PEDAGOGY OF THE INDIAN CHILD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) conducts an international test PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) to evaluate the mathematical ,English and science abilities of students at the end of compulsory education once in three years. Nearly 70 countries voluntarily opted for PISA. India participated in 2009.OECD randomly selected 16,000 students from 400 schools in Himachal Pradesh and Tamilnadu for the test. Chinese students were ranked first in all the three subjects, while Indian students did very badly. Most questions needed comprehension and reasoning skills. Rote learning is the mode of education in most schools in India. Only a small proportion of schools and teachers facilitate learning through questioning and innovation.

The paradox of our school education is that teachers (not all) in government schools give least priority to teaching, though they enjoy security of tenure, good salary and social security. In government- aided private schools, the highest bidders are selected as teachers. For instance, a school management in Kerala is reported to have taken 1.5 million rupees for a teacher’s post. Reasonable says the beneficiaries. In unaided schools, teachers are made to overwork for low compensation. Private tuition is quite common and the teachers put in their best in the tuition centres while they take it easy in the schools. In the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) conducted by the government of Tamilnadu in July 2012, not even 1 per cent passed out of a total of more than 6,80,000 teachers who appeared for the test. The re-test conducted in October 2012 with an increased duration of three hours from the earlier one and a half hours (to answer 150 multiple- choice questions) yielded only a marginal increase in the percentage of results: just 3 per cent. What analytical skills and creativity can these under- prepared teachers transmit to the children? Years ago, a Malayalam movie depicted the state of education in Kerala; an unemployed young man (Mohanlal being the protagonist) becomes an English teacher in a private school in a village producing fake certificates ( not an uncommon practice) and greasing the palms of all concerned. When students asked the teacher the English equivalent of “uppumavu or uppuma” (a popular snack which is a mixture mainly of wheat flour / “rava”, coconut and salt), the teacher impressed the students and his ignorant colleagues with the translation “salt mango tree”. Even today this translation remains a popular joke among the Malayalees, and a sad reality in many Indian schools.

A strong foundation is essential for a strong edifice. Otherwise the super structure will collapse. India’s educational pyramid has a very weak base. From primary to higher secondary levels, the education offered to the young children is generally of low quality. Lower the educational level poorer is the quality of education. India’s education industry is massive with the private entrepreneurs reaping enormous profits with low investment. The pre-school sector is almost in the hands of private profiteers.

Schools in India vary from the elite to the egregious. A large number of schools lack basic infrastructure, teachers and other facilities. Many private schools in the country are run without any recognition from the state governments. For instance, in Tamilnadu, a developed state,4.35 million students are in 10,896 private schools of which 2,600 are unrecognized schools, that is, more than one in four (2012) .Recently, Ministers in Rajasthan were heckled by the girl students of a school en masse because of shortage of teachers and lack of facilities. The Supreme Court ordered in September 2012 that all schools in the country should provide toilets (particularly to girls) and drinking water facilities within six months. It is to be seen how far this order would be complied with seriously and sincerely.

The Right to Education (RTE) Act is a watershed constitutional amendment. But the private schools, which are the custodians of the exclusive system, are determined to keep the poor and the disabled off from their “holy” precincts despite the Supreme Court verdict upholding the validity of the Act. The road ahead in realizing the vision of the RTE Act is full of hurdles and roadblocks. The government should be uncompromising in its goal of providing good education to our children, which is their right. It is irrational for the state to bear the heavy burden of higher education, when the focus of the state should be on school education, with a well- designed, complementary vocational stream. Kendriya Vidyalayas and similar schools should be set up in all parts of the country under the auspices of the government, instead of state-funded IITs, IIMs and such other institutions which can be in the private sector. It is an irony that not even a single Indian University or IIT made it to the list of top 100 universities in global ranking. Further, it is shocking that just 3.5 per cent of global research output was from India in 2010 according to the Thomson Reuters study report presented to the Department of Science and Technology of the government of India. India’s global share of research in economics was an insignificant 0.7 per cent. Surprisingly, the share of research in computer sciences by India was a meagre 2.4 per cent in contrast to China (15 per cent) and South Korea (6.3 per cent).There is a serious mismatch between these findings and India’s claim to be the future knowledge superpower. The potential of our enormous human resources needs to be fully tapped. Otherwise, India’s demographic dividend will fall far short of our national expectations.