Primary and secondary education reform should be India's top priority
jayanta chatterjee
Monday, 03 November 2008 18:11 UTC
There were only 20 universities and 500 colleges in the Indian subcontinent (including Bangladesh and Pakistan) in 1947, the year of Indian independence. Now there are about 376 universities and 17,700 colleges in India only, many with world class physical infrastructure. Many private research institutes are also coming up on a regular basis. The only Nobel prize for India (Indian citizen at the time of the award) in science for C. V. Raman (1930, University of Calcutta) also came in that era. We also had many world class scientists during that time (e.g Satyen Bose, J. C. Bose, Homi Bhaba etc). Now India is the second fastest growing in the world and third largest economy in Asia with huge budget in so-called education and research. But we do not have any world class scientist (who has a slightest chance to get Nobel Prize in science) in India or abroad (as per a survey published in a reputed Bengali magazine, “Desh”, sometime ago).
We see huge uproar when previous government wanted to “introduce accountability” in some elite institutes like IIM or IITs but we never see a fraction of that excitement among educated middle class people or our political masters to reform primary and secondary education although our primary and secondary education system, the backbone of our country, is in a pathetic shape. Our middle class people, who can not afford to send their kids abroad (like our socio-political “elites”) but dream to have a better, more powerful and comfortable life for their kids (and to them through their kids) do not allow any meaningful reform of primary and secondary education since independence.
Our current education system selectively discards talented students with inquisitiveness, ability to ask questions and dream to do something challenging, something better for the society. Now we only produce private tuition and coaching enabled, mugging-up grade technicians who are great to do routine jobs (as in IT or BT) or imitating others (mainly true for Indian R&D sector in any branch of science and in any industry), but not capable of doing original research, despite of having many world class physical infrastructure, huge budget and some so-called “elite” institutes. My recent experience with many graduate students form some high profile Indian institutes/universities indicate that the trend to emphasize on database type knowledge, quiz type information and fascination with techniques (not science as such) are still highly prevalent. No wonder India is among the least innovative nations in the world. Quality of Indian science education and research is going down at an alarming rate since independence, despite of huge increase in funding (1, 2, 3 and Balaram, P. (2002). Science in India: Signs of Stagnation. Current Science 82, 193-194.).
We need to invest much more and have an intensive and proper supervision of primary and high school education than wrongly focusing on higher education and research at the top level, at this time. Recently passed Right to education bill is a step towards the right direction. But here again we need to remember that many such great policies hardly achieve anything in reality and only limited within government files and the money ends up in the pockets of few selected people.
Whatever money we spend on higher education and research is not going to give us any novel knowledge or technological edge unless we have right candidate behind the costly machines we buy. Now we produce mainly technicians, not scientists or technocrats and feel proud to export such raw materials to manpower-starved developed countries (be it IT or BT, the two main pillars of Indian economy today). This might lead to some degree of prosperity in the short term but we are going to loose in a big way in the long run unless we totally overhaul our basic education system at primary and high school level. It’s useless to cut the roots and then water on the top.
I expressed my personal views but like to know your views, what you think.
Updated 03 November 2008 21:33 UTC
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Wellcome Poonam. It seems that it’s almost impossible to change the system from bottom-up. It has to be top-down approach. We have ruined most of our democratic institutions and have reached such a level that there is practically no system. Even the high profile people and committees on education and research find it too taught to make even a token change in the system. Past and recent examples of rejection of recommendations by National Knowledge Commission headed by Sam Pitroda are other indications.
It’s too challenging to challenge the status quo even by able, high profile personalities and committees headed by them. If the system does not guarantee protection of a “whistle blower” then it’s not very wise to blow whistle staying within the system without any Godfather. And that is not limited to education/research, but almost any field of life in our country.
To make any meaningful change you first need to establish yourself and reasonably insulate yourself from that non-functional system. There are few, very few, people who are tactful and diplomatic enough to survive and flourish in such system yet remain reasonably honest till they reach the top. They adjust according to the system and try to contribute their part when they attain position(s) of power. Ground level facts and personal experiences indicate that such people are too few to make any meaningful impact in our society so far. Nonetheless, if you have that rare quality, then you can contribute your part staying within the system. -
This is an interesting experiment with high school education in Japan.
“With its electron microscope, genetic sequencing machines and observatory, the Yokohama Science Frontier High School is equipped like no other”. Nonetheless it’s interesting that Japan is accommodating some of its high profile scientists who can think “unthinkable” and policy makers to iron out its basic education policies and Japanese cities are allocating huge fund to increase the quality of future research in that country.
But the main question is: “Will future scientists be inspired there”?I think, sophisticated instruments sometimes can be a problem to encourage young students to think for themselves (to solve a problems), to groom creativity, to encourage imagination. Those abilities are developed at the early stage of one’s life and probably cannot change much later. If students get easy answers to their questions by schools with sophisticated machines and spoon-fed by teachers, they gradually become reluctant to think themselves. It can take a huge toll on them, so far original thinking, problem solving ability is concerned. Moreover, students from first world countries do not join education and research mainly due to lack of economic attractiveness as compared to some other professions.
Students from cities are more in medicine/technology/management careers (which is financially more attractive) while famous Indian origin scientists working on basic research and education are mostly from village/small town background. I have no data to conclude if better exposure (to highly competitive world) or lack of interest or ability or economic benefit discourages students from metro cities to join education/research career as compared to students from rural/semi-urban background in India. -
The foresaid article is published online on 8 July 2009 in Nature:
Science education: Reading, writing and nanofabrication: Nature (2009) 460, 171-172.(Many readers may not have full text online access to Nature)
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I could not agree more on: “Our current education system selectively discards talented students with inquisitiveness, ability to ask questions and dream to do something challenging, something better for the society. Now we only produce private tuition and coaching enabled, mugging-up grade technicians….”
One of the urgent needs to make basic education encourage originality and independent thinking is to total, zero tolerance ban on private tuition and organized coaching, mainly by teachers and administrators directly involved with schools teaching, setting up papers for different schools and board education/exams. Today success in fiercely competitive entrance exams and other exams means nothing in reality. Those are nor even competition among students but among parents, teachers and coaching centers who make notes, prepare “suggestions”, prepare students with mock interviews and so on. Today a student can answer almost 100% of questions without finishing 75% of the syllabus, even in IIT JEE and many other exams. If you go to any IIT campus, majority of BTech students are from affluent background whose parents can afford costly private tuition and coaching centers. So no wonder IITs claim to take “the best and the brightest” and make them just average. The success of IIT students abroad are no more or no less than any other students from India. Moreover, they do better in terms of management careers, not in terms of original research (even in India), where one’s own talent is needed.
It’s high time different state and Indian govt should ban private tuition and coaching center involvement by teachers and administrators/bureaucrats involved in school and board education. -
In India no body takes responsibility, particularly the higher officials. The common concluding remark in in decision making process is usually, “the system is good but we need to make it better”. Almost all scientific reports conclude while justifying why it could not achieve stated target, “more research is needed”. Stop.
If something goes grossly wrong, then “we are looking into the matter”. No accountability or responsibility is ever assigned to any specific person, unless forced by a court of law and that is very rare. Internal mechanism within any institute is totally non-functional. Now it’s quite accepted fact that Indian science is not doing as it should, it’s doing down day by day despite of huge increase in funding since last 60 odd years. Still there is no systemic study, identifying specific problems and fixing accountability. On the contrary we are in a novel mission to set up too many new institutes and universities. There is no systemic study of the problem, no accountability/responsibility assigned to any specific person or action. The best way to address that by a person of authority is, “let’s move on”. Now what is the guarantee that we will not end up doing the same mistakes we made last time? Who will take responsibility for spending such huge public money when India is struggling to finance many socially important programs for basic health, basic sanitation, basic education and many more?
Every year about 14 million people join Indian population. In that sense how many new schools and colleges do we need to educate them? Have any person having slightest idea about condition of general schools in mainstream India (in villages and towns)? How over crowded our colleges are? How much money India need to allocate to build new schools and colleges with decent facility? Now extrapolate the idea with health care, hunger etc. Isn’t the situation frightening? We, few blue eyed people, living in our own ivory towers are giving sermon on higher education. Do we really think about India as a whole while preaching all these? I do not think so. We need to remember that science is for India not the other way round. -
More and more I see Indian so-called educated class, more I talk to them, more I am inclining to believe what you are suggesting. Even an illiterate village people or a slum dweller is not so naïve about his own surrounding world and not so selfish in his outlook towards others as compared to our “educated” “intellectuals”. In very rare cases I meet a person with a PhD degree from India who is aware of the current situation in India and the world and accept his/her personal responsibility to do something, something that will not increase the problem at least. In recent years our materialistic demands have increased exponentially but we have not developed matching capabilities to earn that. This is prominent in almost all social strata in India. The consequence is sky high demand (for money, for power etc) but no accountability, no ethics, deterioration of law and order, destruction of nature etc. That ultimately gives rise to frustration among people, civil violence, flourishing extremist organizations, to name a few.
Sometimes I think our Universities and Institutes have banned reading news papers or watching world news in BBC or documentaries in National Geographic/Discoveries. They never dare to explore unknown countries, less-known areas/cultures within India. They never volunteer for community services (unless some sort of certificate is given for employment purpose). Only text book knowledge, only selective reading of one’s one research field can produce such naive people who will attain higher positions in Indian education and research in coming days (if not done so already). Neither they have any broader view about life nor any dream to challenge existing knowledge or set a higher standard for his/her personal research. Their narrow definition of success makes them successful, instantly. For them “success” is what they have achieved so far, everything else is “impractical” or “non-achievable”. Such attitude was imbibed during initial days of their childhood. Nothing much can be changed at this stage. They discuss but never listen. When they do not have any argument, they keep silent or leave. Never accept any decision that might oppose their idea about life or science.
I do not see much hope talking to such people. But sometimes I cannot remain aloof. I think the best hope for any country to prosper is to groom its future citizens with a well thought out plan. I personally spend a lot of time with kids. India will do much better in coming days if it minimizes wasteful spending in higher education and research (without accountability, without any long term goal) and invest more aggressively in basic education. But who will bell the cat? Our self-serving “intellectuals” will immediately brand any such novel effort as non-achievable and will take care of it so that it remains non-achievable. Anyway, we have one Kapil Sibal for the time being. Let’s see how he is implementing the “right to education” bill. -
Right to education bill needs about 1.5 trillion (1,50,000 crore) rupees in five years to implement, as per Govt of India. But the fund is not allocated so far. Does anyone have any better source to get these figures?
Most probably GOI has no clue where such a huge amount will come from. It raises serious question mark on sincerity of GOI regarding proper implementation of this bill (just like many other socially important bills passed by our law makers).
On the other hand GOI are hoping to make a cash inflow of about 10,000-15,000 crores rupees to the ever-sick national career, Air India (AI). Last fiscal, AI lost Rs 5,000 crore and is now losing Rs 15 crore daily. -
Anonymous
Good topic! However, there’s no room for cynicism and pessimism. We may yet be able to change it a wee bit, if and only if, each one of us can take a vow to be forthright and honest to ourselves and our children. Thus, we may influence our neighbors and so on and it may snowball by our grandchildrens’ time :-). Utopian? May be.
While I agree with Poonam on the issues she raises, there’s still hope.
The peer-review system in academic institutions does not work in many places. I have been in IISc and two other national academic institutions (Govt. and private). The system in IISc does seem to work well, although there are isolated instances of favouritism, harassment, etc. The high-handed attitude of the Head of the institution is experienced by some of my friends in one of the Top 5 universities of the country. Yet, I would say, there are people, good ones, who have no hidden agendas and only pursue scientific research out of sheer curiousity to unravel the secrets of matter around them, be it natural science, basic science or applied science.
There has been a fair amount of discussion on IMTECH (typical CSIR Institute) in this forum. Though there are some brilliant scientists in IMTECH and other CSIR institutes, they have a huge burden of in-breeding and nepotism and the good ones just about survive in that system. Don’t CSIR labs have a good peer-review system? They do. All institutions have their Research Advisory Committees populated by well established scientists. These committees appreciate the scientists during the review, but the Directors (some of them are all powerful) can manipulate the ratings. And CSIR stretches the Impact Factor game far too much.Coming to the crux of the topic, !we need to focus on School education! (upto 12th = Baccalaureate). Even if we have slept over it for six decades, we should wake up at least now and focus on it, instead of on the IISERs, IITs, IIITs, NITs and Central Universities. Some of the above institutions and Universities can be asked to shape up for a change and get rid of their flab. Some of them have more non-teaching/administrative staff than academic/scientific staff! I’m not underestimating the importance of the support staff here.
Goel quotes that the new education bill needs so many crores of rupees (30000 crores a year): I wonder how it has been “Monetised”! All I know is that we need Primary Schools in each village and middle and high schools in every Panchayat. Schools mean, infrastructure (building, classrooms, desks/chairs/tables, playground and labs) and staff (teachers and supporting). Of course, towns and cities in urban areas should have them too, proportionate to their population. The current NCERT curriculum and books are quite GOOD. They should be followed. Only problem is that the current staff are not trained to teach this curriculum, especially the HOTS (Higher Order Thinking Skill) topics! So we need workshops for the teachers.
The school syllabus (NCERT) should be uniform across the country (this could be another unifying edifice after the IndianRailways and IndiaPost)! The most important aspect is how much we will pay the teachers and supporting staff? Now that the Unique Identity is on the anvil, everyone can be tagged and the salary should reflect the job and the environment. While city folks want more HRA and Dearness Allowance, the village folk should get more !Difficulty Allowance!The National Gems (Maha Ratnas and mini Ratnas) should be safeguarded, IMHO. The govt. should partially disinvest the national Carrier AI to cope with the current crisis. That would make it streamline itself a bit and the lean and mean outfit can perform better.
In terms of Higher Order Thinking Skills and lateral and out-of-the-box thinking aptitude, our Schools and Colleges/Universities lack the ‘methodology/approach’. That’s why most of the Foreign university PhD’s do better than those from India. We can change this (and this would be slow and take couple of generations) by changing the way we teach at the School level and then at the University level. All this development can yield fruits only if there are sincere people at all levels. The current brand of politicians, the Yadavs, the Mayawatis, Karunanidhi’s, etc., are so self-centred and narcissistic that they cannot sacrifice a wee bit of their egos or pomposity. Let us hope the next generation politicos such as the RahulGandhi, Sachin Pilot, G’AdityaScindia, etc can see the merit of the transition that we need to go through to be leaders by the middle of this century!
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I got some more info regarding the cost about Right to Education bill.
“The main issue is not availability of resources. Of course, it cannot be raised from Rs 13,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore within one fiscal — resources will be worked out gradually and increased every year. The real issue is proper allocation and distribution of funds so that the money reaches those who need it. The SSA lacks a proper framework to monitor the flow of funds” an official involved in the process said.“Already, estimates suggest that the financial cost of the Right to Education Bill will be between Rs 54,000 crore and Rs 73,000 crore a year. Perhaps, departmental mandarins fear the additional costs of ramps and other facilities in every single school across India”.
We also do not know how long we need to spend that huge money each year to achieve the main objective of Right to education bill and reach the equilibrium state. The central government has earmarked a whopping Rs.850 billion ($21 billion) towards education in the Eleventh Plan, which ends in 2012.
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Now it’s official. The cost of “Right to Education” is whopping Rs 1.78 lakh crore.
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