A collective responsibility

Rupali Sharma
India is blessed with a rich treasure in form of its sprawling and vibrant reserve of human resource.  The demographic profile of its population is dominated by the younger age-group, which is at the peak of its productivity. But like every other natural resource, this one, too, exists in a raw, unpolished form and needs to undergo rigorous processing to be able to redeem its full value. This processing is precisely what education is all about.
Education is the foundation over which the entire structure of society and the nation exists.  Ensuring high quality of the education system is extremely vital for the holistic development of a nation. In an ideal situation, education should promote technical expertise and creative thinking, in equal measure. The curriculum should be a blend of modern knowledge as well as cultural values, ensuring a balanced development of the student’s mind. Unfortunately, we, in India, are far from achieving this ideal equation. In fact, we are still trapped in the primitive mindset where the criteria of being educated is still based on the narrow parameters of the three abilities of reading, writing and arithmetic, popularly known as the three R’s. It is worth questioning whether these three abilities are enough to ensure a dignified survival in today’s day and age. Aren’t skills like reasoning, analysis and decision-making equally important, and deserve equal attention? And, whose responsibility is it to ensure that the generation passing out of the educational institutions is not just a population of indisciplined, misguided and confused youth who can read and write. Sadly enough, that’s exactly what we are witnessing nowadays. Youngsters going to school in extravagant institutions and receiving what is claimed to be quality education as per our society’s standards, getting horrific ideas like slitting a child’s throat in order to get exams postponed and actually acting on them.  I agree that it is wrong to hold the educational institutions responsible for everything that a child does. But, the fact remains that they do have a huge role in shaping the personality of the child, who spends a major part of his childhood there.
The incompetence of our educational system lies, both, at the level of policy formulation as well as implementation. I do not wish to discuss the drawbacks that our policies possess at a structural level, as this topic alone warrants a focused discussion. I wish to contemplate on how poor implementation and mishandling of already flawed policies on the part of society, has accelerated the degradation of the education system. This can be best understood by considering the case of implementation of the Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) pattern by the CBSE. The system, in theory, had all that it needed to have. It had a great vision, a comprehensive work plan and well defined objectives. The initiative, as such, was a commendable one. However, what it managed to achieve was a great amount of confusion and cluelessness primarily due to lack of adequate groundwork and hasty implementation. The provisions of the system that were aimed to promote creativity and skills apart from the academic ones, in the students were misused by many schools, which resorted to money-minting in the name of project works and extra-curricular co-scholastic assessments. The point is clear. It isn’t just the loopholes in the policy that are posing a threat. It is the mindset of exploiting these weaknesses out of selfishness or sheer carelessness that further degrades an already serious condition and the only way out of this mess is a strong resolve, willingness to make certain sacrifices and fearlessness to confront the wrongdoers, on part of the society as a whole.
The act of imparting education, in my view, holds as much esteem as the act of imparting life and health. In essence, the nobility of teaching as a profession is equivalent, if not greater, to that of the medical profession. And among the teachers, it’s the ones dealing with the elementary and school education that shoulder the greatest responsibility because their job encompasses both knowledge-building as well as character building. Then why is this job not treated with the dignity that it deserves? All the arguments centering on the Government’s or management’s (as the case be) policies in respect to the salaries and other emoluments, grades and promotions etc. are undoubtedly valid. I wish to clarify that I have nothing against my peers and friends who are in this profession and are simultaneously preparing for other jobs or have other ambitions. If you are doing justice to your current profession and are  shaping the aspirations of those young minds in your hands, along with nurturing your own dreams, then you are real-life heroes and deserve to be applauded. All I wish to imply is that teaching, being such an important job, deserves to have more merits than just comfort and should be a more lucrative career option, at par with those prestigious jobs, which most young and brilliant minds aspire for.
The need of the hour is to understand that this is a package-deal, and we all are the stake holders. Unlike other social issues where the power of implementation lies in the hands of the public servants, educational issues are such, where the primary actors are the general members of the society. Yes, the Government also needs to be pressurized to make reforms and changes. But that pressure also needs to come directly from us along with necessary inputs and active participation at all stages from policy formulation, implementation and evaluation.
I would like to say this, even at the risk of sounding idealistic, that teaching has more to do with passion than qualification.  And now, we need teachers who are passionate, not just professional. There are wonderful non-government bodies that are doing exemplary work in this direction. Teach for India (T.F.I) initiative is one such example where volunteers are given an opportunity to teach under-privileged kids and the screening process for selecting these volunteers is extremely stringent and merit-oriented and there is a lot that can be learnt from such organizations and their members. The key word here is “volunteer”. Every child deserves an opportunity to learn from the teachers who are “voluntarily” at their school to teach them. So, while we fight for our right to a better salary, better infrastructure and better working conditions with the school management and the Government, we need to ensure that there is no collateral damage and no child suffers in the process. The people who opt for this profession, should try to do it after a serious look at the pros and cons and should do so, out of choice not compulsion because whatever your reasons are, that child looking up to you, does not deserve to be taken for granted. Education is not magic; it is alchemy which, if performed correctly, can transform any metal into gold. Every child, rich or poor, studying in a government or a private institution, irrespective of the educational board they are enrolled in or the amount of fees that they pay, deserves a sincere chance at learning as per their potential and receptivity and achieve their full caliber. Right to Education is not enough, right to quality education is what we need to implement and merely shifting the onus on the Government and bashing the existing policies is not enough.
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