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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A reason to go to school -Anirudh Krishna

A reason to go to school -Anirudh Krishna

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published Published on Nov 6, 2013   modified Modified on Nov 6, 2013
-The Indian Express


Demonstrations of success are necessary to uphold faith in education in rural areas.

I have lived for part of the last several years in a small village not far from a busy tourist town in central India. There was no electric power when I first moved in. Many homes now have power, and most have cellphones. Nearly all children go to school, at least through the primary level.

Ten years ago, when I first came to this village, I took up with Keshu, then a smart and hardworking boy of 16 years. The first one in his village to complete 10 years of school, Keshu tried but could find no worthwhile employment. He works alongside others who have never been to school - and earns no more than any of them. Other children in this village, including those in middle and high school, are also coming around to believe that education will not produce any miracles. When I ask what they wish to become after completing their studies, the response I usually get is school teacher or police constable. Not one child in this village (and only a handful in 40 villages that I studied in two states) mentioned software engineer, MBA, doctor, lawyer, IAS officer or any other high-paid position as their career objective. Nor has anyone who lived and studied in these villages made it to any such position in the past.

Just 20 km or a short bus ride away is the city, and here the pattern of aspirations and achievements is different. Young people in the city are more aware of better career opportunities, and they prepare to compete from an early age. They find inspiration in the examples of others in their schools and neighbourhoods, seniors who have made it to high positions in the past and contemporaries who are motivated and knowledgeable.

The social backgrounds of those who gain entry to engineering colleges, business schools, and the higher civil services reflect these diverse experiences. Studies that I conducted in six engineering colleges and 11 business schools of diverse quality standards showed that rural residents are clearly disadvantaged. The longer the time spent living in a rural area and studying at a village school, the smaller are the chances of making it into any gateway education institution, such as a medical or engineering college or MBA school.

A self-perpetuating cycle is given rise to, producing a widening rural-urban difference. Not one child of an agriculturist parent educated in a village school throughout was part of the entering class of the top-tier business school in our sample. In middle-tier institutions, such individuals constituted no more than 3 per cent of the total intake. Even these individuals were mostly not from a poorer segment. If one is rural and poor or rural and poor and female - that is, if one has two or more handicaps - then one's chances of making it into any gateway institution or higher-paying job are virtually non-existent. It should not be surprising then to find that young people in villages rarely aspire to higher paying positions. When none before them has made it to any of these places, from whom will they get guidance and motivation?

One of the smartest young men with whom I have spoken was a math genius I met in a southern village. Because their horizon of aspirations is limited, because their parents' generation is largely illiterate (because there were few rural schools in their time), and because the education they receive in village schools can hardly compensate for these accumulated handicaps, smart young people in villages are unable to hold their own in career competition - even when they know how and for what they need to compete.

For many years now, rural school enrolments have steadily risen, until at the primary school level, more than 90 per cent of all age-eligible children are enrolled. From what used to be a largely illiterate society in rural India, a new generation is emerging of which the vast majority will not be unschooled. This should certainly give cause for celebration. But a danger lurks just beneath.

A backlash against rising education is waiting to happen. The first generation of learners was expected to be role models, demonstrating to others the benefits of education. What they are modelling instead is its futility. If after 10 years of school education - when your household chores were lightened and money was spent on uniforms, transport and school supplies - you end up like Keshu, why should higher education not be considered a waste of time? Why should younger siblings also be sent to school for so many years?

Demonstrations of success are necessary to uphold faith in education: chamatkaar bina namaskar nahin, my neighbours say. People will not any more invest in education on the basis of folktales. Until some kid from their village receives visible benefits, faith in education could well falter and dissipate. Helping even one or two talented and hardworking individuals from poor rural and urban slum communities make it into places of high standing will act as a crucial stimulus, raising aspirations and showing the way ahead to others like them.

The writer is professor and associate dean of international academic programmes at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, US.


The Indian Express, 6 November, 2013, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/a-reason-to-go-to-school/1191336/0


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