|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist
and Nationalist Ideas
Even today, after a considerable amount of research and thought, educationists are still uncomfortable with what is taught in India. The specific complaint has always been about the political underpinning of education. Macaulay was uncomfortable with all government money being spent on teaching Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit rather than on science and technology. So he wrote his famous minute, which has earned him the credit of being the creator of brown sahibs in India. Since then, several commissions have been appointed to suggest ways of improving the content of education. However, the author Krishna Kumar says they always ended with suggesting ways in which the already existing system of education could be replicated. There was a little fresh thought, and seldom was there an effort to outgrow the colonial underpinnings of education. Krishna Kumar examines the issue in detail, mainly consisted of reducing the schoolteacher to the level of a low-paid government servant. From being a highly respected Guruji, the teacher was reduced to being the lowliest of government employees. He was paid a monthly salary of Rs 5, while the DPI and the School Inspector were paid Rs 2,000 and Rs 500, respectively. Thus, the teacher lost both his income and dignity. Though he could supplement his income by taking up various clerical tasks for the government like collecting data for census or by surreptitiously providing tuitions. A tyranny of syllabus and exam began to emerge that remains with us till today. A syllabus created by one set of bureaucrats had to be taught within a time prescribed by a different set of bureaucrats. If the students did not perform as per expectations, the teacher was liable to be punished severely by the government. Transfers, loss of increments, etc. were the usual punitive measures. The students were simply herded in the classroom and taught the same bureaucrat-generated syllabus irrespective of their abilities, desires and aspirations. Still, Kumar explains, in the colonial economy of India, education remained the most important pathway for upward mobility. So, there were many takers for whatever nonsense was being dished out in the name of education. That kind of secular education had its unintended consequences as well. The most visible of these was the challenges to caste authority that the educated could pose. While there were enough educated members of the upper castes who wanted to continue with the caste system, the educated untouchables had obtained for themselves the means to control the government and demand greater dignity for themselves. However, there was one critical element lacking in this education system—it did not allow for the growth of an indigenous identity. As a result, whenever the question of identity became important, there was a high propensity among educated Indians to claim a religious identity for themselves. Kumar specifically mentions the threat posed by the drift towards a Hindu identity during the 1990s. But one could easily notice similar drifts in other religions as well—whether Sikhs or Muslims—with the religions claiming a superior identity for themselves and demanding that they be entirely above any critical scrutiny. In the end, it could easily be said that even if one were to disagree with many parts of the analyses that Kumar makes, this book is important enough to be compulsory reading for teachers and policy makers. |
"WE don’t need no education. / We don’t need
no thought control. / No dark sarcasm in the classroom. / Teacher leave
the kids alone" thus went the complaint by Roger Waters of the Pink
Floyd group in that cult song of the 1980s. Those were the days when
teachers provided education and it was up to the students to receive it.
Much has changed in pedagogy since then. What has not changed, though,
is the discomfort with the package of knowledge that is on offer.