The first fortnight of September has always been interesting for education and educationists. In north America and Europe, colleges and universities start a new semester; elsewhere, classes are in full swing. International Literacy Day is celebrated on September 8, though it is losing its shine, of late. Basic reading and writing skills have been acquired by most of the world's population (with some notable exceptions like India). Perhaps, September 8 should be re-christened as International Computer and English Literacy Day, going by the rapid rise of such educational demand and providers world-wide.
September 5 is Teachers Day in India; it is now generally celebrated by giving holiday to kids and teachers going on picnics. Given high absenteeism of teachers in government schools one wonders what do they do rest of the year? This year, we lost one of our most committed and tireless educationists--Anil Bordia. Anil was instrumental in providing the thrust of awareness-raising in the first National Adult Education Programme launched in 1977 in India. Later, he became responsible for educational policy and programming during the mid 1980s. He was a real teacher to many of us.
September also brought in some further disturbing news to India's education system. The recently released list of top 200 world universities doesn't include any institution from India; it is the only BRICS country to have failed to do so. Of course, these ranking tables are flawed; they privilege Harvard/Oxford stereotypes; the system of ranking doesn't take into account wide variations in the contexts around the world. These are fair criticisms; world ranking exercise doesn't tell many things about learning, social responsibility and relevance of knowledge in higher education. But, if the country is aspiring to be a part of the global economy, if domestic companies are competing with global multi-nationals, if the country's growing middle class is ambitious to provide human resources to the world, then world rankings of universities do matter. India can not say, we want to play the global economy game, but we don't like the rules! Alas, whatever happened to the land of Nalanda and Takshila--the world's oldest global universities of the Indian sub-continent since circa 5th century BC?
The global critique of India's education system in September this year was not limited to higher education. Its primary education system also faced some disturbing home truths. The world system of testing students' knowledge of maths, science and language--PISA--has refused to include India this year. Started in 2003, PISA has been expanding regularly. Primary education children from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Denmark, and Finland generally score the best. Indian students were included in 2009; a sample of students from hundreds of schools in Tamilnadu and Himachal Pradesh were given the tests. India ranked at the bottom, just a shade above Kyrgyzstan. Notice that the two selected provinces--Tamilnadu and Himachal Pradesh--are known for their better quality of primary education in the country. So, what is the explanation for this miserable performance? PISA suggests that pedagogy of rote--cramming--in Indian schools is at fault; Indian official response is that the tests are flawed and contextually skewed against Indian kids. Once again, there is no excuse for poor educational performance if the country and its growing middle class are aspiring to compete in the global market-place. By the way, Chinese kids ranked first in all three subjects in 2009!
Education matters! Good quality education matters more! Education that prepares a child to acquire the skills and critical attitudes matters even more! Education that prepares a youth (a young woman specially) to be an empowered, confident and active citizen matters further more! Education that recognises the significance of life-long learning--learning to learn--matters most!
Hence, it is rather surprising that the Commonwealth Secretariat presented a plan at the 18th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers (CCEM) in Mauritius (August 28-31, 2012) that would de-prioritise education in its next phase of work. Understandably, other stakeholders present in the conference (teachers, youth, post-secondary educationists and civil society largely gathered through the support of the Commonwealth Foundation) made a big fuss about this; they argued that education matters in the lives of ordinary folks in the Commonwealth, and that it matters even more because of its poor quality, unequal access to secondary and tertiary education, continued dis-connect between classrooms, vocational and skill development, adult education and life-long learning.
That civil society, when acting as a coalition of coherent collective voices, matters was made evident when CCEM took note of the demand for greater investment in good quality education for all; the Ministers have asked that education be brought back into future priorities of the Commonwealth; and, the Commonwealth Education Ministers themselves would now be deliberating to send strong, clear and unambiguous message to the UN for its post-2015 agenda--education matters even more tomorrow than today!
Rajesh Tandon September 16, 2012
