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http://www.indiatogether.org/education/opinions/btree1.htmEducation: A Beautiful

Tree - Part I Contrary to popular belief, the Indian education system at the end

of the 18th century compared more than favourably with the British system.

Reflections by SIDH of Uttarakhand. February 2002: In October 1931 Mahatma

Gandhi made a statement at Chatham House, London, that created a furore in the

English press. He said, "Today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a

hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when

they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to

root them out. They scratched the soil and left the root exposed and the

beautiful tree perished". The village schools were not good enough for the

British administrator, so he came with his programme - every school must have

so much paraphernalia, buildings and so forth. There was no recognition for the

village schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too

expensive for the people. Gandhiji could not, at that time, respond with

statistics to the controversy that followed but subsequently researchers and

writers went into the records, mainly British, to reconstruct the history of

education in the 18th and early 19th century.The picture that emerges from the

research work of recent years is only a resounding confirmation of what

Gandhiji said in London. We now learn, with almost a sense of disbelief, that a

large part of the country did have a sustainable education system, as late as

even the early years of the 19th century, and that this was systematically

demolished over the next 50 years or so. The present education system is, in

effect, a legacy of the colonial rule. This system has perpetuated the notion

that traditional societies were seeped in ignorance, superstition and rituals

for thousands of years and lived a life of abject poverty, which was caused by

an extreme form of social discrimination and exploitative socio-political

systems. So deep has this notion seeped into our collective consciousness that,

it colours the belief of both, providers of education as well as of recipients

and aspiring recipients in our society.Factual records gleaned from the notes

of British officials in Indian provinces testify contrary to the prevailing

views among the educated classes in our country. The Indian education system at

the end of the 18th century compared more than favourably with the system in

England about the same time. In all respects, be it the number of schools and

colleges proportionate to the population; the number of students; the quality

of teachers; the financial support provided from public and private sources;

the high percentage of students from the lower castes, and the range of

subjects taught; the Indian system of the time was in a better position than

the British. We need to appreciate these facts, not with the intent of

glorifying the past or to condemn colonialism merely but to help us sort out

our goals and strategies today.I draw upon Shri Dharampal's book. The Beautiful

Tree, (Biblia Impex, Delhi, 1983} extensively to demonstrate this. Shri

Dharmpal, a noted Gandhian and historian, did extensive research in India and

abroad and draws mainly from British records of 18th and early 19th centuries.

He draws heavily from the reports and writings of English officers (not

historians) like Thumas Munro, John Bright, William Lam, and William Digby, Dr.

G.W. Leitner and others. In 1812-13, Thomas Munro reported that for areas of the

Madras Presidency "every village had a school". Later as Governor of the Madras

Presidency he reviewed reports to estimate that "there is one school for every

1000 of the population".William Adam, a former Baptist missionary turned

Journalist, in first report in 1835 observed that every village had at least

one school; and that there seemed to be about 1,00,000 schools in Bengal and

Bihar in the 1830s. G.L.Prendergast, Bombay Presidency council member stated in

1821 "that in the newly extended Presidency of Bombay "there is hardly a

village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at

least one school, and in larger villages more."In his report on indigenous

education in the Punjab, Dr. G.W. Leitner, one time Principal of Government

College, Lahore, and for some time acting Director of Public Instruction in the

Punjab, stated that "there was not a mosque, a temple, a dharmasala that had not

a school attached to it." These observations made in 1852 show that the spread

of education in the Punjab around 1850 was of a similar extent to that in

Bombay.The Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data concerning the background of

the taught and the teachers presents a kind of revelation. The data is in sharp

contrast to the various scholarly pronouncements of the past 100 years or more,

which give the impression that education of any sort in India, till very

recently, was almost exclusively restricted to the twice born among the Hindus

and, and among Muslims, to those of the ruling elite. The actual situation was

different, if not contrary.In the districts of Madras Presidency and two

districts of Bihar for which data is available, it was found that children from

communities termed 'Sudras' and the castes considered below them predominated in

the thousands. In the Tamil-speaking areas of Madras Presidency, 'Sudras' and

'AtiSudras' comprised 70-80 per cent of all school going children. Among the

Oriya-speaking areas of the same Presidency, the percentage of children

belonging to these two castes was 62 per cent; in Malyalam-speaking areas it

was 54 per cent; and in Telugu-speaking areas it was 35-40 per cent. There were

11,575 schools with 1,57,195 children in Madras Presidency and there were 1,094

colleges. Nearly 25 per cent of all children used to go to school and a large

percentage of children studied at home. The number of children doing home

schooling in Madras district alone was 26,446 while in the city 5,523 children

were going to school.The situation in India with regard to education in 1500

(and it should be remembered that it is a greatly damaged and disorganised

India that one is referring to) does not in any sense look inferior to what

existed in England then; and in many respects Indian schooling seems to have

been much more extensive. That the number of children going to school actually

declined during the British period is revealed by one data of the Malabar area.

Between 1822-1825 there were 11,963 boys and 2,190 girls going to school. Of

these girls 1,122 belonged to Muslim families. In 1884-85, when the population

had almost doubled, the number of Muslim girls going to school declined to only

705 while the population of Malabar had increased two-fold.Why did the

"beautiful tree" wither away? The answer needs to be explored when we think of

strategies of education. Dharampal in his book speaks of "the sophisticated

operative fiscal arrangements of the pre-British Indian polity, through which

substantial proportions of revenue had long been assigned for the performance

of a multiplicity of public purposes.....which made such education possible;

and it was the collapse of this arrangement through a total centralisation of

revenue as well as political structure that led to decay in education, economy

and social life." The fiscal arrangements which directly hit the support that

education received from the community also demolished some traditional public

arrangements-such as medicine, feeding of pilgrims and other services. We also

must understand that before the early 19th century, when the system started

collapsing, there was more or less a uniform standard in education throughout

the country. We need to distinguish here between 'disparity' in standards

(which is on a vertical plane, more to do with class distinctions) and

'diversity' (differences on a horizontal plane; differences arising out of the

need of a particular region or community). In the traditional system there was

diversity but hardly any disparity: Different textbooks and sometimes-different

subjects were taught in different regions of the country. But the disparity in

the education system which appeared in the country after 1835-when schools

based on the English pattern were first established on a large scale-was

non-existent till then.Prior to the arrival of English schools, private tuition

for children, especially girls, was popular with the affluent classes, but there

was not much hierarchical difference between one school and another. Glaring

disparities started only when the British, at the invitation of social

reformers like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, started opening English medium spools and

gave them state recognition. This move automatically derecognised the

indigenous system and created glaring disparities within the education

system.The new schools began the process of alienation from one's culture,

country and indigenous value systems, which had far reaching consequences. An

alien system, which gets state and social recognition, serves two purposes. On

the one hand, the people lose confidence and the will to sustain their own

indigenous systems, as it is perceived to be an inferior system. On the other

hand, they find themselves incapable of managing the new system perceived to be

superior. They let the old system wither away and the state does not replace the

old with the new. Hence they end up having no system at all.The new system

initiating English education in India did not immediately take root. Meanwhile,

over the years, people even forgot that they were capable of running and

sustaining a perfectly sound education programme. They started depending more

and more on the state run programmes, which they found of little relevance to

their daily lives. They lost interest in learning and gradually Indian society,

became more illiterate and less educated, as the English language became the

measure of worth.A change has set in over the past two or three decades in

India. People have once again become very aware of the need to educate their

children, in particular the male child. But the reasons for this regeneration

of interests are very different from the academic motivation of yore,

monetisation of the economy being the primary cause. Education is considered

important not only because the aspirations of the community here, as elsewhere,

are being shaped by the market and urban middle-class values, but also because

white collar jobs and 'education' have' got irrevocably linked.Where once

education had meant freedom and building of interlinkages in social

relationships, now it has come to mean the one and only route to jobs. A

migrant worker compares the gross income of Rs. 1,500 or Rs.2,000 that he can

earn in a city with the potential income in his village and finds the latter to

be a pathetic amount. He does not take into account the cost of living-the

amount spent on rent, transport and entertainment in a city. The non-monetised

economy of the village and its benefits are also ignored, such as the cost of

buying the grain which is grown in his own fields, the advantages of living

close to the family and the like.Statistical data substantiate that migration

has increased in areas where 'education' has spread. People are moving away

from their traditional occupations and going away more and more in search of

white collar Jobs. Village land lies fallow because the educated youth refuse

to work in the field. Aspirations have changed and so have values. The present

education system is largely responsible for this mindset and for moulding the

thinking in a way that all worth is measured only in terms of money. The demand

for English as a medium of instruction in the schools has increased sharply with

the democratic ethos. What was once accepted as beyond reach is now within

aspiration. Education, and in particular knowledge of English, is perceived as

a means to getting a job and helping in the fulfilment of aspirations towards

the good life of the urban middle class.Education: A Beautiful Tree - Part II

The development paradigm as well as education policies must strive towards

empowering multicultural societies, which is possible only by strengthening

diversity. Reflections by SIDH, Uttarakhand. February 2002: In our work with

children, women and men from the villages, and young people who teach in the

schools and outside, the Society for Integrated Development of the Himalayas

(SIDH) has learnt some important lessons. We have been compelled to address

fundamental questions of 'who is education ultimately serving' or 'what is

education'. In the course of our training programme in gender sensitisation,

there is an exercise we go through. The purpose of the exercise is to sensitise

youth towards the gender bias inherent in most advertisements of consumer items.

But a spin-off we gained from this exercise was a valuable insight into the

mind-set of the youth, their aspirations and also the complete subjugation of

the mind-in which modern post-colonial education plays an important role.In

this exercise we show an advertisement from a popular Indian magazine in which

there are a man and a woman, both Indian but dressed in modern western clothes.

We ask the participants to then write down their impressions of these two people

in the picture. In the course of 15 training' programmes in which more than 300

youth participated, we have seldom come across anyone who has not used the two

words-'educated' and 'civilised'-to describe the models in the picture. Of

course, they use other words as well but these two words recur as the most

common of the adjectives. When we ask them why they described the models as

such, a very interesting and revealing discussion begins.On deconstructing the

terms 'civilised' and 'educated', what emerges are two lists' symbolising

'development' and 'progress', on the one hand, and 'backwardness' on the other.

All traditional systems of knowledge, and traditional systems be it food,

clothes, architecture, medicine, culture and language come under the second

category of 'backward' and all that is 'modern' and urban or western, depicts

'civilised behaviour'. It is interesting that during this deconstruction when

we start talking of public figures, they too are divided along these very same

lines. The urbane and sophisticated politician and the top ranking, elegant:

bureaucrats are on one side-that of the 'civilised'-and on the other side are

the earthy 'grassroots' politicians and provincial personalities. What is

interesting is that honesty and integrity are no criteria for these categories.

People known for being corrupt are on both sides. Integrity is inconsequential

to 'civilised' behaviour. And this exercise is undertaken not by those who have

never been to school but by those who have had at least eight years of formal

schooling.Two entirely different perspectives represent the concerns of the

community. One belongs to the more exposed, and better off people in the rural

community who are demanding the same kind of education that is enjoyed by the

privileged classes in the big cities. This demand has given rise to a

mushrooming of the so-called English medium schools in rural areas. They are

expensive private schools with non-Indian names like St. Xavier's, St. Joseph's

Cambridge or Daffodils. The child is required to wear a coat or a tie as a

distinguishing symbol. This improves the marketability of these schools among

parents, as well as camouflages the poor quality of teaching they offer. Most

unfortunately, the children never get to learn the kind of English their

parents yearn for. Yet, the number of such schools are increasing every

year.The second perspective belongs to a group, comprising mostly of women and

people who are considered unprogressive. They regard the present education

system as reducing choices instead of increasing them and feel that the

'educated' become alienated from land and traditions, leaving them 'neither

here nor there'. This group does not have a dominant voice and is perhaps

dwindling to a minority now.It would be interesting here to take note of the

World Bank's thinking based mainly on the 'human capital' view of education.

Inherent to this view is the belief that 'in many developing countries there

are no avenues to learning other than schools. Whereas youngsters in advanced

countries can avail themselves of television, libraries, newspapers,

neighbours, and educated members of the family, those in developing countries

must learn in school or not acquire any human capital at all.' (Solomon: The

Quality of Education and Economic Development: A World Bank Symposium, 1986).

This view, of course, negates the knowledge of traditional societies and

narrows down the definition of learning and education to a very small area,

which aligns itself with the human capital view.Contrary to this is the view

held from time immemorial that education is that which brings freedom. Perfect

freedom lies in perfect harmony of relationships. Thus we in SIDH defined

education as that which gives information about the self, society (including

friends and family) and the environment and then helps to build a harmonious

relationship among these three elements. Only holistic education has the

potential of doing this.Diversity, equity and happiness go hand in hand just

like disparity and competitiveness go together. Education that builds

confidence, which encourages diversity and thus works against competition, can

help build a world based on the principle of equity and justice-two principles

essential for human happiness. Education is that which empowers and brings

happiness to the lives of people. The human capital view can never do this,

because it treats people as resource, an instrument in furthering the economy.

The rights-based approach to education needs to incorporate this view of

education and strongly counter the human capital view of education.Any effort

to make education more relevant must look linkages that education has with the

way our lives are being shaped. Education cannot be seen in isolation. The link

between the education system and the values it imparts and the dominant

world-view it promotes needs to be recognised. The dominant view of education

is largely responsible for the present paradigm of development, which in turn

has created more misery and disparity in the world than ever before, and an

environmental crisis of unimaginable proportions.Despite the best efforts of

the multilateral donor agencies in the last 50 years the misery in the

developing countries has increased in direct proportion to the support given by

the developed world. A few examples: In Argentina in 1970 the percentage of

people living below the poverty line was 8 per cent. This increased to 13 per

cent in 1986 during the 16 years of SAP. In Chile this percentage in the same

period increased from 17 to 38 per cent. A review by the IMF of 19 low-income

countries which had undergone SAP (structural adjustment programmes) found that

their current account deficits averaged 12.3 per cent of GDP before adjustments

and were 16.8 per cent in the most recent years and the external debt had grown

from 451 per cent of exports to 482 per cent (The Economist, May 7-13 1994).

According to the same issue of The Economist "of the $12 b or so which goes

every year to buy advice, training and project design, over 90 per cent is

spent on foreign consultants".The real harm that is done is the belief created

that local resources for management and advice are not available thus

grievously undermining the confidence of local people in their own ability. The

use of the English language plays a critical part in this. The ethnic majority

in every region of the world is excluded by this one act of keeping the

language of communication restricted to a foreign language to which only the

middle classes now have access.This matter needs to be considered seriously

while talking of education, because education is closely linked to the medium

of communication that has to do with language. Do we have the means to ever

make an average child in a Third World country as competent in English as her

counterpart in an English-speaking country, or as her more privileged

counterpart in her own country? Can we ever hope to achieve equality by making

the English language accessible to all children in the Third World countries?

Or is the balance better achieved by strengthening the diversity of languages?

The development paradigm as well as education policies must strive towards

empowering multicultural societies, which is possible only by strengthening

diversity and, as a corollary, by discouraging competition and

mono-culturalism. Unless we recognise this connection between education

policies and the developmental and economic paradigm we will not be able to

address the real issues in education policy.(Concluded)

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