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By R.N.Bhaskar Indians love pointing out to foreigners all the time how India used to be the seat of learning in ancient times. How almost everyone, including the Chinese (remember Fa-Hien and Huen T’sang?) used to come for education and learning to India's universities in Taksh-shila, Nalanda or Patliputra. The country's Brahminical classes take pride in pointing out that Sanskrit and Tamil predate almost every other written or spoken language in the world. And even today, teaching is often referred to as the noble profession. But take ground realities. India still does not have a cogent language policy. The centrifugal forces of regionalism have compelled pupulist leaders to believe that compelling students to learn local languages will revive an ancient culture. The northern belt believes that Hindi should be made the national language. At the same time, there are many who say that the only language that provides unity to this country is English – pointing out that it is the language in which the country’s Constitution and its laws – civil, corporate and criminal – have been written. And the middle has resulted in all the languages being taught so badly that most students come out from school incapable of gaining excellent mastery over even one of the three languages. Managers working as clerks The situation becomes so bad that most senior managers – who have to possess good communication skills as part of their job profile – opt to write and type out letters themselves as they cannot easily find a secretary who can read and write good English (or any other language for that matter). This absence of language skills has – time and again – caused even poor drafting to seep into the legislature. There have been several instances of the laws and amendments to laws being so pporly drafted that they increase the scope of litigation, and do not help clarify or simplify legal processes. One shudders to think of a possibility, some ten years later, when judges will have to be selected from a pool of students who do not know how to speak or interpret a language precisely. It will increase the legal muddle that most litigants are already confronted with. And yet, the government, year
after year, continues to make sanctimonious sounds about how it plans
to increase the plan outlay on education, and how this has to be made
the cornerstone of our social fabric. The big question is – how is
this money to be spent? If it is by promoting the same teachers
who have not been able to improve their language skills, the next generation
of students will emerge with more flawed linguistic skills, not better.
In fact, taking a few comparative
notes with what India has been doing, and what China has already done,
is quite telling. Do look at the table given alongside.
It will reveal a few startling facts. Literacy levels are higher than those in India. And do remember in India literacy is defined as anyone capable of reading, writing or signing his or her name. It does not really matter if the person does not know the other alphabets of the language. China has concentrated on the building blocks of education far more effectively than India has. It has more schools, more teachers, and more students. But, most critically, it has fewer students per teacher, thus allowing for greater student interaction than would be possible if there are more students per teacher. The issue of fewer students per teacher is something that China has respected far more than India has. For instance, for Junior colleges, the government at the centre has recommended that the strength of students per class can go up to 80. In Maharashtra, this minimum number per classroom was revised from 80 to 120 a few years ago. Just last month, the state government announced that each classroom should have a minimum (not maximum) of 125 students, thereby making a mockery of education itself. Its reason for this fliparound? There were more students than there were classroom, so more students would have to be packed into classrooms. This state government also had the gall to say that teachers would not be paid during the vacations but only on the basis of answer papers they corrected. What this tells us that this
country which once used to be a centre of learning has forgotten the very
values that must be cherished if education is to thrive and blossom. It
has forgotten that teaching and learning are very sensitive subjects and
must be dealt with great sensitivity and foresight. And that without good
learning, India can very well forget being a republic that it thought
it could become when it wrested independence from the British in 1947.
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How is it that little children are so intelligent when men so stupid? It must be education that does it..... Chinese proverb
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