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Lighthouses
On The Horizon
What’s
Going Right with Indian Education Today
text: Anustup
Nayak
with inputs from Trisha
Sen, Amruta Patil,
Luke Haokip and Parul
Bajaj
illustrations: Luke
Haokip
 The year is 2020. 13 years from now.
I see my nephew Zorawar standing tall on the stage singing a chorus with his friends. Hard to imagine that he is the same toddler who invented his own nursery rhyme at age three. He is showing me around his school. It doesn’t look anything like the schools I went to - drab factory esque places where terrified children endured bored teachers. This place, in contrast, seems abuzz with enthusiasm and energy. And colour. For most Indian kids of Zorawar’s generation, this is what a school looks like! It’s amazing that the world can change so fast. I am envious of Zorawar and his peers!
Flashback. December 2006.
I pick up the latest issue of ‘India Today’. The cover story is titled ‘What’s wrong with teaching’ and is a scathing expose of the dysfunctionality of Indian schools. How our children are learning without understanding. How they know the contents of their textbook inside out, but are unable to explain why those things are the way they are. How hardly any of the ‘knowledge’ they acquire can be used in real life. It’s a disturbing article - a long way off from Zorawar’s school of 2020.
Forces are being quietly unleashed to alter the future of our schools. Together, these forces are very potent because they challenge the root causes of decay, have tested breakthrough ideas on the ground and most importantly, taken them to a scale from where millions could potentially benefit. These forces are the lighthouses of hope for education in India.
Lighthouse 1
Reinventing the Classroom
For decades, going to school was only about the three ‘T’s - textbooks, telling and testing. While everyone recognized that learning had become a burden for most children, little was done.
After much inaction, the government has finally woke up to script one of the most comprehensive reforms in curriculum, teaching and assessment systems in the country. ‘The National Curriculum Framework’ (NCF) was proposed by NCERT. (See box on the right).
It provides the blueprint for a national system of education that puts the child at the center and not the other way around. It envisions a schooling experience that is connected to the real world, learning is not by rote or limited to textbooks, examinations are flexible and integrated into day-to-day teaching and children are nurtured to be creative and caring citizens.
Why should we take NCF 2006 seriously when many such well-meaning centralized policies have failed us in the past?
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It honestly acknowledges the current reality and makes a case for radical change, “I hope this effort might start a freedom movement for the education of our young - away from some of the tyrannies in which we have enveloped ourselves”, acknowledges Prof. Yashpal in a tone uncharacteristic of the government.
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It gives practical suggestions for how textbooks, examinations and classrooms can be reorganized – see the following example of how children can better understand multiplication by relating it to real life. Some of these suggestions are already visible in new textbooks and examination reforms.
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Most importantly, NCF acknowledges that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ will not work for children whose lives are so diverse in a country like ours. It leaves room for local bodies to customize their own content according to their context.
While NCF provides a useful blueprint, this alone is not enough to reconstruct the system. What is needed is real content and know-how that makes a visible impact in the learning for a large number of children.
(See Pratham
Read India Project).
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