Hillary Clinton's Visit and the debate on Education

Recently there was a major event organized by TFI, a discussion on education hosted by Arnab Goswami, the loud mouthed journalist editor-in-chief of Times Now with Hillary Clinton and Aamir Khan participating in it. The choice of Hillary Clinton and Aamir Khan at the first place is quite funny. With all due respects, Hillary might be involved in charities involving education throughout her career, but does she have the understanding on what are the issues plaguing Indian Education system? Don’t we have enough heroes and experts who have worked at the grass-roots all through their life? Hillary at least has a good public profile and can atleast provide inputs based on American education system, but what is more shocking is Aamir as a brand ambassador for education. What’s his contribution to the educational sector? A few photo-op events and Taare Zameen Par should make him a brand ambassador? It sounds utterly ridiculous to me. Much more shocking is Nandita Das. Same question, what’s her contribution to education? Films on liberalism, individual freedom, lop sided views on Gujarat riots?

Since my team lead left his job to join the TFI program, I got to attend a call hosted by a TFI coordinator. The talk was unimpressive because the coordinator was not in a position to answer many critical questions posed by the audience. They have set for themselves lofty ideals of eradicating illiteracy. But they don’t have a time frame to do so, nor do they have resources. They also don’t seem to know that by the time they teach 500 kids the population in the same bracket of illiterate people multiplies manifold. They also didn’t answer my question on what are they planning to do to overcome the general aversion that kids have for studies? Rich or poor I have not come across a kid who is more than happy to study, do his home-work. Everything answer would boil down to “Yeah we know the problem; there are different ways to look at things. Problems are too complex.” If the problems are too complex, they need to split into simple ones. I don’t think it’s any different from the way we solve complex mathematical problems. The underlining point here is not to demean the TFI, but to say that thorough analysis of the Indian education is the first step. They are only looking at one aspect of lack of good teachers, which is just one of the problems out of a pool of many other issues. Moreover it looks like a blatant copy of Teach for America. Why should something work for India, which worked for America?
Now coming to the TFI interacting session, I did find some of the thoughts of Hillary very relevant and most of what Aamir spoke utter nonsense.


Hillary hits the nail on the head, when she says
“But, every child must get that chance to be able to nourish his/her own future and for me education is a great equalizer and a gateway to opportunity. It does start in a family. ”
Exactly, there should be awareness. We don’t see those wonderful rashtriya saksharta mission ads anymore. So where is the awareness?

Her study of the behavioral patterns during Bill Clinton’s governorship in Texas, based on the economic strata is also laudable. Do we have any such scientific studies done in analyzing the problems plaguing Indian education? It’s unfortunate that our over-zealous HRD minister makes lofty statements on introducing grading system, scrapping of 10th board exams, One India One board. All that he can say is that the system has worked in Germany without any study done in Indian context. It’s a farce to say that grading system will reduce the burden and pressure on students. It’s surely a better way of judging students, but it’s bound to increase the pressure on students with weekly tests etc. But, I am surely looking forward for the Right to Education act. Hope Mr.Sibal doesn’t go back on this. He already made a fool out of himself when he said he will scrap 10th board exams and after much uproar he had to swallow his words and limit his experiments to a few CBSE schools.

And now Aamir

“We as a country, as a society should be giving so much importance to teaching that every kid coming out of the college should feel like I want to be teacher. It should be the highest paid job.”
Really!! How will you make teaching the highest paid job dear?? Teachers don’t need money dear; they need social security, state patronage and need to have an inherent quality to serve. Our gurukula system fit the bill in all sense because, the gurukulas got state patronage. The gurus had a sense of duty to the society and the parents of the students made sure the guru and his familys daily needs are met by sending a part of their produce. It’s not to say that we need to have kids begging for alms. But we need to decentralize the education system. Dharmapal records that India had more schools before the arrival of British than after based on his study of British archives. The same proposition was professed by Gandhiji in his newspaper as well. Read Dharmapal’s works here http://www.samanvaya.com/dharampal/ . Can’t we devote some efforts in understanding these works? Can we devote some time in understanding how our ancestors dealt with the issue of education?
One more gem from Aamir: P

“What disturbs me more about education in India is that so much emphasis is given on competition? We have to teach our kids to be loving and caring. ”
The problem is not competition. There shall always be competition in all fields, the best always survive. The problem is too that many people take up “hot” topics. During the pre-independence everyone wanted to become a barrister. Early independence, everyone either wanted to be in civil services or study civil engineering and land a job in the Public works department. Presently it’s no more different we all go with the flow to become IT engineers, Financial Analysts. I will be frank to say that I am also a victim of the same “go with the flow” attitude. I am not to be blamed if I want to go with the flow. Policy makers have the onus on them to invest in the not so hot topics in the larger interest of the nation. How many people want to become archeologists, marine scientists etc? Are we creating quality centers of expertise in all these fields?

BTW, what the eff does Aamir mean when he says we need to teach our kids to be loving and caring? With moral science courses and text books full of Gandhisms we have too many who behave like loving and caring ones.  He speaks as though our schools are breeding terrorists and hate-mongers.

One of my friend said such sheer exhibitionism doesn’t even affect 0.000000000003% percent of the population. The need of the hour is not such arm chair discussions. We have had enough of it. What we need is thorough scientific analysis of our education system coupled with concrete actions.

Interestingly the much reviled Saraswati Shishu Mandirs are doing exceptionally well in Orissa. (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/sangh-schools-score-high-in-orissa/483926/0). They don’t have any celebrity endorsements or media sponsors.