State of Education

This is my response to an extensive blog written written by Falstaff. Started of as a response to the current mandal gimmicks of arjun singh.

without addressing the foundation issues at primary education level, all this iit-iim talk is just a lot of hogwash.

my sense in whats happening on the ground is as follows:
1. access to private services in primary education is not that much a barrier in india as it is in western nations.
2. this is leading to a tacit movement by many states to encourage small scale schools across the country. i am told that TN is deliberately not hiring teachers to encourage this migration.
3. the way the mumbai restructuring is being planned, in the main city and most suburbs, the population that will finally reside will not access municpal schools. this malaise is across all urban settings. municipal bodies are totally disinterested in running education.read this link from times of india...speaks volumes...

i had this chance to present to a high court appointed committee on the experiences of ngos working in municipal schools and what could they recommend to change the system. turned out to be a total farce. come on people...this is supposed to be a high court appointed committee...if that does not work well, what the hell will...was so ticked off that i let of big time steam...my point was...the decay in the system is so apparent that the first time that the output of the municipal schools are tested by an external agency, the results are abysmal (10th std results in municipal secondary schools, when kids move to 5th or 8th in private aided schools, and tests like the link above). second point was...if i do some work and i myself appraise that work, it is inevitable that i will get corrupted. and thats the case with teachers. they are evaluated mostly on the basis of attendance, drop out and exam results which is all administered by them.
have seen it happen in front of eyes. and people who think bihar elections are rigged should check out an exam in a govt school. how then do you expect the kids to be good citizens if their teachers tell them that copying is ok...why the hell will they even try to learn if they know that the answers are going to be told out.

the decay in public society will screech out of control if this generation comes with these values and are exposed to our fabulously upright 4th estate.