NEW STRATEGY FOR EDUCATION

- Leena Mehendale

I.          INTRODUCTION

 

            The fast deterioration in the social life and the loss of ethical values in India in the last fifty years are quite obvious and they are the indices of the ineffectiveness of our educational system.  The problems currently facing the country as a whole are excessive population growth, extreme poverty, increasing number of families below poverty line, a widening economic gap between rich and poor sections, rising inflation, capital flight, rising unemployment, corruption and lethargy in government offices leading to worsening of government administration, loss of moral and ethical values in all sections of the society, wide spread corruption, indifference towards nationalistic commitments, brain drain and scarcity of resources.  All this results in accelerating the deterioration of social order and harmony. 

 

            While each of the above problems may appear to have a short term solution which is independent of the other problems, holistic view of the above problems brings one to a realisation that the remedy has to be a comprehen sive and long term remedy.  It is then appreciated that the solution demands character building as one important ingradient and hence it will come only through the process of education.

 

            It is also apparent that the present system of education is not geared to give either short term or long term solution to the  above problems.  In the following pages I have made an attempt to highlight what should be the objectives of education, and the main reasons why/how the present system fails to achieve these objectives.  Further on, I have given an outline of the new strategy which I propose for correcting these lacunae.

 

II          WHAT ARE THE OBJECTIVE OF EDUCATION?

 

            A)        From the point of view of the SOCIETY or the NATION-

 

            The society or the nation is a harmonious group of individuals.  The maintenance of this harmony is the mjor prerequisite for the existence or development of the society.  So the system of education in a society must be such which preserves, propogates and perpetuates education and also leads to betterment of the society.

 

            The betterment of the society can be partly measured by answering some questions as:

 

Is the society gorwing richer?

Is there enought material production and materialistic gains?

Does the socio-economic system permit equitable distribution of wealth and production?

Is there a reduction in the drudgery of the common man?

Does the environm,ent permit pursuit of excellence?

Does the environment permit inculcation and establishment of ethical and personal value systems alongwith pursuit of freedom and fearlessness?

Do the prople have a sense of commitment towards:

 

a)         the society,

b)         the cultural and philosophical heritage,

c)         the nation?

Do people regard contentedness as a cherished value?

Does the society uphold truth as the ultimate goal?

 

            The answers of above questions must be given in an integrated fashion.  The pursuit of any of them in isolation will make the society’s growth lop sided.  For example, as the experience of western countries has shown, an increase in the richness alone, not coupled with contentment can also lead to disastrous results.

 

            The above questions also give us a clue to objectives of education for an individual.

 

            B)        From INDIVIDUAL’S point of view:-

 

            The education for an individual,

           

            -           Must make him better equipped to earn his living.

            -           Must encourage him to the pursuit of excellence.

            -           Must build up the sense of belonging towards the society and the nation.

            -           Must build up the sense of compassion and friendliness towards others.

            -           Must bring in appreciation of social harmony.

            -           Must inculcate dignity of human life and human labour.

 

III        SHORTCOMINGS OF THE PRESENT SYSTEM

 

            Our constitution is committed to the principle of equality of opportunities.  For this, universalisation of education is absolutely necessary.  As a policy we have a committment to the universalisation of education.  We also have a system of education with a well developed, broad base and a standardised syllabus.  Still we have not been able to achieve universalisation even at the elementary level.  Resource crunch  appears to be the major reason.  However, this is not the only cause.  There are certain inherent defects in the present education system.  These have been high-lighted from time to time in the reports of various committees as well as by various academicians and thinkers. Without going into details I would enlist some of them which may or may not have been opioned elsewhere.

 

1.         The present system fails to imbibe ethical and nationalistic values in the             individual.

 

2.         With the present system of education perhaps the information level of the individual goes up.  However, the ability of logical thinking, scientific attitude, and appreciation of art,            beauty or excellence is not created.  Education must make a man a thinker and a worker simultaneously.  This is not achieved in the present system of education.

 

3.         There is a serious lack of vocational training.  Education must generate a desire and confidence in an individual to acquire skill and strength in his two hands and to use them.  Since this is not generated we have lost the sense of dignity of human labour and of human strength.

 

4.         The present system prepares a man mainly to work in clerical jobs.  Hence there is a tremendous drain of educated unempoyed people from rural to urban areas.  This leads to a complete breakdown of civic facilities in urban areas and to an enormous quality deterioration in rural areas, both being great problems for all our planners.  Brain-drain to developed countries is a further menace.

 

            5.         The type of vocational syllabus presently available is also meant  to prepare highly professional groups for whom the market is available only in cities.  Vocational courses which are available today are mostly for typists, stengoraphers, business managers, computer programmers, etc. which cater to the needs of urban areas.  Vocational courses relevant for rural areas have not been designed.  The package of education should be such which will upgrade the knowledge and skill of the village farmer or a village artisan which will improve his earnings and facilitate his staying back in rural areas and not force him to leave the village and settle in urban areas.

 

            6.         The biggest draw-back of the present system of education is wastage of time in the life of the student.  It is not yet fully appreciated by us in India that Time is a major investment.  In present system, to reach a respectable level of education, one has to spend atleast ten years to reach the level of Matriculation.  At the end of such a long Time investment the student is ill-equipped to earn something on his own and he becomes necessarily a job seeker.  Since jobs are not available he has to, per force, enrol himself for higher education spending additional four to six years in the hope that this will increase the chances of getting a job.  At the end there is no guarantee of employment and this leads to frsutration.  Thus after investing a lot of time and money not only  of his family but also of the society, one finds the process of education to be a futile exercise for satisfying his imemdiate needs.  This leads to a feeling that the way to a job or to riches is not through education, efficiency or honesty but through favouritism, corruption, dishonesty or violence.  This has led to the erosion of value system. On the other hand no education means a sure loss both to the individual and to the society.

 

            7.         The wastage of time hits hard at the poorer section.  In the families below poverty line a child is considered and used as an earning member of the family right at the age of seven years.  The parents in the poor families cannot afford to send the child for schooling for a long and continuous period of ten years.  Therefore the system of education must be developed with such children in mind who can attend schools only for four years at the most.  If at all they can join the schooling system again, it will be possible for them only after a long gap.  Hence the package of education should be such where vocational and academic trainings are well-integrated so that the children coming our of schools after four years would definitely have acquired at least a semi-skill if not the total skill.  For those  who can attend school for another three years or five years, higher skills can be imparted.  This idea will be elaborated further shortly.

 

            8.         The total expenditure on education in the present system is very high.  There is a very littel scope for providing additional sizeable outlay for spending on education.  Two possible solutions which have been suggested are (i) to privatise the education (so that the education administration will be taken up only by those who can manage it and the actual schooling will be undertaken by those who can afford it -- this is also a popular remedy suggested by IMF and World Bank to many of its borrower countries of the hird world) or (ii) to reduce outlay for higher education and divert it to elementary education.  Both are defective because the first forgets about the goal of universalisation of education while the second forgets the need of the nation for having highly skilled and professional groups also.

 

IV.       SUGGESTED STRATEGY

 

1.         Introduce vocational education from the beginning:

 

            There can be no two opinions about the need for introducing a much higher quantum of vocational education.  In the present system the bias is entirely in favour of academic inputs at least in the initial period.  In the present set up of (10+2+3) systematic vocational education starts only at the +2 stage, that is, only after the initial ten years of academic education; this is too late.  A small attempt at earlier vocational education is made by providing a subject of “work experience” at standard eight in the schools.  However, there is no proper integration of the syllabus of work experience with subsequent vocational/technical/professional education.  For the rural poor even the Time Investment of seven years is quite difficult.  This has resulted in rendering the education irrelevant for a large section of the society.  As the result of this the returns on the investment in education sector are very low both from the point of view of the individual as wel as the country.  Hence introduction of vocational education and its proper integration with the academic syllabus from the very beginning of the schooling is immediately needed.

 

            It must be emphasised further  that this syllabus must be uniform for all.  No distinction must be made and  no separate or optional syllabi be provided for those who may want to opt for education with academic bias alone.

 

            This recommendation may necessitate the raising of the age of entry to 6 or 7 years.  Some may feel that it will surely necessitate an increased budget provision on primary education.  However, as discussed ahead, this increase will not be very substantial.

 

2.         Condense the present syllabus

 

            The present span of education should be drastically condensed.  What is presently covered in the first four years can really be covered in two years if designed more imaginatively.  With this, one can integrate a proper vocational syllabus so as  to make a four year primary education course.  In these four years a student coming out of the school will have covered a good basic understanding of two or three vocations, and selectively he would have covered the academic syllabus up to the present seventh standard.  He would thus definitely have a better earning capacity.  Such a programme could be easily and effectively supplemented through distance learning on television network which has penetrated in all rural areas.  The course presently covered in next five years, this is, upto + 2 stage (12th standard) can also be condensed to three years.  Next comes the present five years period of college education (under graduate + post graduate).  This should be either condensed or utilised for acquisition of high technical skills, keeping these two options open for the students.

 

            Thus the new course will be of 4+3+5 or twelve years duration as against the present duration of seventeen years.

 

            Something must be said here in brief about the coverage of subjects.  In the new four years course the emphasis will be on such subjects which promote scientific attitude, thinking capacity, respect of moral values, especially Truth, compassion towards others, and appreciation of art.  In addition great emphasis will be needed on the acquisition of skills and vocation.  These vocations must be more relevant for rural life which means that they have to be suitable to bring a wide range of intermediate technologies.  So the stress will have to be on the subjects such as arithmatic, literacy, language, poetry, agriculture, soil and environment, botany, smithy, masonry work, marketing, handicraft, commerce, account keeping, horticulture, team games, stage performance, water management, afforestation, horticulture and agriculture practices, basic electronic assembly work, fisheries, sericulture etc.  This list of vocations is very wide and a syllabus has to be prepared for each keeping in mind the possible end use and proper integration.

 

            Thus the present emphasis on knowledge alone will be changed into a balanced emphasis on knowledge, attitude and skills - the three pillars of any education system.

 

            When a short time of four years spent in education is also found useful and relevant for immediate earning, then ordinarily it would satisfy the basic needs of the people and this will tend to make them more orderly and generous towards others.

 

            It can be argued that the attempt of basic education based on Gandhian philosophy has failed long ago and it may not be, therefore, worthwhile to pursue vocational training from the beginning of the schooling system.  However, it is necessary to examine the causes of failure of the pattern of basic education which was tried out during the late fifties.  In those days the basic education was considered synonymous with total ban on mechanisation.  Hence the courses included in basic education pattern had never gone beyond charkha spinning, or sowing or weeding operations on the schools, agriculture plots.  It was not appreciated that for establishing wider industrial base we have to encourage such intermediate vocations, which will permit the spread of low capital intensive industries in rural areas whre a combination of mechanisation/automation alongwith a sizeable employment generation would be achieved.  With complete negation of mechanisdation one cannot survive in competition with the developed countries’ it would also leead to inefficient and wasteful use of material resources available with us.  On the other hand, to plan blindly in favour of heavy automation will lead to large scale employment and thus tremendous wastage of human resources and human potential.  The experience of basic education failed mainly because it would not recognise the importance of balanced mechanisation or the need or preparing the syllabi for appropriate vocational courses.

 

            It it, therefore, advocated that the present pattern of education 10+2+3+2 (for post graduate) or 10+2+5 (for technical degrees such as engineering, doctor, Chartered accountant, etc.) should be condemned to a new pattern of 4+3+5 in which the last stage would b e recognised as degree education or college education.  At present the syllabus starts with hundred percent thrust on academic side while vocational component is introduced only after seven to ten years.  Instead, the new pattern will start with a much higher thrust on vocational component and the academic component will gradually increase up to fifty percent in the second or +3 stage.  The syllabus can be gradually expanded to include more and more interdepartmental subjects, as a student goes to higher classes.  In fact, some of us who agree with this idea have already started working on detailed syllabi preparation.

 

3.         Make teaching a precondition for admission to higher education.

 

            It shoule be made compulsory that every student who desires to undertake higher education (+5 stage) should work as the teacher himself before he is given admission for higher education.  This policy is most urgently needed for two reasons: firstly the teaching services will help to reduce the budget requirement on education because the service will be available at less costlier rate than the services of normal terachers.  The present shortage of teachers can also be taken care of.  Secondly this will also lead to sense of commitments towards the society and help in developing a feeling of compassion and harmony.  The teaching need not be compulsory for those who may want to leave the school after completion of their seven years.  At that point a person will be adequately skilled both in vocational and entrepreneurial fields to be able to start his earnings in life.  Because of the vocational bias he will not be completely dependent on wage employment as in the present system; not will he be dependent on urban oriented white or blue collared jobs.  This in itself will reduce the burden on budget expenditure for higher education.  An analysis of the student going for present day college education shows that at least forty percent of them attend the college because they have not found any worthwhile job and they expect that the college education will improve their chances of giving a job.  When such a person is permitted to enter into the main stream of life his vocational bias has improved his chances of self employment or wage employment, the burden on college education will reduce greatly.  This in itself is desirable from the point of view of the budget and resource deployment.  I feel that the compulsion of teaching need not be imposed on such persons but should be limited only to those who want to take up higher education and, therefore, the society is going to spend a huge amount on themn (as the society is also paying today, for those who can afford to spend time in schools/colleges).

 

            It should, therefore, be made compulsory that anyone who seeks admission to college education must work as a teacher for one year.  After three years in college, he must do teaching job for one more year, and the person wanting to avail of foreign scholarships or doctorates must render teaching services for a third year.

 

            Many questions may be raised on this suggestion.  But I consider three of them to be more pertinent.  First is how to streamline the deployment of a huge number of students every year.  For this, administrative machinery of the education department will have to work more deligently, but this is not a very difficult task.  Gradually as more population will go into earning directly, this number will also reduce to some extent.  Second question is whether these student-teachers will have any commitment towards the students or the teaching job which is a compulsory imposition on them.  I think that a totally negative view is not warranted.  Young and impressionable students coming out of school are still filled with ideology.  It will also be necessary to emphasize this ideology during their student days.  In any case, no improvement in the education inputs or in the social condition can be expected if proper ideology and attitudes are not imbibed as a part of value system.  Third will be the question of their having proper teaching skills.  This can be taken care by introducing this subject in their earlier course itself, but more pertinent is the fact that presumably they will all be bright students and hence fast on picking up teaching skills.

 

            I feel that the teaching service should not, however,. be completely without remuneration.  They should be paid half the salary of a usual teacher.

 

            The concept of social service is not new, for example medical interness are rendering social service in the field of health.  However, when a teaching service is rendered, it helps reducing the budget on education.  The teacher himself leans the qualities of leadership, compassion and commitment.  It is true that lot of efforts have to be made during the student phase for inculcating the right values because the society depends very much on the qualities and right attitudes of a teacher.  These efforts are particularly necessary in those areas whre the teacher’s qualities and atitudes need to be different from a  manager’s qualities and attitudes. For example, a manager should learn how to utilise the strong points of a person to get the best work out of him but the teacher must learn how to locate the weak points of a person and be able to correct them.  I emphasize this point because in today’s education the thrust is on equipping a student to be a better manager and not a better teacher.

 

4.         Introduce the network of creches/mobile creches / Anganwadies

 

            In rural areas one important reason why the universalisation of education has not been achieved or why the percentage of girls going to schools in less is that the elder children of the family, especially the girls are required to look after the younger children.  If a well deveoloped network of creches and anganwadies is established it will serve four main objectives:

First: it will relieve the elder child for going to school.

Second: it will allow the rural women folk to feel free from the anxiety of their children and this will increase their productivity on the jobs.

Third:  it will be much easier to introduce health care service to this group of children with a much better success rate.

Fourth: Some useful attitudes such as cleanliness, sharing, team work, discipline, inquisitiveness etc. can be taught to them together.  This is the right stage and atmosphere where the pleasures of learning can be revealed most imaginatively and effectively to a child.

 

5.         Ensure local participation

 

            For this purpose it is suggested that for every locality of two to three hundred families there should be a school and the management of the school should be given largely to the people of the locality.  Initially this will have to be restricted only for primary schools because this will necessitate that people should be first of all motivated to understand that education is their responsibility also.

 

            How to involve parents and even non parent residents in a more meaningful education will be a subject for a different discussion/article.  But one idea needs to be elaborated.  The vocational skills taught in various schools must be networked and interlinked by using some spatial planning techniques, so as to  provide a bigger variety and choice.  The parents participation can be useful in this.  It will also be useful in resource generation, proper inspection and immediate appreciation, leading to motivation, commitment and qualitative development.

 

            I also feel that a student will be facilitated to choose a subject of his liking because (i) he will be exposed to many vocations and (ii) because of the participation of the whole community he will have a more realistic understanding of the professsional needs of the society to which he can devote himself.  The concept of “Education through the subject of liking or inherent aptitude” can be practised better when we have a spatial network and community participation.

 

V.        In sumary

 

            Two areas of thrust have been discussed.  One is to adopt early vocationalisation coupled with shortened span so as to orient Education towards self sufficiency and make it less expensive, both time wise and money wise.  Second is to emphasize the building up of attitudes like Truthfulness, Commitment, compassion, friendliness and honesty.  It is felt that the introduction of this new strategy will make education more relevant and less expensive thus ensuring a better coverage.  This harmony and social order is highly dependent on our being able to provide equal opportunities as well as a more relevant education.  Only such an education can ensure peace and development in the society.