Teach India Becomes

Teach india becomes By Havovi Wadia 14 November, 2008

Even as 'Teach India' becomes 'Teach for India' and says that education is the 'biggest leveller', and that education for all children should be a reality in a country as large and as 'developing' as ours, there appear to me some contradictions in the professed aim of the campaign and the methods it employs. In their writing on the Right to Education, the Teach India campaign has consistently used 'education' and 'literacy' as interchangeable terms and quotes incidents of generosity and big heartedness as indications of the contributions made in this direction. For instance, in their piece on the "Teach for India" campaign , it quotes literacy rates in the country and cites the 'Teach India' campaign as a 'modest way' to help address this problem. To prove that their campaign has addressed the issue of “education” , the following stories are cited: a businessman who distributed dictionaries in a classroom, a senior citizen who brought tiffin for an entire class. The "Teach for India" campaign, they say, aims to "provide quality education to the underprivileged across a number of Indian cities". The “Teach for India” web page says that the Times of India group believes in "education and equity for social justice." (emphases mine) It seems to me that if one believes in equity and social justice then one must also believe that our children must get a free and equal quality of education. In that case, the way to do this is to ensure that the state takes responsibility for Article 21 and invests time, thought and political will in strengthening the public school system in our country. How else will we ensure that the Korkus in Melghat and the Pardhis in Marathwada get an education that can put them on par with the students in Pune and Nagpur and (dare I say it!) Mumbai. As someone who has been a teacher for the first three years of her professional life, I also feel disturbed at the casual way in which people are seen as ”qualified” to teach. It is bad enough that our teachers are overworked, often underpaid and regularly undermined. Now their effort will be put alongside twenty-somethings who are fluent in English, have had a couple of months’ training in teaching practice, two decades of the best that life can offer (education, infrastructure, access to the facilities of urban India) to back them, whose efforts are documented and splashed across the pages of the leading English daily in this country... we don’t have to guess for long to realise what this will do. It will give energetic and young students, volunteering as ‘teachers’ a sense of of philanthropic fulfilment. And it will give teachers more reasons to feel marginalised and undervalued and criticised. I went to the University of Pune to do an MA in English Literature, fresh out of St Xaviers College, Mumbai. I was one of 10 students in a class of 100 who was fluent in the language. Many of my classmates had rarely spoken English before, but they all had

BAs in English. 50 of my classmates came from caste and tribe backgrounds that marked them as SC/ ST. It took me a long time to understand the significance of an MA in English Literature in the lives of those from Bid, Satara, Nashik, Sangamner, Buldana, Marathwada, Vidarbha.... After putting in several hours of study a day for two years, memorising a language that they had hardly been taught, many of my classmates went on to do B.Eds in Baramati, Kolhapur and elsewhere because they knew that would guarantee them employment back home. None of these classmates of mine lacked in intelligence or effort. They just knew what would work and what wouldn’t in a system that is often built to defeat them. I cannot support an intervention that is envisioned, not on the basis of strengthening their skills and endorsing their commitment, but rather on setting up a parallel system in which they would have no space. We owe our teachers. And what we do in the name of ‘teaching India’ ignores the conditions in which they teach and works towards reinforcing the notion that theirs is a thankless job. One could argue that I am selling the children short. That they deserve the best teachers. I agree. They deserve TEACHERS, I say. Not volunteers substituting for teachers. Volunteers supplementing teachers would be quite another thing. That is what happens in the USA, where this model is being lifted from. With a strong public school system, the programme in the USA encourages educated citizens to contribute to the public school system. The danger of putting the same model in place in a country which has an already weakened public school system, where free and equal education for all has not been realised for over 60 years, where curriculum, teacher training and infrastructure all need investment of thought and energy and time.... I see it as a gesture noble in intention, but counterproductive. Let’s for a moment, put aside the question of qualifications for teachers, and equity and other things. For a brief while, let us consider the difference between working on the Right to Education, and working towards Education/Literacy (sic) for all. In the latter scheme, various NGOs and well positioned and intentioned and perhaps even qualified citizens could work in a relatively organised manner as volunteer teachers. This would mean that those in areas around urban and semi-urban India would get a variety of teachers and a rather eclectic “education”. And all this would be dependent on the generosity of the educated strata of our society. No worries there. When we discuss Education as Right, the question is about things like: increasing the number of schools to enable more children to go to school, revamping the Bachelors of Education syllabus so that teachers are trained in ways that ensure that Child Rights are upheld in the classroom, enabling parents to participate in schools through PTAs, working with educationists to build a flexible and relevant curriculum…In short, putting a system in place that functions on the principle of equitable education for all. The latter change involves changes in systems. Systems that will be in place irrespective of economic slow downs, benevolent benefactors and the existence of NGOs, Corporate Social Responsibility, etc. They can be activated, ensured and monitored by the citizens whose children are the main stakeholders in the system – that means each and every one of the citizens of this country. The change is a vision, but why would a vision like this be something not worth committing to?

This is not to say that nothing is accomplished by having several volunteers contribute to teaching in various schools across the country. It is a good thing – it helps the volunteers be in touch with realities beyond their own, it helps students get variety in their teaching faculty, it would inject new life into staff rooms…. I’d say, let us all work on a campaign to build a resilient Education system. And then encourage participation from intern teachers, volunteers etc. The question is this: should a quality education be something that each citizen in this country can ask for as a RIGHT? Or something that one has to request from sensitive corporates, NGOs, other well educated people, and proxy teachers? I back the call from the Times of India “Join the movement to end educational inequity in India”. This movement, I believe needs to work towards a system that gives EDUCATION to all the children of our country. It requires a systematic belief in and campaign for schools in rural and adivasi India, teachers who are trained by educationists who believe in equity and justice, and a commitment to Education as a RIGHT, not as a corporate philanthropic scheme. Havovi Wadia work with CRY (Child Rights and You) but the views in this piece are his own. He takes responsibility for the views in the article.