But the ministers, policy makers turn it into a consumer product
The rest of the crowd, the private sector educators and the money-minting machines turn it into a fast moving consumer goods sector!
Is this all about education we have got to say? You see we are at this sector, at this journal for the past half a century. But we are not called a brand, or an icon or a legend! We would have called ourselves so if only we too played the marketing game, right?
But education is after all something above all these petty and narrow considerations. Education, we believe and it is actually so through all the historic periods, is all about man’s imaginations, aspirations and search for some certainties only through education and speculation and daring to predict the future forever! Education, to quote another famous line, is a search for beauty in all its simplicity!
Man has evolved through the history by this constant search and unceasing quest and we see where we have come all through these processes. That is education, please all stakeholders, understand and concede to some of these eternal verities!
Now, we read that the HRD minister, the hon’ble Jawdekar has a quota to allot seats in the Kendriya Vidyalayas under the HRD control. Is this news, we ask. Yet this is reality on the ground. The HRD minister this year has allotted 6,500 admission requests, commands that we all know would be obeyed instantly! His quota is only 450 but he has exceeded owing to pressures. His predecessor did the same. So, this continues, this process of recommending admissions to some of the low-fee high quality secondary education! But as a HRD minister he has an obligation to the larger society.
Education in India, right now, is not in the best of health. We don’t know, there is no way to know it, whether the Prime Minister knows what is the state of education. Education in a society like ours is a highly exploited subject. Society being what it is, an unequal and inequitable society has to have some long-term perspective.
Given the stage at which we find ourselves as a free country, we have to go a long way ahead. We have to fight for justice, social justice and an enlightened society; we have to debate, articulate what sort of an enlightened society and a civilization we aspire to. The class structure in the country is such that we have to reach out to a better integration of the various classes. Then, there is the caste society, that too the Hindutva conception of the Hindu society as it is, we have to weaken the hold of the entrenched caste system. There were just some nine or so castes, we are told in the beginning. But today the castes are getting split into new castes and sub castes and we do practice still a caste based politics, right? Or wrong?
So, politicians, given their mental horizon would only play for consolidation of the castes only.
So, we as thinkers and leaders should have a moral duty, commitment to see that at least in our education system, as we are able to have now, no undue advantage is taken by the middle classes that are now becoming more and more prone to corruption, corrupt practices to get admissions to other consumer goods and services. So, the middle class driven quotas and reservations and the quotas in the KVs must be resisted. The education minister must set a good precedent to resist this temptation to corrupt our education system.
Once you resolve to resist this temptation then other good things would come about. The secondary schools in the states, mostly run by the state governments are in dire need of up gradation. So, the government schools where the poor go, would get justice in terms of any new facilities. Use the IT tools to impart quality education in the government schools.
Just now we read that the SSLC results in government schools show very varying standards.
Where the poorest results come through the governments must introduce only the latest technologies in imparting quality instructions. Some balancing of government policies in terms of allocation of funds to introduction of IT tools must be the high priority. The HRD must bring some of the tools, like corporate social responsibility into the government schools sector in the most neglected regions, say in the tribal belts or backward regions.
The HRD ministry news must be about the big picture, not about the nitty-gritty of pandering to the petty demands like admissions to schools. We know from our personal sources that even the other Cabinet Ministers, why even the PMO sometimes come into the prestigious secondary school domains.
Public schools are another area where we have to concentrate. These schools are supposed to to produce leaders, of society and polity! Now, they too produce only clerks and other jobs seekers category only. A great pity, indeed!