 21.59% in 2001 to 16.68% in 2011. Yet these figures show that a
substantially large number of children are still first generation learners. Gender
and regional disparities in literacy continue to remain high.
School Education Most
people have had an average of only 5.12 years of school education in India.
This is well below comparable figures in other emerging economies such as China
(8.17 years) and Brazil (7.54 years) and significantly below the average of all
developing countries (7.09 years).
Enrolment of
children in primary classes has picked up, particularly since the
implementation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, but the drop out rate is
still high. Gross and Net Enrolment Ratios continue to fall sharply after Class
8, showing that a number of children drop out after primary education or when
they complete 14 years, and presumably thereafter enter the labour market to
financially assist their families. The drop out rates is sharper among SCs and
STs.
There has been
an improvement in the enrolment of girls into primary education, but drop out rates
after primary education is still high. This shows that the stress on UEE (Universalization
of Elementary Education) has not resulted in establishing education as a
continuous process such that all children reach a socially acceptable level of knowledge
and practical skills so as to play useful productive roles in society.
Despite the stress
on a ‘mission’ approach, various centrally sponsored schemes and substantial
intervention by NGOs and private agencies, achievements have been less than expected.
Even though the 1986
Education Policy statement stressed access to education, the bedrock of
programmes for realization of Education for All, access is not 100 percent. Further,
States that have been backward, still remain backward in terms of access.
Quality Education The
character of education in India assumes interesting dimensions when we take
into account quality rather than quantity alone. The results of the recent National
Achievement Surveys of the NCERT (National Council for Educational Research
& Training) conducted in 2010 show that learning abilities of children at
the primary level leave a lot to be desired.
Results show
that about 31.5% of children surveyed scored less than 40% in language, 35.8%
failed in mathematics and 35.1% failed in environmental studies or EVS. Even in
Kerala, a state with otherwise creditable educational achievements, 39.6% of students
scored less than 40% in Mathematics and 29.7% did the same in EVS. Interestingly, only 2.7% in Mathematics and
2.9% in EVS respectively scored more than 80% (which is about one-sixth of the
National average at the same score which itself is poor)! It is clear that when
the quality at the foundational levels is average or poor, quality at higher
levels is likely to be abysmal.
Data also shows
great diversity among different regions and States in India, both in terms of
access and quality.
In general, both
the Southern and North-Eastern States have performed better, whereas Northern
India has lagged behind. This diversity is nothing new, but government policies
during the past quarter century has done nothing to change the pattern, which
shows that the malady lies deep in the economic and socio-cultural structures
in these regions rather than in the education process alone. In fact, the performance
of Uttar Pradesh, where only 15% of students scored less than 40% marks
overall, in the National Achievement Survey illustrates this point. Such diverse performances also beings up the
question of the overall centralization of curricula, management, and policy
directions visible in recent policy documents, as they tend to ignore such
economic and socio-cultural variations in different regions and often tend to
underplay regional initiatives in favour of central policies or programmes.
Whether such policies have themselves contributed to continuation of
disparities needs to be examined.
Unfortunately,
this element never finds itself seriously considered either in the educational
literature or in the documents of policy makers. Diversity of our national
economic and cultural forms finds expression in the use of language,
environmental knowledge and even in computation. Other elements of social
knowledge have been ignored in the educational system even by NCERT.
It appears that
policy makers do not care whether children know the history of their own land,
understand their living conditions or know their Government. This means that
the great diversity of Indian population can be safely ignored by the policy
makers, educational institutions and even teachers and students. From such a
position, “quality education” can be enjoyed only by a privileged few termed as
“meritorious” students, and even the present set of documents call the real
problems of Indian education mere “gaps.”
Vocational Education The
Central Government had initiated vocational secondary education from 1988, but
this programme has never shown appreciable results. In its present form, Skills
Education has been conducted since 2009. In order to make the secondary level
more inclusive, the idea of vocational education to go along with Socially
Useful Productive Work (SUPW) is being given importance these days.
Educational
experts have been emphasizing employability as a criterion along with equity
and excellence in education, but experience over the past quarter century has not
been good. Unfortunately, this experience in vocational education has not been
reviewed and research-based policy directions have not been developed. There
have been major problems with integrating the vocational stream with the
academic stream. In fact the numerous streams of vocational education,
technical and polytechnic training and recently introduced skills training have
only added to the confusion and lack of purpose of vocational education at this
important stage of human life.
Higher education
is primarily tasked with creating a cohesive and well-integrated citizenry that
will help sustain the values of democracy, secularism and scientific temper in
our nation and society. It is not meant to instill a narrow emphasis on physical
skills to the detriment of intellectual knowledge. In fact, in the modern high
technology environment, physical skills without intellectual advancement will
never deliver what is required in different categories of the working
population. Just think of information and communications technology,
bio-technology, nanotechnology, renewable energy and so on which are at the
cutting edge of industries and therefore integral to the advancement that
counties want to pursue. Skills in any of these disciplines can be acquired
only by combining technical knowledge with physical skills. Therefore, a narrow
emphasis on physical skill-training is inimical to the very essence of higher
education in a society that is modernizing and looking ahead to the future. The
proposed NEP adopts and recommends a narrow interpretation of “skills” and
“training” as if these are disconnected from “education” whereas “know-how” and
“know why” are equally components for modern vocations.
Emphasis on
physical skills and professional competence cannot be at the expense of
Critical Learning Skills.
Higher Education There are three
segments in higher education viz:
●
central institutions, which account for 2.6% of
the total enrolment
●
state institutions which account for 38.5% of
enrolment, and
●
private institutions that cater to the remaining about 60% of students
Expansion of
higher education during the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) was led by the private
sector which now accounts for 58.5% of enrolments.
Numerous reports
on higher education have been submitted to the Government in recent times. Of
these, the report submitted by the Yashpal Committee of 1993 took cognizance of
the varied conditions of educational development and suggested a degree of autonomy
in the functioning of Universities and decentralization of power. Regrettably,
it was here that the concept of foreign universities starting collaboration
with Indian private educational institutions was seeded. The idea was that
India has low costs of living which would help attract foreign students to
study in this country which could thus earn foreign exchange while bringing in
top quality education.
The 12th
Plan document therefore contends as follows: “Private sector will be
encouraged to establish larger and higher quality institutions in the Twelfth
Plan. Currently, for-profit entities are not permitted in higher education and
the non-profit or philanthropy-driven institutions are unable scale up enough
to bridge the demand-supply gap in higher education. Therefore, the
“not-for-profit” status in higher education should, perhaps, be re-examined for
pragmatic considerations so as to allow the entry of for-profit institutions in
select areas where acute shortages persist”. Clearly, educational institutions
would in future work mainly with a profit motive.
In
order to guard against the apprehension that mediocre educational entrepreneurs
will invade the country, the Report recommends that investment be sought from
the “best two hundred Universities” (as per various rating agencies in the
World). There is no indication regarding what such Universities are going to do
in our education system, and how such investment is going to benefit the average
student, who admittedly still suffers from lack of quality and access. Inevitably,
this will lead to creating a few islands of “premium” education accessible only
to those with ability to pay huge sums as fees, and about whose quality or
relevance to Indian conditions nobody has any idea. This will further exacerbate
the inequalities already prevalent in the Indian educational system as regards
both access and quality. This is a completely
unacceptable policy, and must be vigorously opposed.
Other reports
too have drifted in this direction. The Birla-Ambani Report says Higher
Education is not a public good but a private good! The National Knowledge Commission
Report and the recommendations by N.R.
Narayanamurthy have treated higher education as a money-spinning enterprise
which places knowledge and expertise in the marketplace, and treats students
and the feeder community as consumers.
The growing
emphasis on so-called self-financing educational institutions, which further
means high fees and hence providing access only to the better-off, is very much
like the slogan of “user charges” in health
services and public utilities such as water, power and other
infrastructure. These are all part of the neo-liberal policy framework wherein
the state withdraws from services for the common good, and instead leaves it to
corporate bodies guided by market forces, which inevitably pushes these
services towards higher-paying sections of the population and exacerbates
inequalities in society. This increase of high-fee higher education
institutions, aided and abetted by central apex bodies such as the All India Council
of Technical Education (AICTE), Indian Medical Council (IMC), National Council
of Teacher Education (NCTE) and National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT) have
rendered higher education out of reach for students who find it difficult to
take loans. Even those middle-class students who do manage to take loans, get
tied up for many years in repaying the loans. Such policies have wreaked havoc
in developed countries including the UK and USA. In the US, total outstanding
student loans have crossed $1300 billion (Rs.90 lakh crores) and students often
have loans hanging over them for over 25 years!
The NEP Report
has recommended merit-cum-means scholarships covering fees and living expenses
for up to 10 lakh needy students, but this is not expected to meet real needs
or alter the basic problems outlined above.
Such market-led
higher education is also killing the diversity desired in higher education.
There is a kind of “academic cloning”
now taking place, where the same kinds of courses in disciplines such as
engineering, medicine and management were being cloned and taught everywhere in
an attempt to capture the cream of the “student market”. In the process, other
important forms of knowledge such as basic sciences, social sciences,
humanities and languages have lagged behind, because they are not thought of as
commercially attractive, where students will not pay high fees and not take
large loans for fear of being unable to pay them. Even major Universities are
being forced to run or recognize only the former types of “new generation courses.”
This trend mirrors similar trends in the US and Europe where the same
neo-liberal policies hold sway.
Studies on the
academic performance in such courses have demonstrated an absolute decline in
quality, indicated by a sharp fall in examination results, in spite of such screening
processes such as entrance examinations. In fact, the admissions processes in
the numerous self-financing institutions that have sprung up everywhere have
become so complicated that entrance examinations do not serve as a screening
instrument anymore. This is further complicated by the emergence of numerous ‘coaching malls’ that openly resort to
malpractice.
Strategies of “quality
assurance” such as accreditation and
rating devices have not helped in improving the conditions of higher
education. Many colleges and Universities have managed to get high ratings, but
only in order to attract more funds,
not to improve the teaching-learning process or to ensure academic excellence.
No amount of “corporate
social responsibility” or corporate profit recycling can hope to replace the
role played by the State in the running of an education system that caters to
interests of the Indian population and society as a whole. Corporate funds and
“for-profit” institutions by their very nature will move according to the
profit motive, not as per the greatest social good.
No wonder moves
are under way to make education a tradable commodity and place education among
services governed under World Trade Organization (WTO).
New National Education Policy (NEP) The present Central Government has drafted a new National Education Policy 2016 based
on a report submitted by a committee headed by retired bureaucratic T.S.R.Subramanian.
Our understanding and critique of the
suggestions made in this Report are briefly presented below, along with reasons
for such a critique and alternate viewpoints that would support universal,
quality education in India.
Performance & Merit: Performance of the student and of
schools should be determined not only in terms of learning outcomes based on examination
scores. Instead, quality should be assessed, prospectively, by the process
through which the child acquired her knowledge and skills, and also the ability
to produce new knowledge and, retrospectively, by the way in which she
reproduces her knowledge in actually existing social conditions of life and
work. The concept of merit in fact contains hidden
biases, for example variations in the social and family background of the
student, and in the learning environment at school and at home including the
additional assistance available to the student from parents or private tutors.
Often “merit” reflects examination performance of the urban elite rather than
of the average student especially in rural areas. High quantitative scores in
controlled examination conditions based on stereotypical questions and rote
learning can also be manufactured by training and coaching prior to actual
testing, itself a big business, from small towns to metropolitan cities and
“coaching malls” in special service centres like Kota. Thus “merit” as defined in
the NEP supports only one kind of learning, rather than the well-rounded accrual
of knowledge and life-skills.
Value education: Value education is addressed as religion
and religious morality, rather than the principles and values of secularism,
freedom of religion, pluralism and freedom of opinion, democracy and critical
thinking as called for in the Constitution, and not a word is said about
academic freedom stressed by all educational thinkers. No mention is also made
of the fact that in some States such as Gujarat and Rajasthan, Hindu scriptures
and mythological epics have been introduced into school curricula and
textbooks, and observance of Hindu rituals and quasi-religious performances
such as recital of Vande Mataram, performance of Surya Namaskar and Yoga are
being made compulsory, even though there are many cross-cultural and
non-sectarian prayers, cultural performances, observances, parables and lessons
in humanistic ethics and morality that could have been included in school
curricula and routines. The effort to impose majority community
Role of Students’ Unions: In a country where voting age is 18, where multi-Party
democracy prevails, and where participation of citizens in governance and
policy-making is norm but a duty or responsibility, active participation of
college and university in student union and other such representative bodies is
natural and should be welcomed. However, despite the fact that all political
parties have links with student bodies on college and university campuses, at
the government level and among the bureaucracy there has always been an active
dislike for student unions. This is reflected sharply in the TSR Subramanian
Committee’s recommendations towards the NEP, as well as in the prevailing
Lyngdoh Committee’s rules regulating students’ union functioning, elections
etc. This aversion is partly based on the perception that students unions divert
students away from their primary academic responsibilities by encouraging them
to “engage in politics,” and often mirror party politics even with active
engagements of Political Parties including in conduct of elections, and thus
bring in various malpractices associated with party politics in India.
It must be made clear that there
is nothing wrong in principle with students “engaging in politics,” if politics
is understood in its correct sense of the conceptual underpinnings of governance,
policy-making and civil society. All aspects of social, economic, cultural and
civic life involve politics which guides the very functioning of nations. In
democracies in particular, it would in fact be unnatural if any section of the
citizenry, especially adult and enlightened students, did NOT engage
politically with all issues including those they study and those they observe
and interact with outside their classrooms. Indeed, as we have seen in this
booklet, educational policy is a deeply political subject. Party politics is
only an organized reflection of politics in general. If students aged 18 and
above are expected to understand issues and vote intelligently in national
elections, they there can be nothing wrong in their having an active political
engagement with issues within their campuses as well.
The NEP visualizes various
administrative measures to “deal with” this problem, On the contrary, all
experience show that self-regulation by the student body along with the
academic community at large is the best defence against undesirable elements or
activities on campuses.
Recent events in various
Universities and Institutions of higher learning in India, such as in JNU,
University of Hyderabad, IITs in Chennai and Mumbai, and the Film & TV
Institute in Pune only highlight the contrast between the enlightened and
vibrant participation of student bodies in the democratic life of the country,
and the draconian and bureaucratic measures taken by the political leadership
to crush opinions they do not like.
India Education Service:
The NEP recommendations include the suggestion to form an elite cadre called
the Indian Educational Service (IES), similar to the IAS, to administer and
over see educational policy. While a prestigious cadre of teachers and educators
would indeed serve the cause of education well, it is highly doubtful that an
administrative cadre would achieve the desired results. This is part of a number of administrative measures advocated in the
Report, clearly revealing its bureaucratic inclinations and a perception that
sees educational institutions as administrative entities with teachers and
students at the bottom, governed from above by such an elite cadre, perhaps
drawing from the role the Committee sees being played by the IAS “ruling” over
the general population!
In
fact, such bureaucratic functions will not serve the very principles of
academic freedom and autonomy of higher education institutions that numerous
expert committees have recommended and which the government itself professes to
agree with.
Centres
of Excellence: The
Report has no specific recommendations to improve the functioning of state
Universities. Instead, the Report recommends the establishment of new “centres of
excellence” that provide quality education and facilitate. This proposal, made
earlier too under the UPA government, has not led to either more research or
innovation Instead, such centres have caused State Universities to follow their
own paths, often leading to loss of direction, faculty members leaving, and the
decay or death of many departments.
Innovation
is used here as a catch-word for outputs that could be patented and
commercialized. Such programmes leading to innovation have long been
recommended by various bodies, but no assistance has been forthcoming from the
Government especially to State Universities and other Institutions to build an
ecosystem necessary for truly encouraging students, researchers and faculty to
explore new ideas, question established notions, and engage in critical thinking
and problem-solving. Instead of supporting a lower-grade kind of interaction
with industry and defining “excellence” accordingly, efforts should be made to
stimulate knowledge creation in existing Universities and reward the display of
exemplary capabilities, especially of those from downtrodden classes and rural
areas.
A policy that nurtures special “centres
of excellence” contradicts the vision of a socially inclusive and democratic
system of Higher Education in which all citizens get equal opportunity to
access the best quality of education. Such a proposal will promote an
unwarranted hierarchy in the quality of education and training in institutions,
and freeze exclusivity in students and faculty.
Teacher Quality: The NEP Report has suggested putting in
place a mechanism of assessment of academic performance of teachers including
peer review so as to ensure academic accountability of public-funded
institutions. The Report also suggests assessment of teacher performance by
looking at the examination performance of students. However, an enlightened
education system would have a more rounded assessment methodology looking at
all aspects of the study environment along with teacher and student performance
judged over a period of time. Judging teachers purely by examination
performance of students may, in fact, put a premium on the teaching methods of coaching malls as in Kota and reduce teachers
to mechanical operators! Teachers are induced to reach their full potential in
an environment of democracy, operational freedom and freedom of expression befitting
an academic professional. And students would reach their full potential when
provided with quality teaching, a challenging learning environment and
encouragement to question, apply acquired knowledge to solve problems, and
invited to open up the horizons of her curiosity.
Pre-school education: One welcome recommendation is that pre-school
education be declared a right, and that cadres of pre-primary teachers be
developed. Similarly, pre-primary education also does not require a common
curriculum, as indicated by the Report, but a common perspective based on Early
Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for which specific curricula will have to be
devised as per concrete local conditions by States. The common schools will be the mainstream of
school education at the secondary level as well, the role Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Council for Secondary Education (ICSE) and
other streams will have to be regulated on the basis of a common concept based
on the RTE, instead of being
indiscriminately organized as they are today.
On Curricula: Given the diversity of
the education system in different States and between different types of schools,
it is clear that a centralized curriculum is not feasible. Only curricular
guidelines should be worked out at the central level, with the States being
asked to develop detailed curricula. For Higher Education, the same task should
be entrusted to the Universities as is the practice today.
Regulating
Higher Education The
NEP recommends a “comprehensive new legislative framework” for regulating
higher education, the underlying principle of which would be to provide
financial support and full autonomy to institutions ranked at the top and “to
weed out institutions, which are on the lowest rung of the scale.” Autonomy for
highly ranked institutions would mean providing incentives “to raise additional
resources by starting new programs on cost recovery basis, employment of
part-time and contractual staff on market-determined salaries, optimum use of
buildings and other assets, and regular increase in fees without Government
approval”. This virtual division of higher education institutions into an elite
category that would be financially supported and encouraged including through
autonomy, and an ordinary category that would be slowly weeded out or in other
words closed, would mean a sharp restriction of access to higher education, as
discussed under “Centres of Excellence” above and “Accreditation” below.
New approach to Accreditation So far, the concept
of accreditation and quality evaluation was aimed at deciding eligibility for
Government grants, as the NEP 2016 itself records. Now it recommends a reorientation
towards assessment of quality and the promotion of competition between
institutions for funds. This means needs of institutions w would be ignored and,
instead, focus would shift to their ability to raise funds which may be
attracted for a number of reasons unrelated to quality of education provided.
Such accreditation would also work against the effort towards social
inclusion. For instance, public-funded colleges and universities are
required to function in very different conditions compared to well-funded private
or foreign universities. The former admit more students, have typically
under-funded infrastructure and under-staffed labs, libraries and offices. Yet,
they play an important role towards ensuring a more inclusive environment for both
students and faculty, which should be encouraged. The social, cultural and
intellectual diversity in these institutions should be utilized to lay firmer
foundations for social justice and democracy.
Accreditation as proposed in the
NEP Report will effectively push public institutions towards privatization due
to the very criteria of ability to attract funds. In fact, if Government notes that certain
institutions are not well managed, it should take appropriate measures to
rectify the situation and improve these Institutions instead of devaluing them
and permanently relegating them to some inferior grade.
Right to Education
(RTE): If one accepts the spirit of the RTE act and wants to
implement it seriously, then the only possibility that emerges is that the
entire education from 6 to 14 is integrated under a framework of common schools, without gradations such
as KVs, Navodaya Vidyalayas, various transitional schools to CBSE and other
Board examinations and so on. The common school, will strictly work on a
neighbourhood principle admit all children without caste, class, gender,
religion or region teach children in the mother tongue as the medium.. Furthermore,
worldwide the common school has helped society advance and provide quality
institutions for all the people.
Two other suggestions also
militate against the spirit of the RTE.
The NEP Report attempts to make a
proviso that all minority schools should admit 15% of students from
economically weaker sections which, minority institutions assert, will work
against their minority character and dilute it. On the contrary, effort should
be to actively assist the endeavour of minority institutions to reform and
improve themselves instead of imposing external conditions.
The second is to amend the no
detention policy, with the policy being limited up to the fifth standard, and
after that a suitable form of remedial teaching being adopted for children who
lag behind. Such compromises are cumbersome and unwarranted.
Over-centralization
and bureaucratization India
has come a long way as regards the organization of its education system. One of
the dominant trends has been to gradually centralize the system with the Union
Government playing an ever greater in framing the system and regulating it.
This trend is further accentuated in the NEP Report which seeks to centralize
all ideas and processes, based on the premise that performance of State
governments is poor and that only the Centre can deliver. The Constitution
provides considerable autonomy to the States in education and this need to be
safeguarded.
If left unchecked, this trend will
be a major impediment in the development of local and regional initiatives
which are very important in the growth of education in a country of great
diversity such as India. This becomes even more important as education is a field
that is essentially participatory and democratic, which cannot be carried out
without the active participation of the teachers, students and the
neighbourhood community. The very dynamics of this process is impeded if the whims
and fancies of a group of individuals in the capital are imposed on the States,
however brilliant or innovative these individuals may be. In the present
context, this also sharply increases the dangers of imposition of a saffron
agenda with religious, linguistic and caste-based biases being thrust upon
States, regions and communities with very different cultures and
backgrounds. Disturbing trends along
these lines are already visible in both school and university education.
For instance, the emphasis being put
on Sanskrit and Vedic–Puranic traditions, with both being associated
exclusively with ancient Indian culture to the exclusion of all other cultures
and traditions, is a dangerous trend. An understanding of the ancient Indian
civilization which consists of many religious and cultural strands, and
includes both indigenous and international inputs, are extremely important for
cultivating a multi-cultural pluralist national identity and building a
humanistic value-system for India’s precious democratic system. Imposition of
an idea of India based on unitary conceptions of Indian religion, culture and
language, and a false history deliberately constructed to promote such a view
point, is not only contrary to the real history of the Indian civilization and
nation, but also to the direction in which modern India needs to go. The
educational system in India must be protected from such wrong ideas so that the
citizens of tomorrow are not brought up on distorted ideas.
The New
Education Policy as currently structured does not offer a new vision of the school
and university as required for playing a critical role in the development of a
modern India.
Hidden agenda in the New Educational
Policy? It is true to say that all educational policies serve certain
ideological purposes or, put another way, serve to embody and promote certain
developmental ideas of the government of the day. In that sense, one could say
that the Education Policy of 1968 sought to build a large-scale school
education programme and a higher education system aimed at producing the
scientific, technical, managerial and academic needs of India’s then growing
state-sector and private industries, visualized as constituting the basis of
India’s planned economic growth with the public sector at the commanding
heights. The Education Policies of 1986 and 1992 were designed to cater to the
demands of an economy being liberalized and globalized, with greater role for
private enterprises, market forces and managers suited for this environment.
The NEP 2016 is based on a neo-liberal policy frame and an economy clearly
operating under the LPG framework which requires an educational system that not
only caters to, but is also itself governed by, market forces and a globalized
economy.
In the present
context, it is visualized that need is for professional and managerial personnel
particularly for the burgeoning service sector, as well as skilled and
unskilled workers again including the service sector. The corporate sector both
Indian and foreign/MNC is constantly complaining about the shortage of skilled
workers and professionals in India as required for this kind of economy, and
that the products of the existing higher education system are not employable
without a huge amount of retraining by user-entities in the absence of a suitably
structured education system. Added to this is the demand by Hindutva forces to take
advantage of a BJP-majority government to impose that ideology throughout the
country utilizing the educational system and cultural institutions.
Experts have
argued that the era of globalization of capital brings in its train a process
of the destruction of education understood in its broadest sense as a system
for promoting broad-based knowledge, critical thinking and innovation in all
spheres. In India, the destruction of education occurs from two directions, the
commoditization of education,
and the “saffronization” of
education.
It is
significant that almost every document prepared by the present government on education
emphasizes the need for privatization,
and for “public-private partnership”.
Education is thus being converted into a commodity sold by private
profit-making institutions and conversion of the educated into products that
are socially insensitive and thus open to “saffronization.”
Corporate
capital requires “skills” not
“knowledge,” the latter being essential for critical engagement of the
world. Hence, the world over, there is a neglect of the social sciences and the
humanities right from the school curriculum, and an overemphasis on mechanical
application of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills.
Serious reservations have also been expressed by
educators and intellectuals on the rowing trend of stifling dissent, free
thinking and pluralism in Universities across the country. This on-going
endeavour by the ruling dispensation is aimed not only at imposing a singular
view of Indian history and culture, nationalism and the “idea of India,” but
also at crushing all efforts at building and promoting critical thinking, a
scientific outlook and pluralism of thought and action, the very foundations of
a modern, democratic society.
It is noteworthy that targets include all manner of
progressive ideas and concepts promoting social justice. The crushing of
discussion for a run by the Ambedkar Study Circle at IIT, Madras, and the
series of events at Hyderabad University culminating in the tragic suicide of
Rohith Vemula are just a few examples. The students’ resistance movement in
Delhi, “occupy UGC”, aimed
precisely to protect social justice in higher education and publicly-funded
socially useful research which the government was terming “unproductive.” The prolonged struggle against victimization,
saffron intimidation and false allegations of “anti-national” behaviour by
students and faculty of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in
Delhi is another example of the destructive and pernicious attitudes and
actions of the Hindutva forces as well as a tribute to the fighting qualities
of the broad democratic movement against the efforts of the present ruling
dispensation to crush all criticism and to enforce the neo-liberal system on
the educational system.
Role of the People’s Science
Movement PSM has been intervening
in Literacy and Education since its inception.
The National Educational policy-2016 is detrimental to our educational
system in numerous ways, and to our very democracy itself. PSM should oppose
the NEP 2016 and fight for inclusive education with critical thinking and a scientific
temper.
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें