Democratization of Knowledge: Vernacular Education Planning in the Indian Context Rajarshi Singh Pratham Educational Foundation, New Delhi (India) Author Note Rajarshi Singh is a Senior Consultant at the Pratham Educational Foundation, New Delhi (India). He has a Ph.D. In Computational Mechanics from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA). His research areas include social development with respect to education policy, Mother-Child Nutrition and Institutional Strengthening for decentralized governance Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr Rajarshi Singh, Consultant, Pratham Education Foundation, B 4/54, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi, 110029 (INDIA); E-mail: [email protected]; Phone: +91-70428 83592
Transcript
Democratization of Knowledge:Vernacular Education Planning in the Indian Context
Rajarshi Singh
Pratham Educational Foundation, New Delhi (India)
Author Note
Rajarshi Singh is a Senior Consultant at the Pratham Educational Foundation, New Delhi (India). He has a Ph.D. In Computational Mechanics from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA). His research areas include social development with respect toeducation policy, Mother-Child Nutrition and Institutional Strengthening for decentralized governance Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Dr Rajarshi Singh, Consultant, Pratham Education Foundation, B 4/54, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi, 110029 (INDIA); E-mail: [email protected] ; Phone: +91-70428 83592
major say in the introduction of British law and English
education. He argued that it was prudent to use soft-powers
of English influence, reason and argument (rather than the
brute force) to eradicate the immoral and barbaric cultural
native practices, shunt the evil of the caste system and
numerous other “errors” of the Indian society. What is
crucial is that he believed that unlike other people, the
natives of India could be enlightened through English. He
observed (Grant, 1792) that the missionary teachers in other
colonies
“...used the Vernacular tongue of that people, for a naturaland necessary reason that they could not hope to make anyother means of communication intelligible to them. This isnot our case in respect of our Eastern dependencies. Theyare our own, we have possessed them long; many Englishmenreside among the Natives, our language is not unknown there,and it is practicable to diffuse it more widely.”
From here to the famous minutes of T.B. Macauley dated 2nd
February 1835, we see the arguments against the vernacular
medium coming back with a lot of strength, because Macauley
(1835) writes:
…It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectualimprovement of those classes of the people who have the meansof pursuing higher studies can at present be affected only bymeans of some language not vernacular amongst them….We haveto educate a people who cannot at present be educated by
means of their mother tongue. We must teach them some foreignlanguage. The claims of our own language it is hardlynecessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even amongthe languages of the west.
The developments that followed created an atmosphere of
learning that was detached from the natural environ of the
students. It was as if the nation lay outside the curriculum
textbooks, thereby creating disconnect between pedagogy,
critical thought and reality. The incoherence of English
schooling and Indian thought that gave birth to an
inefficient and insufficient “modern” educational philosophy
was explored by Bhattacharya (1931) in his lecture titled,
“Swaraj in Ideas”, where he argued that:
The most prominent contribution of ancient India to theculture of the world is in the field of philosophy and...itis in philosophy, if anywhere, that the task of discoveringthe soul of India is imperative for the modern India… Oureducation has not so far helped us to understand ourselves,to understand the significance of our past, the realities ofour present and our mission of the future.
Khubchandani (1981) observed that “Contrary to ‘modern’
values attributed to Humanism, the country was rather
confronted with a deliberate policy of selective higher
education to train an elite class to mediate between the
technologically superior ‘caste’ or class…The British system
of education in India thus perpetuated the dichotomy of the
privileged language (English) versus vernaculars.”
Post independence when the Indian political administration
tried to build a roadmap for the development of Indian
languages by first debating the issue of mother-tongue as
medium of primary education on 8th December 1948 in the
Constituent Assembly, and then by including fourteen major
languages in the 8th Schedule in the Constitution of India,
the balance appeared to have been restored in favor of the
multicultural ethnic groups for a brief moment. But six
decades later, it was still a fact that many were still left
out of the formal system. Although the twenty-two recognized
languages cover more than 96.55 percent (Census of India,
2001) of our student population, the remaining 3.45 percent
of Indians speak 96 per cent of other-tongues in India,
which remain largely uncared for. This has resulted in a
‘learning paradox’. Administrators and policy makers have
mostly been looking for educational solutions in factors
other than the medium of instruction. While it makes
economic sense to focus on large languages of the market,
and promote them in all spheres, sociologically and
philosophically, teaching and learning demand inclusion of
many more mother tongues in the primary school system in a
country struggling to expand its educational base.
As this paradox has neither been debated openly nor
attempted to be resolved, it has remained a “Wicked” problem
(Rittel & Webber, 1973) of education planning in India. As a
result, India has failed to implement Article 45 of the
Directive Principles of the State Policy viz. “State shall
endeavor to provide, within a period of ten years from the
commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory
education for all children until they complete the age of
fourteen”. Despite being ratified by the National Policy on
Education (NPE, 1968), its revision in 1992 and the Right of
Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE, 2009)
while putting them into practice (Soni, 2013), the situation
remains challenging, threatening India’s dream of
democratization of knowledge.
It is argued in this paper that although India has remained
committed to all United Nations decisions on primary
education, and taken certain positive legal-administrative
steps towards bringing in Indian languages in the school
education curriculum, the situation needs further amendments
and re-adjustments in view of the linguistic and culturally
heterogeneous pre-primary and primary student population in
India, and also to be more inclusive with respect to our
heterogeneous language situation.
History of Education in India
With the formation of the United Nations and establishment
of the International Institute of Child Study in 1955, the
early 1950s witnessed a piecemeal cooperation with 18 member
states, including Afghanistan, Australia, Burma (now
Myanmar), China, Democratic Kampuchea (now Cambodia), India,
Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, New
Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam – all of
which agreed to work with UN goals, an example being the
experimentation in China (UNESCO, 1952) to form a group
against the barrier of the multiplicity of languages and
cultures. By 1962, the Ministers of Education in Asian
States reviewed the Karachi decisions in a meeting in Tokyo
(UNESCO, 1961) to set up an Inter-governmental Meeting for
initiating regional cooperation. Finally, the exchange of
ideas during 1990 to 2000 encouraged world leaders to adopt
the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) with all 189 UN states
(now 193). This provided a platform for the convergence of
world agencies to work towards a unified goal of making a
better world through eight MDGs, with Universal Primary
Education (2nd MDG) being one of them. Much of these events
owe a great deal to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in
1948 where the Article 26 - Right to free education. David
Cassells Johnson (2013, p.103) explained how language
policies became the instrument of empowerment, and the
credit goes to the 1954 UNESCO declaration of its
unflinching support in favor of mother tongue education
(Menken & Garcia, 2010.
Post MDG adoption, most developing and underdeveloped
nations have adopted this “No child left out” policy. As a
result, enrollment rates are up, dropout rates are down, and
teacher attendance is ever increasing by the year. Despite
this geo-political confluence, the Annual Status of
Education Report (ASER), a large-scale citizen led education
survey, facilitated by Pratham, and similar studies on
student performance have raised questions about the quality
of education across urban, semi-urban and rural India.
Taking a cue from these questions, it may be ideal to
consider what Tagore (1941/1948) had observed in the last
lecture of his life titled ‘Sabhyatār sankat’ (‘Crisis in
Civilization’) where he said that education in India as well
as in Persia – and even in eastern civilizational spaces
such as Japan, had inculcated Sadācār (literally, ‘Cultured
behavior’) that mitigated the severity of competition and
brought in a rare tranquility (Singh, 2014b). He pointed out
that no attempt was made to bridge the “foreign” education
system with the existing indigenous knowledge dissemination
network.
At this point, it should be noted that when the colonial
rulers introduced “Western Education”, the British
themselves did not have a universal education philosophy. In
comparison, the traditional education setup in India,
despite its selective studentship, had divided the sphere of
knowledge into two hemispheres - Sanskrit and Persian
traditions, where classical texts were taught in gurukuls and
madarsas, while pathshalas and mukhtars functioned as centers
for vocational training such as book-keeping, accountancy
and such other skills that aimed at students from merchant
class and such other people. While the traditional set up
was meant for preservation, more modern Indian thinkers such
as Rabindranath Tagore believed education to be a means of
seeding individual intellectual freedom. As observed by
Singh (2014a): Tagore had a “deep dissatisfaction he had for
the hodge-podge that emerged in the name of introduction of
English education in India led him to think of ‘De-
Schooling’ seriously,” which was reflected in his design of
higher education as well in planning for his institution -
‘Visva-Bharati’. Tagore’s long-time associate, L.K Elmhirst had
also observed: “Tagore’s objective was to break with the
traditional model of the university where the elite pursued
knowledge for its own sake” (Mukherjee-Reed, 2011).
To sum up this discussion, encouragement to diversity,
heterogeneity, ingenuity and liberty was expected to
democratize education. However, a century after these
thoughts were floated, the policies adopted by the
Government of India, still used the line of thinking handed
down by the British, and championed uniformity assuming that
large language spaces such as Hindi or Bangla or Marathi
remain invariant throughout its speech area. In reality, the
so-called dialects or mother-tongues tucked under broad
language labels are as varied as the smaller languages
outside the 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India. The
elementary education plan in India did not go down under the
sub-language level to cover both smaller languages and
mother-tongues. The trouble is that large scale quantitative
studies of language vitality as well as language variation
index are both missing even after six decades of
independence. The Government is still dependent on a hundred
year old obsolete language survey document – Linguistic Survey of
India done by G.A. Grierson (1904-28).
Tagore was not alone in voicing his dissatisfaction vis-a-
vis the education system during the British Indian
administration. Other prominent thinkers such as Mahatma
Gandhi, Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan and others were also
opposed to it. Of these the most precise argument explaining
the failure of the adopted English system of education can
be found in Bhattacharya's (1931/1954) “Swaraj in ideas”,
where the emphasis was on cultural domination and not
political rule as found in M.K.Gandhi’s (1909) seminal work
titled “Hind-Swaraj”. Bhattacharya (1954, p. 103) began with
the following argument:
Man’s domination over man is felt in the most tangible formin the political sphere. There is however a subtlerdomination exercised in the sphere of ideas by one culture onanother, a domination all the more serious in theconsequence, because it is not ordinarily felt. Politicalsubjection primarily means restraint on the outer life of apeople and although it tends gradually to sink into the innerlife of the soul, the fact that one is conscious of itoperates against the tendency. So long as one is conscious ofa restraint, it is possible to resist it or to bear it as anecessary evil and to keep free in spirit. Slavery beginswhen one ceases to feel the evil and it deepens when the evilis accepted as a good.
What happens when there is cultural domination is that it
imposes a borrowed structure on the language as well as
thinking pattern of the subjugated race. This domination
would not only color one’s perception, but would affect
linguistic expression as well (Cf. Sapir, 1983 and Whorf,
1956). On the other hand, we are aware that each language
universe is unique in many ways, providing fresh ways of
thinking, contemplating and seeking knowledge. Here again,
we get a paradoxical situation if we were to take a
position that the British rule was worth rejecting but the
culture that its language had imposed on us was so much
superior that we could easily abandon ours and adopt the
English ‘culturation’ patterns. But the slavery it implied
would mean downgrading one’s own social and cultural
character vis-a-vis the alien practices behind which there
was a huge market force. It is not assimilation of western
civility that is being questioned here but it is the
obsession for it at the cost of one’s own civilizational
practices is what Bhattacharya (1931) was arguing against.
Interestingly, traditionally “Bhasha” (or, 'Language') was
considered in India to be a repository of knowledge, wisdom
and values, and not just a tool for communication or social
identifier. Not getting into the question of “language
equality” in terms of their capacity to address the cultural
needs of a community, rapid social and technological change
in modern times call for a cognizant effort to expand the
expressive means to cater to emerging needs. Since, a
majority of children in India are “other-tongue” speakers (a
term used in Census documents), it is only logical to
question the existing educational framework that encourages
education through a constitutional of what was called the
“mother-tongue” education.
The argument in favour of English education is that English
was a great leveling force that would obliterate the evils
of heterogeneous existence. More enterprising ones would
even try and bring in a divide among different cultural
groups within a country. One needs to be wary of those
forces that think like a subjugated colonized race thinks,
and seeks to make issues out of language variation as if all
diversity leads to division. Their stridency is so much that
the polity becomes a conflict ridden space where many lives
are sacrificed in the name of language-related movements or
because of language riots. Contemporary Indian history of
protest movements would bear this out.
In the Indian context, Hindi is often placed against as well
as on par with English, stating that this too was a “Killer
language” (Phillipson 1992, p. 45 and Mufwene 2005).
However, no policy on language promotion can be tabled that
does not say something about Hindi which – through various
discussions and debates, has finally become the official
language of the nation (English still being the Associate
Official Language), and which has a unique role to play in
our national integration (besides being spoken by 41.03
per). It must be underscored here that the other 21
languages in the 8th Schedule of the Indian Constitution
were all designated as India’s “National Languages”. This
formula of separating out national from the official was an
interesting move, because all said and done, Hindi was a
language of tour, travel, market-place, entertainment and
many other conveniences anyway besides being slowly employed
as languages in the law and administration. Unlike English,
Hindi was truly a language of the masses rather than of
classes, and the popular media had already played a role in
its promotion. However, there are also many varieties of
Hindi that are functioning under this large umbrella and it
would be good if our promotional activities are not seen as
merely the pursuit of standard Hindi but are directed at
nurturing all those varieties. The 1948 Constituent Assembly
debate had highlighted their plight as well. Therefore, when
we are talking about including the Other-tongues in
elementary education, all such situations are covered,
because Singh & Manoharan (1997) report in the People of India,
Vol. IX that out of 325 languages, only 199 are confined to
one state – the other 126 being spread over two to eleven
states.
The importance of vernacular language education in the
history of the Indian education set up is evident – also,
for example, from the A.D.Campbell’s 1823 Report of the
Collector of Bellary District, which stated that out of a
total of 533 schools in Bellary, there were 235 Kannada, 226
Telugu, 23 Marathi, 21 Persian, 4 Tamil and one English
medium schools (as quoted in Jalan, 1976, p.59). The
plurality in the education set up mirrored the usage
patterns of the students who used multiple tongues to
navigate through their daily lives, as is still the case in
modern times. In contrast to the traditional system, the
British schooling system promoted English based on the
philosophy that education was meant to prepare students for
“actual life.” In other words the system was created to
churn out individuals who could act as efficient workers for
the organs of the British governance. No thought was spared
for the development of students, or their mental faculty or
creativity. The emphasis was on their utility and usability,
and not on the three pillars of education policy, namely,
the content, spread, and medium. The purposeful limitation
of British schooling is evident from the Harding
proclamation (Kaushik, 2005: 23) in 1844 that promoted
preferential recruitment of those “who were educated in
English schools.” This selective education policy is
familiar even today as many still want their children to be
educated in an “English medium schools” as though, the arts,
sciences, mathematics and other subjects cannot be learned
through a child’s mother tongue. A British educationist,
Howell’s (1872) critique that Indian education “was first
ignored, then violently and successfully opposed, then
conducted on a system now universally admitted to be
erroneous,” (as quoted in Khubchandani, 1981, p. 31) is
still applicable in modern times.
Homogenization, Plurality and Linguistic Relativism
In the earlier sections, we found three paradoxes so far in
respect of medium of instruction for the beginning school
children in India. First, our pluralistic ethos recognized
only a limited number of languages in the Constitution.
Secondly, rejection of the English rule but acceptance (and
even super-imposition) of the English Culture as well as
English language created another kind of problem. Thirdly,
all our energies went in only planning for Mother-tongue
education whereas the other end of the dyad, i.e. the Other-
tongues remained neglected in our consideration because we
have never looked at the sub-language levels. With all
these, our planners for official languages of both the Union
as well as that of the States moved towards efforts in
Language standardization - aimed at deciding on the
“correct” spellings, style, pronunciations, choice of words
and terms, and grammar. Behind all these was again this
belief that homogenization of language created an even
playing field in terms of communication. The fallacy of this
belief lies in the nature of communication within a
heterogeneous linguistic society such as India. That each
member of such plural societies wear many hats and have
multiple identities speaking different languages and mother-
tongues for different purposes is a common feature of our
communication matrix.
Communication (Hewett et al., 2012) - both verbal and non-
verbal, is an indispensable human condition continuing its
activities. From birth, until one’s death, human
participation in communication is constant, except that
one’s taste for a particular sensory modality (or choice of
multiple modes) does change. In effect human communication
is dependent on three prominent sensations - kinaesthetic,
visual and auditory clues. The assumption that our sensory
organs gather all available environmental stimuli is
incorrect, as they are designed to gather, or at least
consciously record sensory stimuli selectively. Given the
uniqueness of a person’s sensory perception, homogenized
communication would be a myth. The paradox here has to do
with the fact that while language homogenization or
standardization ideally facilitates communication, it is in
the nature of human communication to make room for
variations and fluctuations. This non-standardized nature
of communication could be seen from the fact that humans
perceive and express the same “event” in multiple ways.
Given the non-uniformity of communication and language use,
so common in a multi-cultural and multi-lingual society, it
could be argued that schooling contributes to greater
standardization as it encourages a wider interaction among
people through a set lingua. Supposing that formal education
was indeed successful in suppressing speech varieties
thereby creating one form of language that people used, it
would be necessary to investigate the implications of such
an outcome. It would be interesting to ask if we do truly
desire standardization of language, and if so, what is lost
through an exercise in standardization.
The Cultural/Linguistic Relativity hypothesis provides us
the means of tackling this question as well as the question
on what happens in a teaching-learning scenario. Based on
this position, one would have to say that language imposes a
grid on our cultural view as much as the latter also creates
a window of perception, and allows our languages to flow in
certain directions. That should, ideally, make it possible
to distinguish between what elements were frozen and what
were not in a language spoken on an ice-covered mountain.
Similarly, a market-place pidgin will have its own
characteristics that draws heavily from the bazaar.
Following from this concept of language dependent perception
of reality in combination with the choices our senses make
in a multi-lingual and pluri-cultural society, we would
suggest that the range of sensory stimuli in a multi-lingual
setting requires comprehensive ability in both other- and
mother-tongues. Furthermore, the use of multiple languages
in a day to day setting would suggest that such plurality is
the natural direction of linguistic evolution. A weaker form
of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which views languages to be
influencing and not dictating thoughts, has gained
acceptance, especially among the psycho-linguists.
Levinson’s (2000) research has reasserted the understanding
that different language users observe the world through a
language filter. According to Lucy (1997), language
influences thought on three levels - semiotic (as symbolic
persons think differently) and functional (because of which
particular kind of language usage influences thought). In
summary, since much of human learning happens through verbal
communication as well as written language, limiting the
scope of languages in a culturally plural and multilingual
domain limits the potential of education as well. The above
discussion obviously takes teaching-learning as an extension
of communicative situation, rather than considering it as a
top-to-down approach where all knowledge rests with the
teacher.
Language and Pedagogy
What Freire (1993) criticised as “Banking Model of
Education,” as against a communication approach, is a close
parallel to the existing educational set up in India where
students are considered empty vessels, and teachers act as
fountains of knowledge, pouring all that they deem fit into
the minds of students, who are not encouraged to question
newfound information, but rather memorize and repeat until
they’ve gathered the contents of the teacher’s lesson
verbatim. There exists no exercise in relating knowledge to
their socio-economic and cultural surroundings. What is
more, like the content, they must also somehow comprehend
and memorize the ways of speaking and writing in the
language of instruction here. In this sender-receiver model,
students are not active members of the knowledge
transference process.
A majority of children educated in the subcontinent are
unwilling participants in this model of rote learning and
forced memorization of alien tongues. This educational setup
mirrors the colonial real politik of the privileged
separated from those without, a device for the subjugation
of large portions of society. Freire's Critical Pedagogical
(CP) approach promotes emancipation of students, and is
geared towards the development of students’ independent
thought and self-image by creating an environment for
critical assessment of knowledge. It should also create a
situation where learning the language of knowledge seems
great fun. He would argue that critical pedagogy aims at
educating students so that they “come to see the world not
as a static reality, but as reality in process, in
transformation.” CP aims at guiding students to become
responsible members of a democracy where the voices and
opinions of the marginalized are also heard.
Traditionally, teachers are labeled as power-holders in the
“banking model.” People in power usually enjoy authority
that has been granted to them. If this were true, then
teacher absenteeism, and the general lack of professionalism
or enjoyment wouldn’t be an issue, which instigates us to
question whether teachers in the traditional set up
themselves are powerless or not. Their role-acceptance could
also be an outcome of succumbing to their “situation.”
Standardization (of pedagogy, language, or techniques) then
serves neither students nor the teachers, and instead exists
to ideally create a uniform student-body that has been
taught similar lessons, that they regurgitate and reproduce
through rote, thereby making an efficient worker population
that does not question any task at hand. They would
obviously have very little scope to comment on the design or
methodology of the task assigned, even though they could –
based on their traditional wisdom. Performance of a task, or
learning is thus dissociated with the cultural and
sociological value of what is learned. This creates a
situation where the material being taught is completely
alien to the student to be merely gulped unquestioningly.
Education Pathways and Problematization
Coming back to the basics again, the purpose of mass
education is to create a democratic society through
knowledge empowerment. Supporting the importance of
education in governance, Aristotle once said, “All who have
meditated on the art of governing mankind have been
convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education
of youth” (as quoted in Adjibolosoo, 2005, pp 1). Education
affects an individual as well as the space in which she
operates, namely her society. Classically, education is
considered to benefit society through the betterment of
individuals. Recent empirical research shows correlation
between positive social outcomes, such as the containment of
violence, health hazards etcetera and universal education,
and this reaffirming the impact of education. The accepted
view in the development world (as proposed by the The
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or
OECD) and literature is that, “Education has the potential
to bring significant benefits to individuals and society,
which go well beyond its contribution to individuals’
employability or income. Skills are important channels
through which the power of education is manifested in a
variety of social settings. Policy makers should take into
account the wider social benefits of education when
allocating resources across public policies.” The
legitimation theory suggests institutionalized education
directly effects society. It creates and build ups as well
as affects of socialization (also ‘culturation’ as we argued
earlier) and allocates people to certain roles with a select
skill set (Meyer 1977). Primary education is the first
stepping stone for sieving candidates. Since a majority of
the universal education programs are government funded -
considering the vast spread of universal education, the
standards of education are set by the government. In effect
what a child is formally taught is dependent on the politics
of the existing government. Therefore, if the government or
the ideology of governance morphed, it could lead to an
altering of the “lesson plan,” thereby creating universal
education with questionable “universality.” Furthermore,
“democracy” is not a universal concept, but “freedom” is.
Given the self-preserving nature of governments, it could be
argued that, government regulated education policy and
structure promotes “democracy” within the philosophical
ambit of the ruling segment. Then mass universal education,
although meant to promote empowerment, could for all
practical purposes, teach persons from a very young age to
tow the line.
China has successfully reduced illiteracy when compared to
India. Her citizens have better access to universal primary
education. Being non-democratic her government does not
encourage radicalism or political liberty in the Western
sense of the word, yet her education policy has emancipated
millions of suppressed citizens, while also functioning to
suppress the beliefs of many others. The Chinese case helps
assert the point that despite the fact that freedom of
thought, voice, and choice is not guaranteed under a state
sanctioned universal education policy, it can alleviate
large sections of people economically, thereby reducing
poverty and improving health conditions.
This brings us back to the original question - What is the
purpose of universal education? We have seen an example
where education alleviates poverty, leads to development
while also reducing dissenting voices through uniformity of
thought, or standardization of reaction – so to speak. Since
education works on a child’s mind from a very young age, it
can be used to streamline the thought of an entire nation.
Gandhi Ji, was vehemently opposed to the Colonial education
set up which modern India has acquired. He proposed a system
of education “aimed at educating the whole person, rather
than concentrating on one aspect” (Burke, 2000). His
proposal was woven around the concept of Swaraj to avoid
“dependence on the state.” The Mahatma’s educational
philosophy (See http://infed.org/mobi/mahatma-gandhi-on-
education/) was not designed for a 68 year old democracy,
and it may need to be suitably modified to fit into today’s
changed scenario, yet it is aligned with the principles of
Foucaultian Cultural Relativism, and the educational
critical pedagogy of Freire, which encouraged education
immersed in the local culture and identity of students. Much
like Tagore purposing education to be a means of promoting
‘ananda’ in individuals, Gandhian education is
“individualistic” as well because he envisioned education
inculcating self-respect and knowhow pertinent to rural
development useful at the village level, in comparison to
the country level objectives of the present policy. Making
education policy at the state level risks mass scale
homogenization leading to the non-discovery of talents of
individuals, as suggested by Plato.
Contextual Problematization
In 2013 primary school enrollment for children in the age-
group 6-14 in India went up to 96.7 per cent. The average
attendance in primary and upper primary schools was 70.7 per
cent and 71.8 per cent, respectively in the same year. 73.8
per cent of schools had functional drinking water and 53.3
per cent schools had usable girls’ toilet. The gender gap in
amongst school children in most states was minimal. But this
heartening upward trend towards universal access and
facilitation in our schools resulted from the government’s
aggressive elementary education policy, which under the 2009
Right to Education Act mandated education to be the right of
every child in the nation. Yet, policies are created based
on survey results measuring indicators such as enrollment,
checks on the facilities and other input-level monitoring
parameters that are disconnected from indicators that
reflect the purpose of schools - educational maturity and
confidence. Approximately 50 per cent of children in the 2nd
grade failed to read simple everyday words and constructs in
their regional language. Also, 25 per cent children in grade
3 could identify individual letters but could not read
simple words (ASER 2013). To understand the problem of
universal elementary education we require a clear picture of
the ground reality.
The practice of the RTE Act is haunted by teacher
absenteeism, teacher incompetence, non-availability of
related and relatable reading material, non-practice of
activity-based or active learning, and the absence of an
engaging lesson plan, to list a few. The two language policy
assumes that since most business occurs in Hindi and the
Regional language, the school system requires children to be
taught knowledge building and personality development
material only in these languages. No consideration is given
to the local environment that may not require Hindi or the
regional language for everyday life. The innate ability of
children to learn languages is misused to educate them in a
“desirable” tongue. Although, children do have the capacity
to acquire any language equally, the richness of the
language-acquiring experience is very much dependent on the
language stimuli surrounding them. Mother-tongue education
cashes onto this fact and works towards helping students
acquire knowledge in the language with which they are most
familiar. Case in point, a tribal child in Bihar has
probably grown up listening to her grandmother’s songs in
Magahi, which makes her mother-tongue the language of
choice, if the goal of the nation’s education policy is
geared towards creating an atmosphere of learning leading to
development and growth of her curiosity. “Engaging the
children and encouraging them to express themselves
interactively while building on their prior knowledge in
real-life situations is an effective way to build language
experience.” (Clark 2000). Since the cognitive development,
information exposure, child-adult socialization and cultural
transmission occurs in local languages within a multi-
lingual society, vernacular schooling is the only logical
step. Furthermore, this strategy also provides a possibility
of seamlessly integrating early childhood learning (primary
readiness) with primary education. One should be aware that
interaction in a language which has a low-level proficiency
amidst the local environment of the child can cause limited
growth. The nation’s education policy leans on languages
with political backing, and not which is suitable for the
child. Portes and Rumbaut (2001) suggest that
multilingualism in youth is associated with high academic
achievement and developed personality adjustment. Although
other-tongue education in the primary grades is advantageous
for initial development during childhood, adhering to only
that language is limiting, as the available literature may
not be vast, and the language itself may not have had the
exposure like that of Hindi, state languages or English. A
multi-pronged approach towards language education is a
feasible solution within the heterogeneous and multicultural
environment such as India.
In what follows, we would like to present two Education
Pathways - the Structured and Systemized pathway that is in
practice throughout the nation, which aims at engineering a
standardized platform for skill enhancement and capacity
testing, and Heterogeneous and Localized pathway that is a
possible educational setup to promote primary education
through vernacular languages, mother-tongues and other-
tongues (meaning “other mother-tongues” also, in the Census
of India jargon). In the following subsections each
component of the pathways will be discussed. Under no
circumstance is this present analysis exhaustive, but could
be a basis for the amalgamation of education and language
planning aimed at milking the heterogeneity of the populace.
Figure 1. Present or Traditional and Alternate EducationPathways of Universal Primary Education
This position needs some elaboration where one must critique
the assumptions of educational policy options. We would
only like to raise four issues here:
The first among these is about 'Standardized Curriculum and
Assessment'. Standardization and the creation or adherence
to standards (Carroll, 2006) are different approaches to
bring in uniformity. The former, is a means to artificially
implement a set methodology in the practice of education.
Given the size of the education sector, the number of
stakeholders, and geographic spread over the domain in which
education operates, standardization (Bjerede, 2013) is a
lucrative solution for a uniform code of learning and
teaching. Not only is it simple to implement as educators
have to follow an “edict” ratified by a “governing body,” it
is cost effective as well, as it limits variability of
content and content delivery, which necessitates the
production and reproduction of similar kinds of resources.
It is often promoted on the account of equity creation. But
standardization leads to a situation that limits the
creativity of the instructor while acting as a de-motivating
agent as well by taking away the responsibility of content
creation and delivery from an instructor who is probable the
best judge of her students’ abilities and inclinations.
Apart from demeaning a teacher’s role, standardization does
not cater to a student’s individual capacity, but asks
him/her to alter their level, learning methodology and pace
to fit the prescriptions. One of the biggest threats of
standardizations is observed when teachers are focused on
running through the curriculum, and not on what the students
are supposed to learn.
The second issue is that of “Language Barrier”. The aim of
communication is the transfer of thought from one person to
another, or its reinterpretation. Cognitively and
linguistically it is impossible to generate uniformity of
communication, yet the present education policy in India
demands knowledge dissemination and acquisition through an
enforced standard code, without paying heed to the child’s
mother tongue, speech variation, and inherent richness of
other languages. Furthermore, standardization of the medium
of instruction, demands a child first learn an alien tongue
before diving into the content. Language can also play a
decisive role in segregating students - the few who grow up
in an atmosphere that is shuddh (grammatically pure)
distance themselves from children who grow up and tend to
use local variants or different languages, or a set of mixed
codes.
Then we come to what I would like to call the “Structured
Merit Filter”. Quite often testing results follow a bell
curve. If they don’t, scores are normalized, which makes it
easier to sort the wheat from the chaff. In a world where
performance is the end objective, the bell curve is a
powerful tool. In a test with normalized results 68 per cent
of scorers fall between ±1 standard deviation, indicative of
the fact that structured testing is suited for students who
are more or less average. For those beyond +1 sigma, the
test is not challenging enough, and those below -1 sigma,
find it too difficult. Furthermore, as high quality testing
is expensive, quite often it is done with an objective
viewpoint. Subjective responses are too often evaluated
based on “key terms” and “important points”. Structured
testing is not designed to evaluate knowledge assimilation,
gap in knowledge, practical use of acquired subject
information, and cumulative development of individual
students. It is generally believed that standardization
enables an equitable means of comparing students across
grades, schools, and locations. This would be the case if
and only if the training provided to each student was also
comparable and they came from similar backgrounds. As we
have seen in the previous sections, language has a dominant
role in cognition, world view, and information extraction
and interpretation, which would mean that the lessons
obtained by students are dependent on their cultural and
social circumstances. Furthermore, structured tests have
aided the culture of testing, wherein, student mug answers
to questions without paying heed to a deeper level of
comprehension.
Lastly, “Mastery of Curriculum” is also an equally important
concern. The fact that RTE Act emphasizes on the “completion
of syllabus” and “attendance” during the school year, seems
to indicate that government is primarily concerned whether a
handsome number of students are “coming to school” and
“passing the grade”. Although these “noble” indicators do
improve schooling conditions within the nation, but they too
are not student-centric but institutional in nature (Chavan,
2014). The learning lag between the expected performance of
a student in a particular grade and students is not
considered as many students are placed in grades depending
on their age. This is further complicated by an edict
instructing teachers to finish the syllabus. Very little
thought is given for students who are academically behind
the standards of their grades, who therefore, have to face
an insurmountable task of mastering a syllabus that is
beyond their scope of comprehension as they lack the basic
tools to do so. Although lack of quality teaching is one of
the root causes for this gap in education, it is impertinent
that we ask why else are students unable to learn languages
and mathematics (as ASER survey shows), when the former is
an innate linguistic ability of every human. Rereading the
question above will show the flaw in what is being asked -
the students do know a language, they do communicate, and
they do weave stories amongst friends (all these
demonstrating their linguistic creativity), albeit in a
language or speech that is their own which may not be a part
of the authorized curriculum.
Concluding Remarks: Education Pathways
Universal primary education is aimed at enabling freedom and
opportunity in every citizen from a young age. It is meant
to foster love for knowledge, curiosity, and knowledge
acquisition amongst children. The quintessential substance
of education is development of a young individual by
enabling an environment promoting the joy of learning. And
because socio-cultural cognition is triggered by one’s
speech and is language-dependent, fostering locally
influenced curriculum imparted in the mother-tongue is a
reasonable means of harnessing the individuality of every
child. Policies promoting the uniqueness of a child will
create a more efficient and useful child development
platform. Instead of aligning education with business or
industrial opportunities, it is appropriate to alter
business perspectives based on development of children, and
availability of varied talents. Furthermore, a homogenized
state is not and cannot be a reality for a multi-lingual and
pluri-cultural nation such as India. Hypothetically, even if
everybody had one common language (through an enforced
language policy) it would still not lead to “one people” as
persons would form heterogeneous groups based on other
social and cultural parameters that define their identity
such as their state of origin, caste and creed among other
things. There is therefore no reason why we cannot promote
language and educational heterogeneity without sacrificing
the spirit of the nationalism. Implementing a many language
formula is bound to be carefully drafted, and fraught with
implementation issues, but that is a matter for political
dispensation to sort out. The development of children should
not be held back because the government finds it “hard” to
implement a plan, for that is the spirit of democracy, where
the country sweats for her children today so they may serve
their nation to their best capacity in the future.
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