prasad1
Active member
For the longer term one of the choices the Indian elite should make is dramatically to improve the state of education in order to diminish, equally dramatically, poverty, injustice, inequality and, of course, illiteracy, hence possible violent social instability. In so doing what is above all necessary is to face realities – not to engage in wishful thinking denial.
To give a shameful example: in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test for fifteen year olds in reading, math and science from seventy-four countries, India ranked seventy-third, just ahead of Kyrgyzstan. (China was first.) What was Delhi’s reaction? You would assume of course that it took the results very seriously, called for an in-depth and thorough investigation, and immediately set about instituting radical reforms to ensure a dramatic improvement in India’s future rankings. In fact, your assumption would be completely wrong! In the words of Hemali Chhapia, India “chickened out”: it withdrew from the test and has since refused to participate. Whether the choice to buy the Rafales was the right or wrong choice can be debated; in this case the withdrawal from PISA was emphatically and unequivocally the wrong choice.
Arguably even more devastating than the PISA results are the findings of the NGO Prathan on the deplorable state of affairs in the country’s rural primary schools. Though percentages of enrollment have increased to a respectable 96%, Prathan reports that in the last decade over 100 million children have completed primary school without achieving the most basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The 2014 education report found that 20% of children having completed primary school are incapable of recognizing single digit numbers up to 9! The figure for 2009 was 11%. Thus while numbers of students enrolled are going up, quality is obviously deteriorating fast. This is in part due to very high levels of teacher absenteeism. One of the consequences is that even the very poor are seeking to put their children in fee-paying private schools. This, among other nefarious things, aggravates inequality.
India: War, Peace, And The Education Crisis
To give a shameful example: in the 2009 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test for fifteen year olds in reading, math and science from seventy-four countries, India ranked seventy-third, just ahead of Kyrgyzstan. (China was first.) What was Delhi’s reaction? You would assume of course that it took the results very seriously, called for an in-depth and thorough investigation, and immediately set about instituting radical reforms to ensure a dramatic improvement in India’s future rankings. In fact, your assumption would be completely wrong! In the words of Hemali Chhapia, India “chickened out”: it withdrew from the test and has since refused to participate. Whether the choice to buy the Rafales was the right or wrong choice can be debated; in this case the withdrawal from PISA was emphatically and unequivocally the wrong choice.
Arguably even more devastating than the PISA results are the findings of the NGO Prathan on the deplorable state of affairs in the country’s rural primary schools. Though percentages of enrollment have increased to a respectable 96%, Prathan reports that in the last decade over 100 million children have completed primary school without achieving the most basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic. The 2014 education report found that 20% of children having completed primary school are incapable of recognizing single digit numbers up to 9! The figure for 2009 was 11%. Thus while numbers of students enrolled are going up, quality is obviously deteriorating fast. This is in part due to very high levels of teacher absenteeism. One of the consequences is that even the very poor are seeking to put their children in fee-paying private schools. This, among other nefarious things, aggravates inequality.
India: War, Peace, And The Education Crisis
