The future is upon us

Karthik Venkatesh

The importance of education has once again made it to the front pages on account of what Nobel Prize winner Venkatesh Ramakrishnan said recently at the headquarters of the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. Apart from taking potshots at governmental priorities with reference to 'meat-eating', he stated quite plainly that Indians should spend more time thinking about education, particularly in science and technology. 

That Ramakrishnan has spoken on education just a few days after the infamous Ryan School incident is something of a coincidence. Of course, it reasserts the value of education. Equally, it is perhaps a reminder to us that we need to ponder on an important question: What is the education that we are now getting and who is providing this education? Is the nature of the education that we are currently getting going to serve us well in the near future? These are the questions that need to be addressed urgently.

Privatisation of schools

Education, especially school education, is increasingly going the private way in both rural and urban areas. Much of this has to do with the changing nature of the government schooling system. In times past, government schools and teachers rendered yeoman service. All that is mostly history now and private schools of all hues rule the roost. Many are doing a fine job. Many aren't and have converted the school into a money-making machine. The government is largely reluctant to arrest the rot and, instead, prefers to further shrink the existing government school system under the guise of 'rationalisation' and 'cost-cutting'. 

The Ryan incident more than anything else is a reminder about the limitations of the grand private school that dominates parental imagination. When choosing schools, parents are easily taken in by the grandeur of massive buildings, huge playgrounds, gleaming labs, a student population in four figures (even five) and other such superficialities. The school that is under fire had all of that. It had a massive campus, facilities of all sorts and several buses to ferry its children to and fro. On paper, there were cameras everywhere and guards/ayahs on every floor. A few cameras appear to have been dysfunctional and a few guards or ayahs not actually present where they ought to have been. And hence, an unfortunate incident occurred. 

Now pause. Cameras and guards on every floor are paraphernalia that one finds in prisons. How is it that such things have become de rigueur even in schools? What kind of society mandates such things in educational institutions and why? The answer lies in how modern-day schooling is being imagined. Even as scapegoats are being found and fingers being pointed, this incident affords us a moment to think about the nature of schooling and the lines on which schools are currently run and how they ought to be developed. 

By its very nature, a schooling system run on corporate lines is a puzzling creature. The centralised nature of its management, the McDonaldisation of its curriculum, the consumerist thinking that is likely to dominate its decision-making cannot truly create an institution that 'educates' in the fullest sense and creates a thinking, sensitive individual who will contribute to society. With 'Head Office' and a mostly unseen CEO (or some other fancy designation) calling the shots from the confines of an office, management is likely to be efficient, but not sensitive and definitely, not intimate and caring. 

Schooling in such institutions is likely to be impersonal and 'at a distance'. While offering the pleasure of a grand spectacle and the likelihood of mainstream 'success', they will not give us the warmth of intimacy since anything big demands bureaucratic methods of management that impersonalise the nature of its activity, even something like education that calls for personalisation and customisation. Hence, while smart-phone apps, attendance updates on e-mail, beautiful looking activity sheets etc are bound to be part and parcel of such an institution, it is impossible for such an institution to respond to the specific needs of individual students. Equally, the orientation of such institutions is likely to be towards conventional markers of success and creating a student who will stop at nothing to achieve that 'success'. 

Now more than at any time in the past, it calls for mankind to pull together in ways that demand that a 'we-thinking' on a regular basis. It is time to think intimate and sensitive and a time to forgo the grand and think small, especially when it comes to schools. If societies do not act on creating such institutions and, instead, allow greed to overtake us, our future is a big, big question mark.

Case for a ‘neighbourhood’ school

As opposed to private schools, imagine a neighbourhood school within walking distance of the community with just a few hundred students. 

• A school that is affordable, has cost-effective labs, playgrounds, facilities for extra-curricular activities etc. 
• A school run by the community, that welcomes parental involvement and is answerable to the community. 
• A school which, while being open to suggestions, also relies on the community to put these suggestions in action. 
• A school where teachers and parents work together to match children and curriculum and pace the curriculum accordingly. 
• What will be the guiding nature of such a school? It will be one of sensitivity, of care and concern and a sense of ownership. 
• What will the nature of students who emerge from such an institution be like? They are likely to be more community-oriented, sensitive to issues and to think in terms of 'we' and not 'I'.

It is easy to dismiss such thoughts as idealistic. But reflect on the planet as it exists today. Climate change is upon us and its effects are being felt. The clock to doomsday is ticking. The world is bursting at its seams and our resources being stretched to unimaginable extents. Even drinking water appears to be on its way to becoming an endangered resource. In the near future, a very different set of challenges is likely to emerge-challenges that are of an existential nature and will call for sensitive and informed decision-making. In the face of such a crisis, what is the value of the conventional success and the 'me-first' thinking that is at the heart of the corporate schooling system?

The author is a publishing professional and  freelance writer.