Maheswari is getting married today.She is sixteen, dewy-eyed, dreaming of the future, absolutely certain that life would follow what she is seen in the movies. And looking at her kohl-lined eyes, her hair wreathed in flowers, her thin gold platted bangles and her thin necklace of which she is as proud of as though they were the most expensive piece of jewelry, I find it difficult to blame her mother, Parvati, for getting her married at this tender age. I remember the day when Mahesh, as her mother calls her, was just six, and was going to the school for the first time.She was proud of the new uniform, of her books, of her satchel, and eager to learn. Ten years down the lane she has been pulled out of the school so that she can be married off.

“You don’t understand, amma,” Parvati said, when my mother protested learning about the impending marriage, “it is very different in our community. A girl has to be married once she has attained her puberty.I managed to evade getting her married for the past two years but … we got a good alliance for her.The boy has got a steady job, the boy’s parents are impressed with her, and she will be well treated in her new home.If I let this match go by, what guarantee is there that another one will come along which is better or at least as good as this one?And, honestly amma, it is a headache to have a grown-up girl at home. Men eye her and I live in dread that she will fall in love with an unsuitable character or elope with someone or worse be raped. It is better that she is married off, and then it will be her husband’s headache and not mine!”

So Mahesh was pulled out of school and married off.There ended her education. However, Mahesh decided to learn sewing and work as a seamstress so that she could contribute to the household expenditure.  At least Mahesh’s parents allowed her to study till the 10^th class.In most low-income families, the eldest girl does not even have that chance.

The gender bias (parents preferring to educate their sons) is just one of the issues that ails our education system (or even more, our society!) and contributes to low literacy rate. In this four-part article we will discuss the issues that continue to plague our education system and the work that NGOs and other voluntary organizations like Asha and CRY are doing to raise the literacy level and to make basic education available to every citizen of India.

Mahesh’s parents live in Madras, a thriving metropolis where there is no dearth of information or of schools. Her parents are illiterate but were motivated to educate their children.  Indeed as the PROBE team, who published their Public Report on Basic Education in India in 1999, found, the general interest in education among parents is quite high (80% of the parents interviewed were of the view the primary education be made compulsory).  In urban cities, especially in states like Kerala and Tamilnadu, children are sent to school as a matter of fact. Even in the BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states where PROBE conducted its research, the overall motivation for education was found to be high.So why is our literacy rate so abysmal?

As Mahesh’s case illustrates, one of the reasons is the profound gender bias.  Girls are more often than not, expected to take care of their siblings, or help their mother with the household affairs, or are married off early to ensure immunity from social ills.The PROBE team found that in the BIMARU region, the proportion of parents who found that the education of their daughters is not important was as high as 10%-compared to 1% in case of boys.In addition, it is believed that since a girl joins her husband’s family after marriage, she would not be contributing to her natal home in contrast to the sons who, the parents believe, are going to look after them in their old age and carry forward the family's heritage.  Quite contrary to the government’s claims of free education (the school supplies and the uniform can cost quite a bit even though the government schools take no or very nominal fee), where ever money dedicated to education is limited sons are given priority over daughters. Its no surprise then that in a state like Rajasthan, only about 5% of women in the rural areas are literate.

Parvati has four children: two sons and two daughters.Parvati works as a maidservant in a couple of houses and her husband is a construction worker.Their total income is less than 1000 rupees a month.Parvati enrolled all her four children in the local school run by the government. Her younger son dropped out of school when he was eight.He told his mother that he didn’t like to go to school, that he didn’t understand what was being taught and that school was a bore.Instead, he said, he would prefer to go to work and contribute to household expenses. So he started working with his father at the construction site.When we questioned Parvatiabout her younger son, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “ I can not make him go to school and it is better that he is working than running about vagrant.”

Do we label this as child labor or a child not having interest in being educated? Probably not.If the school cannot provide a stimulating environment for a child to learn and the child refuses to go to school because it is boring and he/she prefers to work, what do we do?The PROBE team found children are initially motivated to go to school.  However, children are often discouraged from attending school. One of the most common causes is beating or humiliation from the teacher.As a child told the PROBE team - “The teacher teaches too little and beats too much”.The other reason, as was illustrated by Parvati’s younger son, is the incomprehension of what was being taught. Take the following lesson that a teacher was found to be teaching to grade 3 students in Delhi on the properties of "Air".

Air is everywhere; Air occupies space; Air has no shape of its own; Air is a mixture of gases; Gas is one state of matter.

The students, mostly 8-9 years olds, can mechanically recite this back to the teacher but ask them that if air is everywhere then is it present in their school bags you will get to see a bewildered expression on their faces! The schoolbooks make no effort to present the material from a child’s viewpoint.Words, nuances, expressions commonly used by children in their milieu are absent and an artificial style dominates.In most schools, the teaching is often limited to a set of actions that include asking the child to read on their own, making one child read out aloud, sometimes writing a few words on the blackboard, or dictating ‘correct’ answers to questions given in the book.It is thus not surprising that a child rapidly loses interest and drops out of school or parents, frustrated by the lack of progress in their child’s learning, take their children out of school.It is preferable for the child to earn its living, contributing to household expenses, than to waste time going to school.  This is not to belittle the problem of child labor which we certainly face but it is important to distinguish out whether a child has been forced into working, because of extenuating circumstances, or has willingly gone to join the labor force because he/she is convinced that learning is useless.

Parvati’s other two children dropped out because they were failing and they were ashamed to face their classmate.The elder son attended school till the eighth grade that he failed twice in a row.   Frustrated and unhappy, he decided to join his younger brother and earn money rather than to continue inschool. In spite of having attended school till class eight, he can read only haltingly and his other literary skills are pitiful.The younger daughter went up to class ten when she had to take thestate Boardexaminations. She failed to clear them and told her parents that she had enough of school.  All my classmates will laugh at me, she admitted reluctantly when pressed for a reason, and I am not going to face them.

Examinations can only be described as child threatening and serve as a major stumbling block in trying to overhaul our much "outdated" education system.  No amount of change in the syllabus or innovations in the teaching methods can succeed if the end point of it all is the examinations conducted in the most archaic manner, where success in one's life depends on the results of these examinations.The examinations that the Education Board conducts depends wholly on the ability to memorize and regurgitate, reproduced in the most “unchildlike” language or mechanically using predetermined algorithms to produce ‘correct’ answers. A child who fails to perform in these examinations is usually too disheartened to go back to school and redo another year in the same class.A low pass percentage in these examinations also leads to demoralization of the teachers and of the younger children still striving to make it when their turn comes. This has in turn led to ‘mass copying’: the PROBE team quotes an example of a teacher who had tried innovative methods of teaching. However at the time of class-5 board examinations he found, to his dismay, that many of them had failed to perform according to the rules of the game were terribly disheartened to be retained in the same class for another year.So the next year, to subvert the oppressive and meaningless pattern of evaluation, he wrote out the answers on the black board and evaluated the children on the basis of how well they copied the answers!

The hopelessness and frustration created by the examination system, and the pressures of a highly competitive system, has taken a high toll on the enthusiasm for learning inthe ruralareas. Among the disadvantaged families, like that of Parvati’s, children tend to drop out of school.   Among the urban or middle class families we often hear of children committing suicides on finding out that they have failed in these examinations.

“Amol bhaiyya, the teacher is laying on the floor drunk,” my cousin, who spends considerable amount of time with the tribals of Bastar, was informed one morning. Grumbling under his breath, for the propensity of the teacher to drink himself silly once in every two weeks was well known, Amol went with the informer to the teacher’s house.

The teacher, who came from a nearby village, had taken this job not for any love for teaching, but because it paid enough for him to support his parents, wife, and three children.   His wife and children lived with his parents in their village, while he himself lived where his school was located.   His weakness for alcohol, however, created problems. After every binge he would faithfully promise never to touch that vile stuff again ever in his life only to break it the very next week.At such times, the teacher was packed off to his village where he recuperated and then came back apparently reformed.The children needless to say did not learn anything even though the parents are eager for them to be educated.If only the teacher would teach with some dedication…

If only the teachers would teach properly, is the desperate refrain of the parents. The widespread problem of teacher inertia results from two factors - working in a deeply demotivating atmosphere and lack of accountability.The government, for all its pledges to improve education, has not yet paid any attention to the appropriate training of teachers.There is an acute dearth of good-teacher-training facilities and the quality of training programs offered in the country is varied, though recently the National Council of Teacher Education has been set up to ensure adequate standards in all teacher-training institutes.  Most of the elementary school teachers in the rural areas have to at least complete school education and undergo some pre-service training. However, the pre-service training is usually substituted by a university degree like B.A or M.A.

In addition to the lack of pre-service training, very few teachers see their work as a vocation. To most of the teachers it is just another job that provides money. Anyone who has the requisite qualifications applies for a teacher’s position irrespective of the fact whether they like teaching, have sympathy for children, or commitment to spread education. Teacher selection in many states has been further demoralized by rampant corruption in the appointment process.

The initial lack of motivation gets reinforced and magnified over time due to other factors. One of the main discouragements is in the form of infrastructure or rather than a lack of it.   One teacher who switched to teaching from an elite school to a government-run school in a resettlement colony in New Delhi found to her horror a school that lacks even proper classrooms, not to mention other things like no electricity during the summer months, no water supply, dingy and unventilated classrooms if they exist at all or even no toilets. These conditions are augmented by the pupils themselves who are for most part first time learners lacking proper nourishment and a home environment geared towards learning among other things. The lack of accountability and excessive paperwork adds to the litany of woes that the teachers face making them unmotivated and uncaring. It is not that teachers who make a difference, who take an interest in their pupils, who play a role in changing the face of the society do not exist.

There seem to be a number of popular myths that have clouded a clear understanding of the reasons linked to dropouts from education at early stages.Some of these are: 1) Parents are often not interested in education of their children.  Quite contrary, most parents attach considerable importance to education, though their faith in the schooling system's ability to impart education is often very low.2) Child labor is the main obstacle for furthering education.Research shows that most of the children are employed by their own families, not by industries owned by others.Is it the case that children quit school because of work or they resort to work because they found learning at school not productive enough?  3) Elementary education is free. More often, this is not the case.  It is estimated that a family needs approximately Rs. 318 per year, on average, to send a child to a government elementary school. This is a major financial burden, especially for poor families having several children in the school-going age. As an example, an agricultural laborer in Bihar having three children would have to work 40 extra days to pay for the school costs. Is this practical?4) Schools are available in rural areas.However, the reality is that schools are often not functional and equipped with the facilities in most cases.They are located at long distances from the villages, which often brings their accessibility into question.

The scenario is not very rosy for our education system.Though the percentage of illiterates has been decreasing, an analysis of the absolute number of illiterates shows that this number is increasing (see figure).   On the 53^rd anniversary of our Independence Day, the government announced that it is committed to make education available to all its citizens and that education will be made free up to the 10^th grade.But as we have seen in the above discussion, making education free is not the answer unless and until the government addresses the other problems that are plaguing the education system. However, the government does not seem inclined to address any of these problems and as it becomes increasingly apparent that the government has abdicated its responsibility, we will take a look at the NGOs and other voluntary organizations that are now stepping in to promote education in the Indian society, especially the rural and the underdeveloped areas.

Reference:

The PROBE Team (in association with Centre for Development Education), Public Report on Basic Education In India, 1999, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

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The authors, Rohini Muthuswami and Anurag Gupta, volunteer with Asha, a non-profit organization involved with supporting educational programs in India.They can be reached at

Rohini Muthuswami muthuswr@hotmail.com

Anurag Gupta anurag73@hotmail.com