Education: task before India

  WHILE I agree with Mr J.N. Puri on some of the points he has made in his article, “Education and character: the task before India” (March 22), I am sceptical about certain others.

It is true that mainstream curriculum and teacher-training programmes leave much to be desired, the mainstream curriculum is culturally and developmentally tendentious and prosaic. Similarly, teacher-training programmes are woefully limited, leading to inept and insipid class-room teaching. All these factors result in the disenchantment of people with education, thereby leading to high drop-out rates and hence illiteracy.

However, I do not quite agree with the author when he calls our education policy “directionless”. How can it be called directionless when it has on its agenda such development-oriented schemes as vocational education, mass education, Scheduled Castes education, Scheduled Tribes education, women’s polytechnics, computer literacy, etc? However, it is true that the grand sweep of the goal is not matched by the sincerity to implement them. The government is lackadaisical when it comes to implementing them.

The author takes a censorious view of an innocuous, nay a positive, aspect of the education policy. He views its philanthropic orientation in negative terms. I ask: what is so glorious about our schools being teaching shops, which they unfortunately are at present. He also takes a dim view of “a segregated approach towards the girl child, minorities, backward castes...” I, on the other hand, believe that exclusive attention towards these segments of society is the need of the hour. It will lead to an intensive care of these people, which will help in their all-round amelioration.

Finally, the author is ambivalent towards the role of science and technology in the cultural context. He bemoans that technological advancement, apart from educational and economic decline, poses a “real danger” to the traditional culture. However, in the same breath, he lauds the generation of new ideas in the scientific field because they serve as inputs in the growth of a new “live and robust culture”.

AKHILESH
Birampur (Garhshankar)

The challenges today: The purpose of education, as I visualise, is to enable children to lead good life when they leave the school. Although the exact constituents of good life for any individual are endlessly debatable, some general demands are not.

In particular, children need to learn how to work so that they need not depend on charity or care of others; they need to learn how to behave decently and honestly, and they need to have their imagination brought to life.

Much of what gets taught in schools is inevitably a paternalist activity; therefore, it needs to be remembered that the customers are children who do not in any straightforward manner know what it is that they require.

Parents send their children to school in the mistaken belief that the school is the bridge beyond which jobs await them. They realise too late that what looked like a job was only a mirage. They have learnt a lot which is totally irrelevant to their task of coming to terms with the grim realities of life.

They learnt this not because they themselves fancied it but for the stupid reason that some persons sitting in an ivory tower thought it was good for them.

What, for instance, is the point in making a school boy with proven aptitude for, say, English or Punjabi learn a lot of arithmetic which even his parents cannot claim to understand? Modern maths taught to school boys in our country today is what the Americans experimented with and discarded decades ago.

The thrust on science and technology is important and relevant. We have to strive hard to catch up and then keep pace with what is being accomplished elsewhere.

We are, in a way, preparing to equip ourselves for the tasks that lie ahead so that we are not found wanting in things that would matter in the 21st century. But an obsession with technological changes that relegate man and his social set-up into the background will beyond doubt jeopardise freedom and other cherished values.

Education, perhaps, has never faced the type of challenge the fast changing situation is posing before it today.

K.M. VASHISHT
Mansa

Tailpiece

I advised a beggar, “You are young, healthy and normal. Why do you not work for food?”

“What work is proposed for me?”

“You can have a rickshaw. You can work as a labourer. You can have a rehri, etc.”

“What shall be my earning?”

“As much as Rs 50, Rs 60 or so a day.”

“He laughed and said, “Sardarji, I come once a week and earn Rs 500. If you get me work which can bring so much money, I shall leave begging.”

I was surprised to know his answer. He continued, “Please give me alm or I should knock the next door.”

He left me standing there and was soon knocking the next door.

DALIP SINGH WASAN
Patiala