When you enter into a private school, you head straight to the admin block and the karamcharis or the clerks tell you, at times in detail about the admission procedure. For more help, a receptionist helps you in knowing why you should make the school your particular choice for your children. As selection of school is important since you are making an important investment which will determine the future of your children.
At stake is huge amount of money, time and energy. You pay dont just tution fee, your monetary investment includes bus fee, admission fee, exam fee among so many sums. It is indeed a huge investment for a period of twelve months.
Education and its significance cannot be undermined as it not only helps you become literate but also takes care of holistic development of your child in terms of confidence, independence, risk taking, decision making, creativity and other traits for an all - rounder personality. All this results in a bright future as getting into a good college doesn't seem bleak a possibility.
This is an urban story of all the families from each class ,having hightened consciousness for education are trying to be part of.
What differentiates an urban dweller from a labourer, hailing from remote tribal belts, migrating on a daily basis for work in nearby cities? Is the story different?
What is the story of a tribal famiy or community and its interaction, if there is, with education ?
When you enter a government run primary school in a tribal belt, there is no Admin block, there is no playground or playing courts, there is only a brick and mortar edifice of five rooms standing straight. Along with two tiny rooms marked as toilets for both the genders is a separate room as the office of the 'dreary head master or head mistress'.
Classes run from one to eight in just five rooms. At times one of the rooms is used for preparing mid day meals. The five room structure, best at being over used , supports an enrollment of more than two hundred students. No fans, no lights, no benches to sit upon. In few schools, benches have been provided to keep your books and copies on while you sit at the floor.
In summer it is worst for the small students as rooms are packed with more than fifty students at a time. With no ventilation, the little faces gasping for fresh air and some space to move around or at least turn.
Multi-Grade teaching
High enrollment is observed in primary standards like class two, three and fourth. But this positive development if looked from another lens takes a negative color when you observe closely, how students of two classes with different topics and levels in their syllabus are taught simultaneously. Two teachers teaching two different classes two differentt subjects simultaneously in one room. Leave alone the subject matter of what is being taught, the sounds and the chaos will be at first, unpleasant to the ears. With hyper activity and short attention span, can students really learn in such a classroom?
More than often, students of third, fourth and fifth are made to sit in the same room and taught by the same teacher often, the same topic.
No observance of division in different classes and the learning abilities of almost fifty students.
Teachers
Being a government school teacher is not an easy task. We urbaniites slam government school teachers most often as we are governed by our prejudice that they really dont work. True and not true as well.
Some teachers are heroes in real sense. Traveling everyday a distance of at least 25kms every day is not easy. Making parents aware about the significance of a free education is not easy. Maintaining a good enrollment number in an area marked by extreme poverty, high rate of migration, and challenges thrown by a hilly terrain is not easy. Teaching students whose first language is neither marwari nor Hindi is not easy.
But there are some teachers who have been truent at their best. Recently one of the teachers from one of the schools I work in was slapped a sum of Rs. 90,000 as fine for being absent for three months. A plause for the administration that such teachers are being shown the way.
Absenteeism is an evergreen story coming from the world of government school teachers.
Currently, some teachers are getting themselves transferred to a more accessible and nearby school through 'jacks'. With connections and bribery making their way in the office of the Block officer (BO), schools located in inaccessible or longer terrains are sufferingt from shortage of staff. Consequence: Two teachers handling around one fifty students of five different grades.
Besides the five rooms, the rural education system doesn't have anything else to boast about. No playground, no library, no labs. Computers ,oh, forget about it.
Most of the students in the tribal belt of Udaipur are first generation learners. Hardly one or two adults can be found with metriculation. As you reach higher, enrollment falls drastically, having not more than 20 students in class seventh or eight. Students have not more than two role models: teachers and police officers.
Distance
If distance is a deterrent for teachers, it is for students as well. Imagine walking barefoot a distance of six to seven kms twice in a day, for six days in a week. In sultry heat, in bashing rains, in shivering cold. Think about women students, with their periods on, carrying a load of five kgs of free textbooks on your back and going to the school. The distancet results in student absenteeism, at times the kids facing dangers like stamping over snakes and wild animals while crossing fields in rainy season.
What motivation we are giving to our students to come to school daily and respect this free education?
Are we givingt them a ground to play on?
Are we giving them separate classrooms to really listen and comprehend their lessons?
Are we giving them proper clean toilets?
Are we giving them free -from-backpain hours of study?
Are we giving them quality teaching which goes beyond their textbooks?
Most importantantly are we giving them love and dignity?
For the last one, it is a big NO.
Corporal punishemment is highly rampant in these public schools where a headmaster on the notoriety of one child, can bash the entire batch with the sleek bamboo stick.
The budegetary expenditure on education by the Government of India has been registering a decline over the recent years. Currently the government spends not more than two percent on education. I wonder how much of it enters the rural spaces.
Colleges and higher secondary schools are almost nill in the areas.
With Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan reaching its closure with targets yet unachieved, the government, no matter how aggressive its stand on business and jobs in the country, and an attempt to maintain a GDP of six or seven percent, education can't be taken for granted. As a nation unless and until we roll out the mass of people from the darkness of illiteracy and ignorance, the corporate growth, the GDP numbers, the foreign tours will fail as policies for its citizens.
At stake is huge amount of money, time and energy. You pay dont just tution fee, your monetary investment includes bus fee, admission fee, exam fee among so many sums. It is indeed a huge investment for a period of twelve months.
Education and its significance cannot be undermined as it not only helps you become literate but also takes care of holistic development of your child in terms of confidence, independence, risk taking, decision making, creativity and other traits for an all - rounder personality. All this results in a bright future as getting into a good college doesn't seem bleak a possibility.
This is an urban story of all the families from each class ,having hightened consciousness for education are trying to be part of.
What differentiates an urban dweller from a labourer, hailing from remote tribal belts, migrating on a daily basis for work in nearby cities? Is the story different?
What is the story of a tribal famiy or community and its interaction, if there is, with education ?
When you enter a government run primary school in a tribal belt, there is no Admin block, there is no playground or playing courts, there is only a brick and mortar edifice of five rooms standing straight. Along with two tiny rooms marked as toilets for both the genders is a separate room as the office of the 'dreary head master or head mistress'.
Classes run from one to eight in just five rooms. At times one of the rooms is used for preparing mid day meals. The five room structure, best at being over used , supports an enrollment of more than two hundred students. No fans, no lights, no benches to sit upon. In few schools, benches have been provided to keep your books and copies on while you sit at the floor.
In summer it is worst for the small students as rooms are packed with more than fifty students at a time. With no ventilation, the little faces gasping for fresh air and some space to move around or at least turn.
Multi-Grade teaching
High enrollment is observed in primary standards like class two, three and fourth. But this positive development if looked from another lens takes a negative color when you observe closely, how students of two classes with different topics and levels in their syllabus are taught simultaneously. Two teachers teaching two different classes two differentt subjects simultaneously in one room. Leave alone the subject matter of what is being taught, the sounds and the chaos will be at first, unpleasant to the ears. With hyper activity and short attention span, can students really learn in such a classroom?
More than often, students of third, fourth and fifth are made to sit in the same room and taught by the same teacher often, the same topic.
No observance of division in different classes and the learning abilities of almost fifty students.
Teachers
Being a government school teacher is not an easy task. We urbaniites slam government school teachers most often as we are governed by our prejudice that they really dont work. True and not true as well.
Some teachers are heroes in real sense. Traveling everyday a distance of at least 25kms every day is not easy. Making parents aware about the significance of a free education is not easy. Maintaining a good enrollment number in an area marked by extreme poverty, high rate of migration, and challenges thrown by a hilly terrain is not easy. Teaching students whose first language is neither marwari nor Hindi is not easy.
But there are some teachers who have been truent at their best. Recently one of the teachers from one of the schools I work in was slapped a sum of Rs. 90,000 as fine for being absent for three months. A plause for the administration that such teachers are being shown the way.
Absenteeism is an evergreen story coming from the world of government school teachers.
Currently, some teachers are getting themselves transferred to a more accessible and nearby school through 'jacks'. With connections and bribery making their way in the office of the Block officer (BO), schools located in inaccessible or longer terrains are sufferingt from shortage of staff. Consequence: Two teachers handling around one fifty students of five different grades.
Besides the five rooms, the rural education system doesn't have anything else to boast about. No playground, no library, no labs. Computers ,oh, forget about it.
Most of the students in the tribal belt of Udaipur are first generation learners. Hardly one or two adults can be found with metriculation. As you reach higher, enrollment falls drastically, having not more than 20 students in class seventh or eight. Students have not more than two role models: teachers and police officers.
Distance
If distance is a deterrent for teachers, it is for students as well. Imagine walking barefoot a distance of six to seven kms twice in a day, for six days in a week. In sultry heat, in bashing rains, in shivering cold. Think about women students, with their periods on, carrying a load of five kgs of free textbooks on your back and going to the school. The distancet results in student absenteeism, at times the kids facing dangers like stamping over snakes and wild animals while crossing fields in rainy season.
What motivation we are giving to our students to come to school daily and respect this free education?
Are we givingt them a ground to play on?
Are we giving them separate classrooms to really listen and comprehend their lessons?
Are we giving them proper clean toilets?
Are we giving them free -from-backpain hours of study?
Are we giving them quality teaching which goes beyond their textbooks?
Most importantantly are we giving them love and dignity?
For the last one, it is a big NO.
Corporal punishemment is highly rampant in these public schools where a headmaster on the notoriety of one child, can bash the entire batch with the sleek bamboo stick.
The budegetary expenditure on education by the Government of India has been registering a decline over the recent years. Currently the government spends not more than two percent on education. I wonder how much of it enters the rural spaces.
Colleges and higher secondary schools are almost nill in the areas.
With Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan reaching its closure with targets yet unachieved, the government, no matter how aggressive its stand on business and jobs in the country, and an attempt to maintain a GDP of six or seven percent, education can't be taken for granted. As a nation unless and until we roll out the mass of people from the darkness of illiteracy and ignorance, the corporate growth, the GDP numbers, the foreign tours will fail as policies for its citizens.
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