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    Dhankar - Schools in Grave Danger

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    The document discusses the decline of public schools and problems with private schools in India. It summarizes that over 17,000 public schools have recently closed in Rajasthan, 14,000 in Maharashtra, and 195 in Odisha due to low attendance. Private schools emphasize competition over learning and force students to learn through rote memorization. They also push responsibility for students' behavior and academic problems onto parents rather than taking responsibility themselves. As a result of these issues in both public and private schools, the author argues that India's primary sites of education are in grave danger without reforms that promote rigor, understanding, and a true sense of schools' objectives in education.

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    Dhankar - Schools in Grave Danger

    Uploaded by

    dhankarr
    167 views1 page
    The document discusses the decline of public schools and problems with private schools in India. It summarizes that over 17,000 public schools have recently closed in Rajasthan, 14,000 in Maharashtra, and 195 in Odisha due to low attendance. Private schools emphasize competition over learning and force students to learn through rote memorization. They also push responsibility for students' behavior and academic problems onto parents rather than taking responsibility themselves. As a result of these issues in both public and private schools, the author argues that India's primary sites of education are in grave danger without reforms that promote rigor, understanding, and a true sense of schools' objectives in education.

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    Dhankar_Schools in Grave Danger

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    The document discusses the decline of public schools and problems with private schools in India. It summarizes that over 17,000 public schools have recently closed in Rajasthan, 14,000 in Maharashtra, and 195 in Odisha due to low attendance. Private schools emphasize competition over learning and force students to learn through rote memorization. They also push responsibility for students' behavior and academic problems onto parents rather than taking responsibility themselves. As a result of these issues in both public and private schools, the author argues that India's primary sites of education are in grave danger without reforms that promote rigor, understanding, and a true sense of schools' objectives in education.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    167 views1 page

    Dhankar - Schools in Grave Danger

    Uploaded by

    dhankarr
    The document discusses the decline of public schools and problems with private schools in India. It summarizes that over 17,000 public schools have recently closed in Rajasthan, 14,000 in Maharashtra, and 195 in Odisha due to low attendance. Private schools emphasize competition over learning and force students to learn through rote memorization. They also push responsibility for students' behavior and academic problems onto parents rather than taking responsibility themselves. As a result of these issues in both public and private schools, the author argues that India's primary sites of education are in grave danger without reforms that promote rigor, understanding, and a true sense of schools' objectives in education.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 1

    Schools in grave danger

    The Hindu, 28th October 2014

    With public schools not performing and private schools teaching students to compete rather
    than learn, Indias primary sites of education are at risk
    Rohit Dhankar

    he Rajasthan government recently decided to close down


    more than 17,000 schools, the
    Maharashtra government decided to close down about 14,000 schools
    and the Odisha government is closing
    down 195 schools because of low attendance by students. These are not stray incidents, but indicate the decline of the
    public education system.
    The problem with the private school
    system can be illustrated with an example. Recently, a parent described to me
    what teachers in his sons school said to
    him regarding the childs poor performance in studies. Science, social science
    and English teachers in the school asked
    him, the father, to solve the problem! Are
    incomplete work or misbehaviour... during school hours... not the responsibility
    of the teachers to handle? the perplexed
    man wondered. If my son misbehaves in
    [the] house or does not read or write what
    we tell him to, we as parents handle it. We
    do not take it up with the teacher. Why
    [do] teachers nowadays take up everything with the childs parents, he asks.
    He opines that the teacher has to be TIME TO STUDY: Schools have an objective, learning, and the process
    responsible for reading and writing and demands both teachers and students to be engaged. Picture shows
    the parent has to be the facilitator by students in a government school in Chennai. PHOTO: M. KARUNAKARAN
    buying books, pens and pencils.
    for the exploration of ideas in a
    This is a trend that persists in middle
    The lack of understanding aside
    sustained and coherent manner, and for
    and upper-end private schools and is now
    of what education
    the development of intellectual rigour
    catching on in lower-end schools too.
    and mental discipline. All this is not posdemands and the awed
    The decline of public schools
    sible without careful selection of what is
    Public schools are dying out simply beto be learnt and a sound judgment on how
    policies of the past have
    cause they dont perform. The problem
    to teach. Therefore, the school as an orgaresulted in the closing
    began in the late 1950s and 60s when
    nised space demands professional knowlthere was growth in the number of
    edge, deep sensitivity towards the
    down
    of
    schools
    today
    schools, but no adequate attention was
    intellectual and emotional needs of the
    being paid to infrastructure and availabilchildren, and pedagogical judgment on
    ity of trained teachers. In most States, demand for education. Some important the part of teachers. When all these are
    teachers were paid meagre salaries and factors that contributed to this mindset pitted against each other, the idea of
    administration was inefficient. A large were the demand for more schools, the school is distorted. This is precisely what
    number of teachers in States like Rajas- lack of nancial and other resources, the our education system has been doing for
    than were untrained. All this affected the pressure of democratic polity to be seen the last ve decades.
    quality of education. Teachers lost moti- as addressing the problems, and a lack of
    For example, the non-formal education
    vation and became disgruntled.
    concern. This mindset can be clearly seen scheme spent crores of rupees, and was
    Some governments started devolving in all the programmes initiated after the implemented throughout the country
    the job of teacher administration to the 60s non-formal education, Shiksha from the late 1960s to the early 1990s.
    Panchayati Raj in the late 1950s. This Karmi, the District Primary Education The scheme completely discarded the
    brought in the local politician, who in- Programme (DPEP), and Sarva Shiksha ideas of professional knowledge in teachterfered with teachers transfers. This Abhiyan (SSA). At each stage these initia- ing, teacher training and educational
    and other factors such as a lack of facil- tives were critiqued, and obvious prob- planning and thus sent a signal throughities in schools, low salaries and irregular- lems in conceptualisation and planning out the country that anyone can teach. It
    ity in disbursement of salaries caused the were clearly indicated by many educa- also discarded the idea of well-equipped
    problem of teacher absenteeism in States tionists. But they also found their ad- separate spaces for schools; thus paying
    like Rajasthan. This led to the growth of a vocates who built a certain kind of little heed to the need for any infrastrucself-centred attitude in newly emerging rhetoric to support them and advanced ture. It ignored the intellectual demands
    teacher unions, who began to think of that rhetoric as examples of educational of both teachers and students. Overall, it
    devalued education, the teacher, and the
    their own welfare rst and foremost with- change.
    idea of school.
    out giving much thought to the functionBy the time the failure of this awed
    ing of schools or the quality of education. The idea of school
    One fundamental problem in these ini- scheme was realised, many innovators
    One can hardly blame them for this
    tiatives is that they undermine the very were ready with other initiatives such as
    attitude.
    Rather than seriously addressing the concept of school. Schools have an ob- Shiksha Karmi in Rajasthan. The DPEP
    problems, education planners and ad- jective learning and the process de- was almost ready to be launched. The
    ministrators devised quick-x and inex- mands both teachers and students to be balance between professional knowledge,
    pensive initiatives to address the growing engaged. There is a time and place set intellectual rigour, sensitivity to the child

    and infrastructural needs was never restored in any of these programmes, including SSA. This apparent lack of
    understanding of what good education
    demands and the awed policies of the
    past have resulted in the closing down of
    schools today.

    Methods of learning
    Meanwhile, the private sector stepped
    in to cash in on parental anxiety regarding the state of education. Private schools
    are growing at a phenomenal rate now.
    Some analysts think that while the public
    education system is deteriorating, the
    private system is going from strength to
    strength.
    This false perception is perhaps deliberately created. Private schools function
    for prot; this fact itself counters the idea
    of a caring school. A good school is where
    knowledge is cherished, where intellect is
    developed, where there is sensitivity towards the child and where there are adequate resources. Maximisation of prot
    prompts the owners to emphasise on
    competition rather than conceptual
    learning. Children in private schools are
    forced to learn by rote and this undermines the value of understanding. Actual
    learning demands conceptual clarity, and
    is difficult and time consuming. Private
    schools naturally encourage the rst
    method. In other words, they impoverish
    the very idea of learning to dilute the
    demands for a good school.
    However, the most damaging aspect of
    the private schooling system is that private schools do not want to take responsibility for the moral growth and
    behaviour of the child. Their ideal is to
    turn themselves into consultant agencies.
    If a child has moral and behavioural problems, these schools will call the parents to
    solve the problem. For academic weaknesses they advise private tuitions. In either case, they abdicate the responsibility
    of an educator. Their own job thus becomes minimised, which suits better
    margins of prot.
    The twin maladies of losing children in
    government schools and minimising the
    idea of school in the private sector are
    putting our schools in grave danger. We
    as a society seem to be far from realising
    that civilisations depend on education
    and schools are primary sites of education. If schools die, civilisations deteriorate. Unless we recognise the need for
    rigour in understanding, planning and
    implementation in education, we will be
    unable to arrest this downward trend and
    our schools will either close down or
    transform into consultancy services,
    leaving the space open for tuition shops.
    Of course, this turning around will demand appropriate political and economic
    decisions.
    (Rohit Dhankar is professor and
    director, academic development at Azim
    Premji University, Bangalore, and
    honorary secretary, Digantar, Jaipur.)

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