Books
Literacy and Levels of Education in India 1999-2000 (NSS 55th Round). National Sample Survey Organisation, Government of India, 2001.
Progress Towards Universal Access and Retention by Yash Agarwal. National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), 2000, 2001 and 2002.
Gender and Social Equity in Primary Education: Hierarchies of Access coordinated by Vimala Ramachandran. The European Commission, 2002.
Elementary Education for the Poorest and Other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalisation by Jyotsna Jha and Dhir Jhingran. Centre for Policy Research, Delhi, 2002.
The Delivery of Primary Education: A Study in West Bengal. The Pratichi Trust Team, Pratichi (India) Trust, 2002.
Local Education Report (six – three rural and three urban – area reports). National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, 2002.
BASIC education is now legally a fundamental right of every child between the age of six and 14 years in India. Following the 86th constitutional amendment, which made basic education a fundamental right, the Government of India is now in the process of formulating a bill which would define the operational contours of the amendment. Several versions of the bill that is yet to be tabled in the Parliament, have been discussed and debated in policy circles. Varying opinions exist regarding what it should incorporate, especially when it comes to defining the ‘right’ in concrete terms.
Basic education as a fundamental right needs to be understood both as an absolute and relative notion. While it is important that all children are assured of a defined minimum (the minimum defined in a manner that ensures adequacy as well as suitability of opportunities and experiences), ensuring equality in education is no less crucial. Equality here refers not only to entitlements, but to opportunities and experiences. While the law defines the entitlement, provisions ensure the opportunities, and processes the experiences, only a combination of the three will ensure that the ‘right’ is exercised in its true spirit and intent.
Though varying in their objectives and focus, several recent reports and research studies in basic education provide a rich information base for wider analysis. They include both large survey based databases, indepth local reports and a combination of the two. Despite different contexts and methodologies, a number of observations and findings are similar, validating each other and thus deserving of greater attention. These studies clearly outline the challenges that exist in making basic education a fundamental right of every child.
All these reports are based on recent data and fieldwork, information largely pertaining to the period 1999-2001. Based on a large sample household survey, the NSS report provides detailed data on educational attainment levels, disaggregated for economic, social and religious groups in rural and urban areas. The NIEPA series is based on analyses of school based data from about half of the country’s districts, those covered by the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP). Apart from an analysis of available data from secondary sources, Ramachandran includes six micro studies conducted in six states. Drawing on fieldwork in 11 districts across 10 states and five urban centres, Jha and Jhingran analyse educational deprivation in different contexts and highlight the interplay of factors that impact educational participation. The Pratichi Trust Report focuses on various aspects of delivery of primary education in West Bengal and raises significant issues about quality and accountability. The six local reports covering six localities in six different states by NIAS foreground the need for a shift in the institutional role of school and school-system in order to make schooling a meaningful experience for all children.
In all its major dimensions – class, caste and gender – equity emerges as the most crucial concern in basic education. The NSS 55th round report clearly shows that educational attainment levels are the lowest for the population with the lowest per capita consumer expenditure. Only about one-fourth of the males and one-eighth of the females among the poorest one-fifth population had completed primary education as against two-third males and nearly half of the female population in the richest one-fifth population in rural areas. Among the social groups, tribals and dalits are closely followed by OBCs as educationally the most deprived. Muslims educationally are the most deprived religious group in both urban and rural areas. Educational attainment levels are significantly low for girls as compared to boys within each social, economic and religious group.
The NSS data refers to the age group of seven years and above, and it could be argued that the situation would be markedly different if only the younger age group population was in focus. Unfortunately, all evidence points to the situation being only marginally better. The Jha and Jhingran study – also based on household survey, albeit a much smaller sample – indicates that the school participation rates for the basic education age group show similar gaps and disparities between and within economic, social and religious groups. It appears that though school participation rates have increased for all groups, significant disparities across groups continue to exist. It is difficult to compare these with school-based statistics, not only because they do not differentiate between economic, religious and social groups but also because they usually do not include data from private schools. The DISE survey, on which the NIEPA analysis is based, includes data from recognised private schools but not unrecognised private schools, thereby leaving out a significant proportion of school-going children from its ambit.
Despite limitations of school based data, that too primarily from government schools, the NIEPA series which started in 1997, became more comprehensive over time and provides useful pointers. The incorporation of new parameters including disability related information, gender-segregated data for enrolment within social groups, grade-wise enrolment, medium of instruction and detailed teacher profiles have added value and reflect related issues. Decreasing social and gender disparity in terms of enrolment in government schools seem to confirm independent observations regarding shift of higher class/caste male enrolment to private schools and the overwhelming presence of girls, dalit and tribal children in government schools, especially in northern and eastern parts of the country. The NIAS local education reports, based largely on case studies of government and private schools, also confirm this trend. However, increased enrolment does not necessarily mean high completion, as the cohort analysis referred to in the NIEPA (2001) report shows. Completion rates for dalit and tribal children are significantly lower in comparison to others.
The fact that socially and economically deprived groups form a significant proportion of both government school and out-of-school children population has implications for school processes at the micro level and the government school-system at policy and macro levels. It becomes especially significant if every child is to be ensured a fundamental right to basic education. The responsibility of providing access to educational opportunities and experiences in a manner that helps them overcome their disadvantages, learn and face life from a position of strength, is enormous.
The NIEPA (2001) report1 recognizes expansion of schooling facilities, especially in DPEP districts, through opening of formal, alternative and education guarantee schools.2 However, it also recognizes that the mere presence of a school within the habitation does not ensure equal access to all children. Jha and Jhingran elaborate this issue especially in the context of dalits, tribals and other marginalised communities. Dalit families in general and the more marginalised among them in particular, reside in segregated localities that are usually the most disadvantaged in terms of physical access and facilities. Schools, on the other hand, are usually situated in localities inhabited by more dominant social group making it difficult for children from disadvantaged sections to attend. Tribal areas are usually sparsely populated with different habitations within one village remaining completely isolated from each other, and the presence of a school in one of these does not ensure participation from other habitations.
The issue of access is not limited only to the existence of a school within the habitation, though undoubtedly it is one of the most critical requirements. The presence of an adequate number of teachers, space and facilities in school is also important. While a number of recent papers and articles have highlighted the inequality between the formal and AS/EGS schools, the inequality within formal schools which continues to cover significant proportion of population in most states, has received considerably less attention. Ensuring adequate space, facilities and teachers is essential for all schools, notwithstanding the category to which they belong. The NIEPA (2000) report highlights that despite substantial investment in construction, the infrastructure position is far from satisfactory even in DPEP districts.
The highly skewed distribution of teachers worsens the situation created by a high pupil-teacher ratio (PTR). More than 50% of schools in DPEP districts had a PTR higher than 60:1 in 2001. Similarly, the problem of low availability of women teachers, except in southern states, is compounded by their concentration in a few schools, largely located in urban and near-urban areas. It is obvious from Jha and Jhingran, NIAS and Ramachandran that the situation is worse in schools located in remote habitations and areas with a larger concentration of poor, dalit and tribal population. Obviously, the political economy of social relations and power plays a role in decisions relating to distribution of resources and deployment of teachers.
The functioning of schools in terms of regularity and observation of timings, or creating meaningful learning experiences for children, is even more critical for ensuring children their right. However, it is here that the failure is most marked and obvious. Jha and Jhingran, NIAS, Pratichi Trust Report and Ramachandran make clear that schools with larger concentration of children from poor and labouring class families are far more irregular and function for fewer hours. As dominant caste, better educated and middle class parents withdraw their children from government schools, the accountability of teachers and the pressure on them to teach or perform decreases. Engagement with issues of survival, especially in a situation of growing casualisation of work leading to an insecure livelihood position, makes it difficult for these parents to wield any influence on school functioning.
Apart from remaining absent and coming to school for fewer hours than prescribed, teachers also spend substantial time in performing non-teaching tasks. Some of these tasks such as collection of grain for midday meals, attending meetings, making salary bills, and so on are part of their responsibilities as teachers, whereas others such as participating in different kinds of surveys related to electoral rolls, census, poverty line are outside their usual work but which they cannot refuse as government servants. The impact of these on school functioning is worse in places where the number of teachers is low.
It is common for parents to point to frequent closure of schools and for teachers to refer to high irregularity among children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Jha and Jhingran and NIAS show that the irregularity is higher for children from poor households because they often share the responsibility of household chores, are engaged in seasonal family or paid labour, remain ill due to malnutrition and, in specific situations, migrate for long durations. Teachers, however, instead of being empathetic to the life-situation of children usually perceive this as evidence of lack of interest in education and consider it responsible for eventual dropouts and non-completion. Instead of considering themselves accountable for their students’ learning, teachers believe that these children do not want to learn and become indifferent, if not hostile, to them.
Field reports based on classroom observation, teachers’ interviews and interaction with children in Jha and Jhingran, NIAS, Pratichi Trust Report and Ramachandran indicate that class and caste barriers in schools are a major impediment in school participation of children from poorer and less privileged families. It is not uncommon for teachers to consider children from poor and socially deprived backgrounds as ‘incapable of being educated’. Schooling experiences of children from such backgrounds are full of discrimination meted out by teachers as well as peer group. It is overt when dalit children are seated separately from others at the time of serving cooked meals and subtle when they are seated in the last row, not receiving any attention from the teacher. Stereotypical statements about Muslim students and parents as uninterested in education are also common. Accepting high irregularity and dropouts as inevitable makes it difficult for teachers to understand the role of ineffective and dysfunctional schools in weakening parental commitment to education among poorer and disadvantaged families.
These reports provide evidence of biased attitude and behaviour of teachers. But the majority, coming from upper caste and middle class strata, refuse to acknowledge that any form of discrimination exists. They, however, do not refrain from showing resentment against incentive schemes and reservation policy meant for poor and socially disadvantaged sections in front of children, often adding that despite various schemes, it is difficult to change the plight of ‘these’ children because they can never overcome their background. These teachers appear to be unaware of the impact of such comments on children. In most cases, the teachers have a low expectation of students from poor socio-economic backgrounds, a major reason for their low performance. For children, these experiences are a denial of their basic right.
Through the 1990s the debate on quality in basic education has usually revolved around pedagogic aspects of the learning processes – based entirely on copying and rote memorization – and transaction processes not being based on active involvement of children. Barring a few exceptions, teacher-training efforts have been directed towards these aspects of quality. Without undermining their importance, it is necessary to point out that socio-psychological needs of children, especially when they come from socially and economically deprived situations, are equally, and in some cases, more important. Their experiences in schools tend to reinforce and heighten the discrimination that they face in society, adversely affecting their continuation and learning. These studies drawing on evidence from varying contexts, underscore that the debate on quality without addressing equity, and exclusion, is meaningless.
The commonly articulated distinction between equity as an issue of access and learning conditions alone, and quality as distinct from the issue of equity is artificial and simplistic. The Pratichi Trust Report’s observations regarding Shishu Shiksha Kendras (SSKs)3 functioning better than well resourced formal schools needs to be understood in this context. Despite poor infrastructure and meagre payments, the SSK teachers have been able to develop a more conducive teacher-student relationship because of their better understanding and appreciation of children’s home situations. The study attributes this to all teachers being local women, their role definition requiring them to contact parents frequently and an inbuilt local accountability system which allows a greater role for the local community. The studies are near uniform in their observation that functioning, including children’s attendance, was markedly better in schools, formal or alternative, where teachers extended their role and developed an appreciation for local culture and home constraints.
These studies also recognize, though articulated differently, that commitment to education is weak among poor and socially disadvantaged households, especially in areas where they have traditionally been excluded from education. The presence of a large number of never-enrolled children, many of them engaged in paid labour, lends credence to this fact. Constraints posed by poverty, uncertainty and unstable life situations coupled with weak education-employment linkages, also play a role in keeping this commitment low. Despite understanding the importance of education per se the tough life-situation makes it difficult to have high aspirations and pursue them with demonstrated demand for education.
Ramachandran and Jha and Jhingran too highlight the presence of competing inequities where the relative positioning changes with a change in context and area. Nonetheless, girls are more marginalised and vulnerable in almost all contexts, and socio-cultural beliefs and practices have a major role in perpetuating this phenomenon. These studies suggest that areas which have experienced social movements, or where sending children to schools has become a social norm, remain exceptions. Though children from very poor and socially marginalised families do attend school despite facing discrimination in school and deprivation at home, instances of children being forced to leave schooling due to some economic crisis are not unusual. The responsibility of schools and the school system, in fact, increases in cases of weak parental commitment in ensuring that all children learn and complete education. Teachers or education administration cannot be absolved on these grounds if every child is to be ensured this right.
Commitment to basic education as a fundamental right for every child has serious implications for both the school system, and society as a whole. Schools needs to function as institutions which help children overcome their class and caste barriers. In the current scenario, this requires a radical shift in teachers’ commitment as highlighted by the Pratichi Trust Report. Jha and Jhingran argue for defining and developing completely different norms and mechanisms for accountability with equity as the central focus for teachers as well as educational administration. All decisions relating to distribution of resources, deployment of teachers and monitoring of progress need to be based on transparent and clearly defined norms of equity and diversity. All six studies support decentralisation with real delegation and devolution of power.
Ramachandran warns against superficial decentralisation and changes in accountability mechanisms without ensuring adequate safeguards as they could also be manoeuvred by vested interests. NIAS (2002) suggests the creation of a crisis fund in education to support children who are forced to discontinue due to some sudden distress situation. The overarching message from these researches is that ensuring basic education to every child in India today is above all an issue of equity and justice.
Jyotsna Jha
Footnotes:
1. Since 2000, the NIEPA reports have been divided into two parts – Analytical Report and District Report Card. However, for 2002, only district report cards were compiled and the analytical reports could not be developed. For 2003, the district report cards are available but not the analytical report.
2. Alternative Schools (AS) and Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS) schools are new initiatives started in many states where access has been a major issue. These are usually started in a space provided by the community and run by local teachers who have similar educational qualification as the formal school teacher except for professional training. The government pays them an honorarium, which in general is much lower that regular teachers’ salary and provides support for teacher training, teaching learning materials and supervision.
3. Loosely, it can be seen as a variant of EGS school in West Bengal.
GOING TO SCHOOL IN INDIA by Lisa Heydlauff. Penguin Enterprise, Delhi, 2003.
BOOKS on education, more so if the focus is on schools, almost invariably make for a depressing read. For years now, our educationists and pedagogues, specially those trained in the social sciences, have bombarded us with a litany of despair: about the sad state of our schools, the work-shirking teacher, figures of low enrolment and high dropouts, and the abysmal quality of learning. This is often accompanied by an analysis of out-of-school, the never enrolled children. And, of course, the fact that access to education is heavily skewed in favour of the better-off-male, upper caste and upper class.
Evidently, the days of schooling as fun, of inspiring teachers as gurujis, of how Lal Bahadur Shastri crossed rivers to attend school are firmly in the past. Fortunately, Lisa Heydlauff’s book is different. It is a celebration of what school can be ‘from kids to kids, to you and me.’ It tells us how getting to school is a ‘wild ride’ – not only the kind the DTC and private buses subject Delhi’s children to, but the exhilaration of cycling to school, riding on bullock carts and boats, walking across the bamboo bridge in Assam or the rope swing in Ladakh. Accompanied by evocative photographs (sometimes marred by over-enthusiastic and intrusive efforts at design), they capture both the joy and effort of young children.
Read the story of the ‘school in the sky’ in Ladakh, how Haider Ali Molla, all of age 10 and confined to a wheelchair, is ‘pushed’ by his friends to school everyday. His ambition, to play football. Or how, in earthquake devastated Bhuj, children frequent their rubble-strewn school, building more durable structures in their imagination. >From the SWRC run night school in Rampura to the Shiv Mandir in Patna that doubles up as a learning centre, to St Mary’s in Mumbai that shares its facilities with less privileged children from Al Madrasa Tus Saifiya Tul Bachaniyah School, providing evidence of cooperation and integration which our political class determinedly fails to learn – the examples can be multiplied.
Each tale carries a lesson, not moral, but from everyday life – proving once again, as if proof was needed – that given an opportunity all children are keen to learn, that with some guidance and a lot of free ‘space’ they can create a joyful and learning environment, even in stressful surroundings like the Dal Lake in Srinagar or the barren landscape of Kutch. There is the lovely profile of Ramesh, age 6, Chunda, age 10 and their sister Samta, age 12 who ride three on a bicycle, all of six kilometres, for an hour to get to school. Or the equally evocative ‘school on wheels’ which takes the classroom to the children.
We learn how children help other children, how the example of one inspires the other and how children’s dreams remain as wild and ‘fantabulous’ as ever. What is needed is effort by us to not, once again, fail our young, stifling their dreams before they have a chance to flower.
Harsh Sethi
GETTING CHILDREN BACK TO SCHOOL: Case Studies in Primary Education edited by Vimala Ramachandran. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
THIS is an interesting and useful collection of case studies, mainly of non-governmental efforts to bring out-of-school children into school. Each of these organizations is well-known in its area, and to concerned professionals. But to the public at large, little is known of the approaches and particular solutions being tried out. It is this gap in information that the book has tried to fill. A study of ten selected efforts, it gives a flavour of the concern, commitment and ingenuity that characterizes these and other similar efforts.
The problem, which the groups here studied have tried in different ways to address, relates to the fact that a significant proportion of children are not in school, that many of those who enrol drop out within a few years, and that even those who do not drop out frequently learn very little. In other words, the problem is multi-dimensional, encompassing issues around enrolment, retention and quality. Much of the public discourse has tended to focus on enrolment. The cases discussed in this book, however, are examples of attempts to span all three dimensions and to find innovative solutions to the needs of children in especially difficult circumstances.
There is often perceived to be a schism between ‘micro’ efforts and the ‘working to scale’ which characterizes government programmes. Usually, those in charge of the latter are unwilling to consider the possibility of learning from micro efforts because, it is argued, the translation to scale changes the nature of the problem. This collection of case studies, through its careful articulation of backward and forward linkages, and of the processes by which the programmes have developed, provides insight into the relevance of scale. The conventional way of approaching the issue is to see how large scale government programmes could be modified so as to incorporate learning from micro effort. Alternatively, one could treat the micro effort as the base and try to upscale it. Both these perspectives have their limitations. A third way might be for the macro effort to provide the backdrop and the linkages for myriad different micro efforts to flourish, an approach in which diversity and experiment is itself the approach of the mainstream. Although no such explicit recommendation is made in this book, it is an approach worth further consideration.
The case studies in this volume are divided into three sections, ‘children, work and education’, ‘meaningful access, relevance and quality’, and ‘reaching the unreached’, each of which is briefly introduced by the editor. The first set includes those who have specially focused on working children and tried to bring them into full time education. The experiences discussed are the Namma Bhoomi initiative of the Concerned for Working Children in Karnataka, Baljyothi in Andhra, CINI Asha – an initiative of the Child in Need Initiative in Kolkata, and CREDA (Centre for Rural Education and Development Action) in Mirzapur. The second group includes initiatives that have especially dealt with issues of quality and relevance. This includes Pratham, Mumbai; Nali Kali, Mysore and Digantar, Rajasthan. The third group includes initiatives that have made special efforts to reach out to the hard core of difficult to reach children. This includes Agragamee’s efforts with tribal children in Orissa, Muktangan’s work with the Sahariya tribe in Rajasthan, and the DPEP’s Model Cluster Development Approach in Uttar Pradesh.
The initiatives discussed are relatively new, the oldest dating back to the 1980s. This period witnessed a great burst of activity in the NGO sector, not least because of more liberal funding norms as well as a stronger encouragement to NGO activity on the part of the central government. Many of the programmes discussed here, i.e. educational initiatives with children, have emerged from larger development oriented programmes. This is an important point since it suggests that more holistic interventions, with loosely defined sectoral boundaries, may enjoy greater success. The reasons why a child is not in school may lie outside the school, but should it be a part of the school’s sphere of action? Similarly some of the more nuanced efforts – for example, CINI’s work with street children – are responses to locale specific situations, grounded in local realities. Even though most of the programmes discussed in this book are young, they have already had to adapt, change and evolve from the initial design.
If what we need is locale specific action, a definition of the solution that is not rigid, and a readiness to change in response to better understanding or new problems, the key factor underlying the success of any such effort is flexibility and continuous innovation. This is not compatible with a programme approach that requires standardization and fixation of norms. At the same time, the actual content of the education and the certification that is given to children, will be of value only if it is what the mainstream system provides. The conclusion seems inescapable: we can reach out to the unreached, bring all children into school, ensure a meaningful education for them, only if we can somehow find a way of incorporating diversity within the mainstream.
Ratna M. Sudarshan
EDUCATION DIALOGUE. Volume I, Issue I. Monsoon, 2003.
THIS new journal, published by Padma Sarangapani of Bangalore, has been launched by a group of educationists drawn from different parts of the country and with a wide range of institutional affiliations. It seeks to provide a space for debating issues central to education in South Asia and also bridge the divide between academics and practitioners. This is indeed a unique endeavour – one that fills a vacuum in extant educational discourse. The journal spans both contemporary concerns – on the notion of quality by Rohit Dhankar, the challenges facing the right to education by Ramya Subramaniam and an interesting case study of Eklavya by Sarada Balgopalan – and historical analysis – a historical review of education in India by Judith Walsh. The end page (akin to the Backpage of Seminar) focuses on the traumatized children of Kashmir.
The overall design and presentation of the journal requires more care. Being the inaugural issue, it is of course somewhat premature to pronounce judgement on the quality of the journal – the endurance of the journal depends not only on the grit and determination of the promoters to plug on year after year but also the contribution of practitioners and researchers working in this sector. Equally, the sustainability of the journal depends on the ability of the promoters to engage with burning contemporary issues. But, above all, its eventual success will depend upon the willingness of the larger education community to use the journal as a platform for open debate and discussion.
Vimala Ramachandran
TEACHING AND LEARNING: Culture of Pedagogy by Prema Clarke. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2001.
CONSTRUCTING SCHOOL KNOWLEDGE: An Ethnography of Learning in an Indian Village by Padma M. Sarangapani. Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
WITH the quality of education in classrooms increasingly being recognised as a critical element in influencing student performance, the debate on what constitutes quality teaching-learning processes has picked up momentum in recent years in India. The context is one of expanded access to and increasing enrolment in government primary schools and the proliferation of private schools, accompanied by a growing concern whether those who are receiving basic education in schools (or out of it) are actually learning something. However, systematic interrogation of teaching and learning processes and practices, apart from a few studies on pedagogical reforms under the District Primary Education Program (DPEP), are rare, though essential to inform educational reforms. The studies reviewed here are a welcome addition to educational scholarship and significantly contribute to the field through a critical expansion of the parameters of analysis and debate.
Prema Clarke locates her research among schoolteachers in private, government and aided schools in Bangalore, Karnataka within the larger analytical context of culture and pedagogy. She explores the different ways in which teachers conceptualise and perform instructional tasks in the classroom with a particular emphasis on understanding the cultural patterning of teachers – their worldviews and frameworks of action. Clarke argues that along with other economic, political and demographic factors, culture plays a significant role in defining ways in which teachers relate to students; in the goals that teachers have for student learning; in the ways they approach the curriculum and the textbook; in the way knowledge is communicated to the students; and in ways they interact verbally with their students.
Drawing from anthropological and psychological research done in India, Clarke identifies four cultural constructs that are interconnected and together represent the broader cultural meaning system that scaffolds pedagogical practices in classrooms in India. This includes a shared holistic worldview that supports the acceptance of regulation whereby the interdependence of actors allows them to be ‘at ease at being regulated and regulating.’ The primacy of the syllabus for the teachers in the research study and its contested relationship to prescribed textbooks as well as teacher’s persistent regulation of students’ behaviour in and out of the classroom indicates an acceptance of regulation. Accompanying the holism is the conception of ‘instruction as duty’ that stems from a cultural moral order and hence is viewed as being obligatory by the teacher. Again, just as teachers feel that they have a duty to teach their students, teachers also clearly define their students’ and by extension their parents’ duty as learning. Clarke observes that ‘motivation’ does not emerge as a significant dimension in teacher thinking with reference either to their own instruction to student learning and suggests that it is possible that motivation is intimately connected in their minds to regulation.
The third cultural construct is a social frame-work defined by a structural and qualitative hierarchy – the former based on the caste structure and the latter on the qualities possessed by individuals who hold a higher position. This is evident in the position of authority accorded to the teacher who is considered more knowledgeable. Finally, there is a shared understanding that knowledge is collectively accumulated, attested and transferred. This implies that an individual’s actions are often framed by the community rather than his/her own experience and perceptions. This has important consequences for teaching-learning processes since it diminishes the role of the individual as a creator of knowledge and encourages a learning culture that reinforces the student’s lower order thinking skills, characterised by memorisation and repetition. As Clarke writes, ‘teachers, regulated by the primacy of syllabus, help their students understand and know the syllabus in its entirety through repetition and memorisation. Higher order thinking typified by analysis and reasoning is rarely upheld in the Indian educational system.’
Clarke’s study has important implications for pedagogical reform, since it highlights the fact that it is not only pre-service training inputs that define how teachers teach, but that their lived experiences – as a child, student, and parent – in specific cultural contexts equally frame their thinking and performance in the classroom. She argues that in order to enable a teaching-learning transformation, the cultural models of teacher thinking and teaching need to change. She advocates that the discourse of ‘indigenization’ that has dominated the agenda of educational reform in the country should be replaced by that of ‘contextualization’ – a shift not necessarily limited to making education relevant to local contexts, ‘but specifically with reference to the importance of analysing existing practice irrespective of its link with the past.’ She considers the ways in which the identified cultural constructs impact on proposed pedagogical reforms and observes that holism as well as conceptions of task as duty are open to reform while the emphasis on hierarchy and collective-decision-making is more resistant to change.
Padma Sarangapani’s focus is on children and their experiences of schooling in a government primary school in a multi-caste village bordering the northern periphery of Delhi. She goes beyond the banal evocations of the ‘dreary monotony of teaching-learning’ and ‘uninterested authoritarian teachers’ to explore the process and meaning of schooling in the village as it is constituted by the inter-subjectivity of teachers and students – what she refers to as an ‘insider’s’ perspective. This provides for a more nuanced understanding of schooling that is embedded in a ‘worldview’ shared by teachers and children and from which they derive their norms and values which guide their course of everyday actions. She also makes an issue of nesting her analysis within the larger ideological context of the extant social and economic hierarchies of the village and the role of education as a tool for social mobility.
Sarangapani dwells in detail on the construction of pupil and teacher identities and teacher authority as they get played out in the classrooms. She explores the discursive as well as material construction of ‘failure’ that not only defines student performance in the classroom but also frames their subjectivity and acts as a mechanism of social control. Not surprisingly, the author observes that all children who are deemed as ‘failures’ are either from scheduled caste or migrant families who have come to the village. Further, explanations such as laziness and being ‘thick’ seem to provide these children with new reasons, attributable to individual characteristics, for being at the bottom of the social pile. This logic of social exclusion is further reinforced through the social dynamics of teacher and students’ engagement in the classroom that has the power to define whose knowledge will become a part of school-related knowledge – whose voice will shape it and whose voice shall be rendered silent.
Sarangapani argues that such an analysis makes it possible to ask more fundamental questions. What does education mean to children? Why do children submit to the discipline of the school? Such questions have important implications for transforming the educational system as opposed to merely addressing issues of attendance and teacher motivation with a view to ‘fixing’ and ‘managing’ them within a normative and evaluative framework – what she views as constituting the current orthodoxy. For instance, conversations with children reveal the common understanding of school as a site where they are socialised in the norms of adulthood. The author suggests that the introduction of play and activities as part of the school curricula in the above context has limited success precisely because of the emergent contradiction and probably also explains why parents too are suspicious of activity-based experimental curricula.
The studies are mutually reinforcing in their ideas, even though their primary focus is on different actors – teachers for Clarke and students for Sarangapani. They provide readers with a rich ethnography of the teaching-learning processes in their respective research sites and successfully communicate the ‘social embeddedness’ of the processes. Both studies rely on the juxtaposition of the first person narrative within an interpretative analytical framework to capture the complexity of the issue under exploration. Drawing inspiration from diverse scholarship, including anthropology, social and cognitive psychology, and sociology of education and knowledge, the studies demonstrate the strength and desirability of inter- disciplinary perspective and qualitative analysis in social policy research.
Some critics may find the attention to detail and the primacy accorded to theoretical frameworks a little too abstract to inform policy in order to meet the immediate goals of Education for All. However, the soundness of analysis in actuality lends itself to developing a more sustainable model of educational reform – of teachers, curriculum, learning assessment – that is grounded in the lived realities of students and teachers as members of larger communities and society. It encourages critical reflection among teachers as well as students and enables a more meaningful experience of teaching and learning to happen.
Aarti Saihjee
