Sir,
In response to the article “Elementary education as an agent of change” published on April 20. I would like to suggest that schools are not just to provide education but they are also business centres which run on profits. To burden the schools with the responsibility of providing a good family environment is simply misplaced.
The author wishes that a School should nurture students to create an ideal society, carve rational individuals immune to needless rituals and become a source of knowledge and application based learning. So far so good. We can hardly argue against the idealistic view of what an institution should be but in reality our schools are far away from it.
It’s needless for me to write down a number of things which a school should or should not do when in reality there are no teachers in classes, no working toilets, a single fan working on its whims and lightning as poor as to even imagine a bright future.
These are the conditions of our mini society aka schools. People who live in cities where private schools have sprouted everywhere, might not realise the poor condition of our schools in villages. To look at the real conditions I wish to produce some cold facts about quality of education in India. Only half (50.3%) of all students in Class V can read texts meant for Class II students.
World Bank said Indians born today are likely to be just 44 percent productive as workers, way below their Asian peers. 75 percent of children in Std III of Government schools across the country cannot read and perform basic calculations like subtraction and division. The educational expenditure is far lower than the country of this size needs. To produce reliable workers who blindly obey orders and don’t ask questions is the reason why this British made education system still continues our country. Unfortunately for the current system, it doesn’t matter if a worker or a student is morally degraded as long he or she performs his or her given duty in a structure made for profits and growth. The state seems to be indifferent towards the quality of education in this country.
Bhumesh Bharti
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