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Perhaps, the most fundamental element of how we perceive education lies in the distinction often made in academic and policy discourse between the “instrumental” and the “intrinsic” value of education [Dreze and Sen, 1996]. The former refers to education as a means to improve opportunities for social and economic mobility measured largely in terms of employment and income growth, whereas the latter refers to improvement in the quality of life of an individual going far beyond the quantifiable benefits that education provides.
In the current context, this trend has taken the shape of a focus on skill development as the driving force in school education. Acquiring skills early in one’s educational life, as is being proposed, not only takes away the opportunity to learn and grow, it also runs the danger of condemning the individual to a life of low-wage employment, based on skill development and not education.
This is not to deny that “skills” have no place in the life of a child or in a school curriculum. They do – but they are of a different nature and play a different role. “Life- skills”, for instance, have emerged as a crucial element in the learning grid of children. Other non-academic or non-cognitive skills too have an important role to play in the educational development of children. The problem emerges when policy advocates life skills for some and vocational skills for others, especially at the level of school education. In so doing, it not just contravenes the constitutional objective of equality of opportunity, widely interpreted in educational terms, but does not serve the long term objectives of the economy either.
Scientific temper or social science perspective It has been ac knowledge d the world over that education is instrumental in ‘nation building’, through preparation of children for the roles they will play in the future development of the nation. These values of democracy, social justice and equality, which have a far reaching impact on all spheres of adult life– personal and professional - are imparted early on through a well-developed social science curriculum.
The push for better teaching of science and math, while necessary, must be balanced with an equal emphasis on better methods of teaching social science. The neglect of social science as a field and as a perspective misses an important link with the core areas of thought that social science engenders – that of critical enquiry, historical review and structural analyses. These are as basic to the educational development of an individual as are the essentials of science and math
Building Institutions or finding quick-fix solutions A large part of the failure to maintain [and improve] quality is attributed to “implementation” failures, which are in effect related to the failure of public institutions of delivery. instead of dealing with the dissonance, and focusing on building strong and durable institutions, the solutions being sought either pretend institutional constraints do not exist or find ways of circumventing them.
The assumption for the latter usually involves a rigid view of state structures as being fundamentally given to inefficiencies and corruption. In other words, small attempt is made to rigorously identify institutional or governance related problems that are the real bottlenecks to reform and work on altering them. Instead, the focus is on finding ‘quick-fix’ solutions, often based on technology without a clear understanding of the institutional or structural arrangements required for embedding technology. For instance, the thrust on ICT, is utterly unrealistic for large parts of the country, who are far from computer literacy or even access to computing facilities.
In the schools where computers have been provided, they lie locked up – either for the fear of ‘spoiling’ them or for the lack of electrical power to use them. Teachers, routinely pay school electricity bills from their own pockets, as there is no line item for electricity in school budgets. Similarly, the lack of integration of teacher qualifications with recruitment rules or scope of work, is a contributing factor to low motivation levels of the teacher, which as a simple introduction of teaching learning inputs is unlikely to impact. Thus, tinkering with the teaching methods, with a sub-set of teachers in any given school, without integrating with broader teacher education and training processes or the institutional conditions of teacher employment is unlikely to yield long term results.
Even fixing accountabilities of teachers cannot be seen in isolation from accountabilities in the system as a whole, or from issues of autonomy and agency at the school level. Other institutional elements such as monitoring, planning and policy making are rarely even on the radar of conversations around education, even though they have an impact on all aspects of implementation. While decentralized planning is an avowed objective, in reality, the systems to facilitate and integrate decentralization have not been put into place. Hence, DISE formats are routinely submitted in lieu of School Development Plans and used at a higher level to devise state plans that have little inputs from local levels. Monitoring systems do not feedback into planning or policy either, as information collected by the monitors is not used by planners and policy makers. developing templates for locally generated and managed data systems would enable decentralized monitoring, planning and implementation, allowing administrators, teachers and the communities to develop a greater sense of ownership of the schools and education systems, than they currently have.
While community engagement like decentralization, has long been an important component of the vision for education, the efforts in that direction belie the seriousness with which these objectives have been taken. As a result, they have either been ‘forgotten’ [like decentralization] or parallel structures of community empowerment experimented with, without dealing with the core structural constraints that impeded the functioning of the earlier structures.
Conclusion In the end, institution building is a long drawn process that requires a clear vision and an ability to stay through the course. It cannot be achieved through short-term goals, quick fixes and technological tinkering.
By: Mona Kaushal ProfileResourcesReport error
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