Basic Education in a shambles- I

Much has been achieved by Indian universities, even though most of them don’t touch the international standards of pedagogy and research. If compared with regards to the human resource it had generated it has fared well, if not wonderful. Notwithstanding the absolute vacuum of job openings in basic sciences, arts and literature, scarce scope of professional educations and absence of thriving intellectual community in most places, huge no of application is drawn by them.

Point of concern is not that. Higher education is the supply basket of human resource for the technological progress of the country. It can be fine tuned as and when the requirement of the country and its industry with regards to economic policies and growth changes. For example, in a more socialistic India of 1980s there were only three Govt. Engineering colleges with a capacity of probably 300-500 students in my state Orissa. The first private engineering college was established in 1986 and after a decade and half of economic reforms and liberalization era even a student having rank 25000 in ORISS-JEE stands a chance. Not long after molecular biology revolutionarized biological and pharmaceutical research, universities subtly switched their curriculum and even the name of the degrees over to fit what they preferred to call “biotechnology boom”. Classical Botany and Zoology are not becoming obsolete because the “advanced” courses are either highly competitive or self-financed. Another eyeful example is the mushrooming management and IT training institutes. So in a way, Indian universities (or say institutes of higher learing) are delivering what are demanded of them!!

But this chain of supply and demand can not be extended to Basic Education, although it affects the same. Both have different purpose. While higher education is expected to produce professional and intellectuals whose number has to be a tiny fraction of the population either consciously or not, basic education is about creating citizens. Basic education confers the natural citizens their fundamental right. Right to freedom of speech, right to private property, right to equality everything precedes the right to acquire information and the right to the power of judicious decision. So even at the risk of being radical, I wont call India a liberal democracy where a little less then half of the population is illiterate, not even uneducated. Education is long been considered the primary resource for any civilization without which it cannot throw effective leadership (consider the state of Indian politics) or create revolutionary society (think of anything exploitation, corruption, violence).

So what do I have to offer on part of solution? I have absolutely no wonder potion. But recently during the spate of debate on reservation I witnessed some people advocating “merti” and “quality” insisted that better students should be prepared in the basic education and allowed to compete with the open category ones rather than providing seats to them on “silver platter”. Here I shed whatever my stand was and prepare myself to contemplate the issue. The issue of basic education.