Education is the foundation of development of any nation. Every citizen must have access to quality education at affordable price. It is against this backdrop that the current state of India’s education needs to be assessed. These are admission times and talking to any parent anxiously waiting outside a school premise will prove what the greatest concern for him or her is — finding the right school at an affordable price. legislations hardly matter if quality education is not within the reach of the common man.
Right to Education is not enough to guarantee quality education for all. Sixty-seven years of our independence and the issue of a reasonable quality school for every child still haunts us. Why have we not been able to do so is a question that begs an answer. In fact even the concept of quality of education has not been standardised. Parents do not know what quality education is. Students do not know what they are learning and why. Even teachers do not know what a student of a certain class is supposed to know.
And the biggest irony is that the schools go on experimenting with myriad of models, treating their pupils like guinea pigs. There are only hollow claims made by schools which have not education but commerce as their basic objective. We need to regulate school education which has today become a money-minting business. The managements are only interested in fleecing parents who see in the schools a means of fulfillment of those dreams they have seen for their children. And they often have to live beyond their means for this.
The schools, however, are hardly bothered. The different heads under which the fee is charged may bewitch even the wisest of parents. There is an admission fee, development fee, tuition fee, computer fee, sports fee, smart classroom fee — the list is unending. And then the books. Every year the books of different classes change so that the same books cannot be used by other children.
The most interesting thing is that the content does not change much. May be, the titles of a few chapters would have changed. The schools are now also selling school dresses, shoes, stationery, school bags and other accessories. All for money. In fact, there is less of teaching and more of cheating. What lessons are we trying to impartIJ What values are we trying to inculcateIJ
Not that children don’t understand. But they are helpless and feel guilty from within when they see their parents paying through the nose. There is one lesson that the schools may need to learn from Gandhi. It was just after the independence when a school was being opened at Vardha by an industrialist who had been a great admirer of Gandhi. He invited Gandhi at the opening of the school and sought his views on the kind of education to be imparted.
A reluctant Gandhi very humbly stated that according to him the schools should impart such an education that when a child is asked what will a man get if he buys apples at four annas a piece and sells them at one rupee a piece, the reply should be that the person will get jail. But what do we teach — good business at 300 per cent profit. Are the schools listeningIJ
The writer teaches management at Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (Jharkhand). He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com