People's Democracy

POET IQBAL had sung about the blind leading the blind in the dense darkness of the night. One is reminded of the poet’s lines when he sees what the UDF government of Kerala is doing in the field of education. In fact the government has no ideas whatsoever about the field of education. The Media conferences of the education minister are typical flops to use the most moderate terms to qualify them. He is not aware of anything regarding the system of education although he is a lawyer, of course, not practicing, perhaps, due to his involvement in politics. Therefore the Kerala Education is facing several serious problems with the change of the government.

Education has many social connotations. In the first place it is a social responsibility. This idea that education is a social responsibility is the contribution of modern civilization and democracy. The old idea was that education was an individual responsibility. Only well to do people could get education. The question of the poor learning some thing through a formal education system was out of question. Further education was a caste agenda and only the upper caste people had the right to education. The untouchables had no right even to pass by educational institutions. The ideas of democracy and liberalism gradually gained ground and education was deemed to be a social necessity, at least in principle.

The Communist movement of Kerala has a glowing heritage to cherish for its contribution to the advancement of education in Kerala. It emphasized on the principle that education is a social responsibility without any hesitation. It wiped out any doubt regarding the matter. Therefore it became the duty of the government to pay the teachers. It also became the duty of the government to prepare syllabi for various subjects taught. Perhaps people may remember that the notorious liberation struggle was a reaction of the caste forces against the involvement of the government in the field of education.

Secondly, education is the product of the prevailing social circumstances. We cannot totally isolate from the society in which we live and give shape to a policy of education in isolation from the social circumstances. The heritage should not be forgotten. The growing forces in the heritage should be taken as the guide to shape the new policy of education. The destructive and outdated tendencies in the heritage will try to harness themselves as leaches in the modern life also. Some would even think that they would not be able to continue in this world without these elements. It is the duty of the government and other agencies of education to eradicate these evils from the heritage while, at the same time, retaining and protecting the forces of growth in the heritage. One of the most important factors that lead to growth is the readiness to change according to the needs of the time and according to the changes that occur in human life in the national and international life. The Kerala system of education has shown this tendency to change to the needs of the society.

Thirdly, education should be able to transform the society into a modern society. If the society were to remain in the old style for all time, a system of education would not have been necessary. It does not mean that the society is to deviate from the heritage forever and forget the past without return. A return to the past is impossibility. At the same time every society has certain things, which are indigenous to it. It has its folklore, it has its costumes, it has its language, it has its literature and it has even an indigenous science based on regional astronomy and regional ecological conditions and environment. We would not argue that these are unchangeable. But what we would suggest is that these should be left free to have their own styles of growth, while at the same time we should be able to advance our society on par with the modern trends in life and knowledge in any other part of the world. Education should help this transformation.

Beginning from McCauley, Indian education has undergone several changes. It is not necessary in this context to delve deep into the details of these changes. In Kerala, after the state came into existence, there has been a concerted effort to change the system of education to suit the reformed Kerala. Kerala’s heritage also must have helped this. The Buddhist and Jain institutions that existed in Kerala from very early times had emphasized on a people’s education to suit their religious purposes, of course. The missionary schools also helped Kerala in this respect. There were several currents of education prevalent in the state. The twentieth century witnessed an upheaval of education in Kerala as the erstwhile rulers of the kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin began to show an earnest interest in the field of education. The organization of the SNDP and the NSS also helped fostering of education to a very great extent.

But all attempts in education were aimed at mainly improving the quantum of the information to be imparted and the improvement of the infrastructure facilities. We do not argue that these are unnecessary. They are all necessary. But with all improvements and attempts education remained a teacher-oriented affair in Kerala. Teachers generally remained encircled by prepared textbooks. These books remained their Holy Bibles and the ultimate strictures in education. Once a textbook is prepared on the basis of one or the other commission report, it remained the last word for the teachers generally. The children brought to the mercy of these teachers learnt the most outdated things in the most hardening way. In short the whole paraphernalia of education disinterested the child. A few extraordinary talents escaped, though. The interference of the Kerala Sasthra Sahitya Parishad in the field of education was an eye-opener to many educationists in the state. The Parishad has been time and again cautioning the Kerala society of the worthlessness of their education system.

The practice was to measure the quality of education on the basis of the performance of a few in the All India Service Examinations. The competitors who could answer these examinations in their mother tongue and those who were to answer either in Hindi or English, which are not their mother languages were gauged under the same criteria and naturally the latter fared worse than the former. Then came the hue and cry that our English is bad, that our teaching is bad and what not. Everything was seen in its periphery. A "School of thought" originated that the main evil that hinders progress of education in Kerala is politics. The Honourable courts issued their ultimate verdicts to the effect that schools should get rid of politics, thus alienating the children from the main stream of life.

Thus, teacher and the results in certain examinations became measure of quality in education. Nobody was ready to examine the kernel of the seed from which the plant had budded. Education for most was the short cut to get employment. For a few it was a way to get enrolled into the Administrative or Police Service. For a further section it was a path to become professionals likes physicians and engineers. Nobody thought education to be a medium for social transformation. Nobody thought of society. The imperialist germinated system naturally had left its hangover of profit motive in anything including education. Social development was measured in terms of bridges and roads and structures erected and constructed. Man was never a measure for them. The lumpen petty-bourgeois elements ran after the profits that might result from education and got fully disappointed and pointed to the society or politics or even teachers; they never felt that they had some responsibility in this.

English medium schools mushroomed everywhere. The cleavage that Gandhiji had feared would haunt the Indian society had come true. The child, of course, learnt a little English. But he could not master sufficient English to learn other subjects through the English medium in the primary classes resulting in the deficiency of the student in other subjects. They forgot that language is only a medium and not a subject. The child was pressured to mug up anything and everything to prove that he is / she is getting great amount of marks. A student was asked, the story goes, to explain what a solar eclipse means. " The solar eclipse occurs when the sun, the moon and the earth come in a straight line". He/she was asked to say in his home language what the eclipse means. The child does not know it. The child is given to understand what is what by certain teachers. But he/she shies away when asked to describe what is a thing or why it happens, even if he/she knows it. Cowardice and incapacity to express oneself has been the result of the erstwhile education system in Kerala. A Hitlerite teacher roaring in the classroom and asking the child to believe that he is reciting a poem and commanding the child to recite in the way he does it is a haunting memory of this writer. Language, social science, Mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and what not were taught in this spirit. Father was taught as antonym of the mother, the sister the antonym of the brother, daughter the antonym of the brother. The child was reduced to a "nasty, brutish and poor" state. They became little monsters. Unable neither to write nor to speak, they appeared for examinations with all audacity of ignorance. They vomited into the answersheets what remained undigested in their minds.

As things were going through this pass, the DPEP was introduced in around a hundred and odd districts of the country, of which four districts were in Kerala. The programme was, of course, a World Bank venture. In Kerala this was introduced during the last UDF rule. It was just two years after the introduction of the DPEP that the LDF was voted to power in 1996. The LDF decided to introduce the system in a most genuine way, known as the New Syllabus or the New Curriculum. It also resolved to introduce the new system in all districts of the state. The ingenious methods introduced by the SCERT of Kerala has been praised by most, while a very few educationists had raised shadows of doubt. However, it must be said to the credit of the new system that there was a new wave of enthusiasm among the children of the primary schools. Undoubtedly the educationists of the conventional type did not believe that this new child oriented system would be of any use. Yes, the new system was child oriented. The children are normally interested in plays and games that would enchant them. The conventional type of education, on the other hand, was based on the writing and learning method. From the very beginning the child was introduced to the alphabets and grammar and then he was to read and write what was quite alien to him. This is the system that prevails in most of the country, now. Undigested arithmetic and nature studies within the classroom without ever going to the nature, say, even the surroundings of the school created generations of machine like, unnatural intellect products in the country. A study of society without understanding what is around the child was called social studies or even social science. This anachronism would have to be resolved. Above all the children educated in this background were not able to respond even to things he knew. He/she was taught that he did not know anything and the teacher knew everything, which, in fact, was untrue. The knowing faculty of the child was suppressed in the earlier system. When such a child grows up he was prone to become a liability to society rather than an asset. He could not survive. He could not choose. He would think that work outside the rooms was not decent. Thus agricultural work would seem menial to him. Any sermon on the greatness of such functions would not make him aware of their greatness.

Thus the new system was aimed at taking him first to nature and expand his ability to "grasp" nature. It was highly tedious thing for the conventional teacher. He was not accustomed to this type of educating. Was everything not written in the books? The teachers asked. They naturally had to change. The new scheme wanted a deviation from the original path. The poor little ones that the teachers were, they were thinking that the profession of teaching was the most leisurely one. Now they were asked to sing and dance, play in the grounds and answer the questions the children were asking and not the contrary-wise. Now the old child was gone from the schools and even homes, the new child with an inquisitive mind has originated. The bulky, fatty teachers could not cope with the new child. The new child began to understand his circumstances even within the limitations of the pedagogic bureaucracy, if the original teachers were to be given the name. Now the child could respond to questions. He could even ask questions. For example, he could imagine a lot more on a thing known to him than the subjugated child of the original system. He could say a hundred and one things about the sky, the moon, the coconut tree, the cow, the sun, the earth, the soil, the pond near by and as his grades increased about the computer, about other sciences, about Gandhiji, Jawaharlal, about India’s freedom struggle, about independence, and about what not. He could now grasp mathematics in an easier way than earlier. It was no longer an insurmountable mountain for the child. Languages became easier for him. He could write and research. He could appreciate a poem in his own way. He could read and analyze the special mode of combination of words in poetry.

The LDF decided to continue the system upto the twelfth standard with variations according to the higher grades. The details were being worked out. This year the new scheme was to be introduced in the VIII STD. It was in this juncture that the UDF was voted to power. The anti-new Education forces again began their manipulations. The first statement of the education minister Nalakath Sooppy was to declare that the new scheme would not be implemented in the VIII STD. It virtually means that children educated on the new lines and for the new epoch are to be taken back to their old days. They are virtually being demoted. The new VIII STD textbooks are said to be withdrawn. For the timebeing, the minister says, the new scheme will continue in the primary classes. But from the VIII STD onwards, the old scheme will be reinstated. The SCERT had prepared and the Education Department had printed all necessary textbooks for the VIII STD. Crores of rupees were spent by the Kerala society for this admirable venture. Without even formulating a policy, the new minister has drowned a great and meaningful experiment that has created a worthy generation of young boys and girls. They are robbed of their lights. They are deprived of their natural right to continue their education in the new format, which they had been educated in. Crores of rupees are shed to the waters for the sake of the oblivious understanding of a mediocre minister.

All students’ organizations and teachers’ organizations and parents have demanded of the minister to continue the new scheme for the children who have been taught in the new format. But the minister is obstinate to the core as if he were the final authority in educational matters. He has become minister for the first time. The former education minister of Kerala who started implementing the DPEP was an IUML man. He is E T Muhammed Basheer. He is in all out support for the new scheme of education. A war of nerves is going not only in the UDF but even in the IUML in the name of the new stand of the new education minister.

The question is very simple. Can a minister by his whims and fancies change a policy and curriculum of a state? Remember that the state in question is Kerala. Kerala has been the forerunner in many things. Kerala has given leadership to India in many respects. It is the new venture that the state was successfully implementing that is now withdrawn by the minister. For reasons known to him alone. Even the opponents to the new scheme were realizing that they were wrong and the new wave of enthusiasm and understanding and liveliness in the school atmosphere in Kerala were eye-openers to them.

The legacy of a great experiment is thus being ruined. The new generation is taken back to the outdated system. The children who have by now completed, for example the VII STD have a very good idea regarding the new strides in the fields of technology including Information Technology. The old VIII STD textbooks do not even mention the thing because they were prepared before this technology came in existence. Yes, our children are taken back to the days fifteen years ago. The parents, teachers, students and educationists and all others will have to rise to the occasion to correct the new minister. The chief minister has to interfere in the matter. However, the chief minister lacks interest in issues like education. He remains contented that the Marxists are taught a lesson. In the course of this complacency on the part of the CM and on the part of the people at large, our twenty first century is being taken back to the remote past. It is high time that the community at large has to protest against this.