What happens when you seriously try to empower children, teachers and community through large scale education initiatives?

The pervasive notion that 'nothing has been done in education in India' could not be further from the truth. In fact not only has a great deal been done, but its consequences have been faced over decades. In particular, what follows applies to introducing educational designs based on local context, using the experiences and strengths of the stakeholders, creating a situation where they play an active role in determining and implementing processes.

Though obviously much must have been done over the decades till the 80s, my experience ranges from mid-80s, when I was part of a team working on such classroom practices, textbooks and educational designs from 1986 onwards. Implementation of the programme called Prashika (Prathamik Shiksha Karyakram) focused on marginalised groups, with the team living in a tribal area as well as in a rural, deprived pocket and introducing the innovation in government primary schools. The work in Prashika was pathbreaking in many, many ways (integration of 5 subjects at the primary level, incorporation of multiple local languages, a hugely localised textbook/workbook that could only be completed with each child contributing, called Khushi-Khushi - still not matched anywhere, I believe). It provided hope that much was possible despite the difficulties faced and informed many of the later efforts that followed, both in the government and the NGO sector.

Later in DPEP - particularly Kerala, Assam, Karnataka, Haryana, UP, Bihar, TN, Nagaland and later with SSA Gujarat further work was done. Localised training, contexualisable textbooks (some really brilliant stuff still not matched anywhere - and that's a professional opinion), teacher determined assessment system, involvement of community knowledge, children constructing local histories / local environment books, peer learning and assessments, textbooks that would be 'complete' only along with a set of 50 district-specific books kept in the school library.... many, many innovative and large scale measures were conceived and actually implemented using a strategically developed implementation plan. 

In each first five states we were able to see 2-3 years of implementation, development of hundreds / thousands of teachers who implemented contextualised learning, a high degree of in-class practice backed by supportive, localisable material. These states changed their position in the national achievement surveys too, with Kerala rising to the top (it had been fairly close to the bottom before this, below Bihar in the first national survey). In the case of Gujarat, field testing was done in 630 schools, researched by MSU Baroda with very encouraging findings. 

However, as long as we were not visibly successful there were no problems. When change began to be visible on some scale and a palpable sense of energy was witnessed among teachers and communities, alarm bells began to ring. in each of these states, the powers that be - especially at state level, state institutions, administrations, political parties - found that this went against the command-and-control structures conducive to them being able to assert their authority. Schools didn't want to be told what to teach when and how - they had their own plans. Empowered teachers / school heads / even some VECs refused to kowtow to mediocre ideas or corruption oriented bosses - leading to huge conflicts all over the place. Unfortunately these never got reported, recorded or researched. The results were mass scale transfers, cases against state project directors who encouraged this (Kerala SPD was charge sheeted, Karnataka SPD given punishment posting in North Karnataka, Assam SPD sent to conflict zone during worst riots, Bihar SPD transferred to PHED and later kept without posting), the re-casting of State Resource Groups from those selected for tested capabilities to those stocked with ex-officio positions, the emasculation of the BRC-CRC structures from genuine teacher support institutions into data collection centres (believe it or not, we did have functional BRCs CRCs at one time!), the centralisation of powers away from the VECs and re-casting into SMCs with a different function, and major shift in recruitments away from districts to states (in one state the Education Minister held a Recruitment Mela in a stadium to personally appoint 3000 para-teachers). 

Interestingly, Prashika in MP faced a similar adminstrative backlash and was closed down.

Yes, like it or not, this is what ideas of empowerment through education come up against - and they fall short not because of lack of any purity in the idea itself or absence of rigour, but because after a point when it goes into implementation an idea is something else, and not its original pure self. You might look at the actual work and find it is not 'up to the standard' - yet when trying to create it for those who need education the most, other aspects need to be taken into account. Basically, empowering the weak is clearly seen by the strong as disempowering them - and the empire strikes back! One of the outcomes is that a few years later, it appears as if nothing has been done, and people gear themselves up to again come up with 'innovative' ideas, often weaker than might already have been tried, uninformed by the past.

The Seven Myths of Highly Ineffective Education Systems – Myth # 1 of 7

Or

The Seven Myths That Make Education Difficult To Improve

Have you ever had the experience of failing to open a lock till you discovered that you were using the wrong key? That's a little like discovering after years or decades of work that perhaps some of the things we've been taking for granted all along don't necessarily hold true. There are probably many such notions, but here are what seem to be the seven most crucial ones. Each one of these is elaborated upon in a separate post, and followed by a note on what we can do - all over the next eight days.

The Seven Myths:

1. Children are homogenous

·      All must learn the same thing, in the same way, with the same material.
·      All must learn the same amount

If someone falls behind, something must be wrong with them – they don’t conform to the norm!

2. All children must attend school every day

3. There is one form of knowledge and it belongs to the ‘educated classes’.

4. Students learn mainly by listening to the teacher.

5. Teachers can improve by following instructions given to them by their seniors.

6. Stakeholders are concerned about education (as educationists understand it)

7. The education system exists to improve education.

Myth # 1 – Children are homogenous

·      All must learn the same thing, in the same way, with the same material.
·      All must learn the same amount

It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? What daily observation and commonsense (backed by vast, vast amounts of in-depth research) tells us is that children are very different from each other. That it is indeed difficult to expect all of them to learn the same amount in a year, that all ‘averages’ are mere guess work, certainly in terms of subject-related expectations after the early years. In fact, even the idea of putting children into classes or grades may not have sufficient basis – it is more management friendly than learning friendly. The question is not ‘How can the teacher teach if all children have to learn differently?’ but ‘How can naturally diverse children learn if the teacher teaches the same thing and in the same way to all?’

As a result of all this, if some children fall behind, it is assumed something must be wrong with them – they don’t conform to the norm! The ones falling behind are actually often those from under-resourced backgrounds – because the ‘norm’ and design of education is such that you are likely to do better if you are from an economically better background. Which is why it is actually news if a child from a poor family does well in a board exam!

And of course if you happen not to be able to learn the way in which you are being taught (you might be from a privileged family) even then something is wrong with you (though less wrong than if you were poor). You may not like school, but you can be sure the school does not like you too.

This myth is so common, so prevalent that it’s hard to imagine there might be other ways… what do you think?

Tomorrow, Myth # 2 of 7

Why Measuring Learning Outcomes Does Not Improve Accountability in Education – Or Outcomes

In the last few years, the clamour for measuring learning outcomes and using that as a means to ensure accountability has grown louder. In fact the current Five Year Plan insists that learning outcomes be measurable and be measured. Corporate houses funding various foundations and NGOs are big on learning assessment and look to it as a means of bringing about improvement. Many sensible people are voicing views to the effect that if a teacher is unable to generate learning outcomes, he should be shoved aside and replaced by someone better. And, of course, the feeling persists that we are not measuring the quality of learning enough.

This is unfortunate. Not because measuring outcomes is not important or somehow wrong but because the present formulations of the issue are simplistic to the extent that they prevent underlying issues to be addressed. Here is how.

First, it is not as if the quality of learning is not being measured, or has not been measured in the last 20 years. The first all-India survey of learning levels was conducted by the NCERT in 1995, and there have been many since. Several large-scale independent studies of students’ learning levels have been run, including ASER and surveys of Education Initiatives. Small-scale learning assessments have been conducted for innumerable research studies (e.g. of 1 lakh children in Tamil Nadu to assess the state’s Activity Based Learning Programme) or pilot projects (for instance, several states have piloted their textbooks and used learning achievement as a benchmark). And of course at least hundreds (if not thousands) of NGOs/NGO-run programmes (often in government schools) have incorporated assessment as an effectiveness measure.

There are thus any number of assessments available – and they've been telling us for the last twenty years that our children are not learning. Only, this doesn’t seem to have resulted in improved learning, thus questioning the assumption behind the clamour for measurement.

This is a little like weighing a child to assess the level of nutrition – unfortunately, merely weighing the child will not lead to better nutrition... Something else is clearly required, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

Second, insisting on having 'measurable' outcomes is hugely misleading – just because you can measure something doesn't make it more worthwhile (e.g. we do want students to be creative or considerate or civic though there are no easy measures for these). Several of the assessments mentioned suffer from this. Thus an Adivasi child who displays great resourcefulness, knowledge of the environment and concern for others would be called poorly educated since the ‘tests’ measure only basic literacy and numeracy.

Measuring outcomes would be useful only when we measure what matters most to us. Not whether a child can read something aloud but whether he can form an opinion on it and give the reasons behind them. Not whether a child can do calculations but whether she can apply it in real world contexts to solve problems or take a decision. Some of these may be hard to measure, but it would be useful to remember that it is not the purpose of education to be assessable, but the purpose of assessment to measure what is considered most worth learning.

Third, measuring outcomes does not account for contexts and tends to disadvantage (and label) those facing adverse conditions. Which then makes it even more difficult for them to improve. There are many teachers who work very hard in difficult conditions – but don't attain the kind of outcomes expected because the curriculum assumes children will be able to attend daily or speak the school language at home (and several other such notions), which don't apply to the children they work with (some 60-70% in India). We'll end up shoving these teachers out if we take the advice to replace them – instead of overhauling the system which has designed itself in such a way that marginalized children WILL fail.

Fourth, there is a danger that the present focus on outcomes is actually obfuscating – instead of increasing – accountability. India's challenges now arise from its success in rapidly expanding the school system to bring in so many children. The consequence is that we now have students (at all levels) who traditionally never attended schools - working children, migrant groups, girls from various communities, children with disabilities, socially excluded communities…. the list is endless. What this means is that while the nature of our students has changed, the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment remain as they used to be and so, the DESIGN ITSELF leaves these learners out.

At a second level, when it comes to implementation, there is a tendency in those responsible to ignore laxity on the assumed ground that it is only happening to those who do not matter. (Just as it is easier to ask a poor person to push a stalled car rather than a well-dressed one, similar prejudices operation in all facets of our society, including government officials.) Even now, therefore, it is mainly those from better-resourced families who continue to succeed, and we continue to have poor education for the poor. So the accountability really needs to be demanded at the level of the system (NCERT, MHRD, Departments of Education) and state / district / block officials.

As long as people keep pointing fingers at teachers as the main villains, the really responsible will continue to escape accountability. For instance, when the NCERT's own national survey shows low levels of learning, why does nothing happen to anyone at any level, including the NCERT itself (whose curriculum has been taken by many states now performing poorly)? How come officials at various levels continue exactly as they have been for decades with impunity when every measure  brings out dismal levels of learning in their watch? Recently, when our group, IgnusERG assessed class 9 students in a district we found 68% of them to be at class 4-6 levels, 7% below class 3 level, and only 4% at the class 9 level where they were expected to be. When this finding is shared, everyone finds a way to blame some one else!

Finally, let me leave you with this – in the current form, knowledge of outcomes attained does not help bring about improvement. Most states will be implementing SLAS (State Learning Assessment Survey) in the coming months. But once a state finds out it is performing poorly, say, in mathematics, that will not inform it of the reasons why this is so. It could be the poor curriculum (e.g. overambitious expectations) or weak syllabus (less time allocated than required), or inappropriate pedagogy (no use of concrete materials at an early age) or bad textbooks (poorly sequenced or giving discrete rather than contextual examples) or demotivated teachers or insufficient teaching time (because the state continues using teachers for non-teaching tasks even after RTE and court orders to this effect) or home vs school language issues or at least 10 other problems that can be named, each of which can seriously lead to poor outcomes. So where will the improvement begin?

The point, as mentioned earlier, is: do ask for outcomes, but don't keep it simplistic, or we'll continue to get the poor outcomes we've been documenting over the last 20 years.

The REAL Reasons Why Change Is So Difficult In Education

If you're not in the government but are working to bring about change in education in India, you're likely to be using one or a mix of the following strategies:

1. Protest against whatever is going wrong

2. Provide data and evidence that things are not working (and occasionally, for what is working)

3. Intervene in policy and decision-making to the extent possible

4. Develop working models and ask the government or others to take them up

5. Actually take over or supplement the delivery function on behalf of the government

(As of now I can't locate any other strategy in use - but if you are using another one, do let me know so it can be part of this list.)

Here's a quick look at what each of these strategies involve and the kind of impact they seem to be having. (This is only a broad overview and not a nuanced analysis.)


Strategy 1: Protest against whatever is going wrong

From small village committees carrying their demands to block/districts officials, to state-wide forums of NGOs as well as the national RTE forum/s (there seem to be a few of these), various pressure groups have exerted themselves to protest against much that is not being done by the government.


The general notion seems to be that if you criticize the system or are able to make a serious protest - the system will somehow listen and start improving. As of now, there is no evidence that it really does. (It's very good in showing that it does, though! Look at all the advertisements issued by state governments where they list their achievements, including in education.) 

Results: Unsure impact. Getting a decent hearing is not easy, and even where there is a hearing, there is no guarantee that there will be an impact.


Strategy 2: Provide data and evidence that things are not working (and occasionally, for what is working)

The assumption is that if the system and decision-makers realize how wrong things are, or evidence is provided on what works and what doesn't, there will be appropriate changes and things will improve. Or that investment will be made on what is known to work. Partly based on this, a large number of think tanks have emerged (mainly comprising of western educated professionals) and produce a number of evidence-based documents every year. INGOs, donors and now VCs/similar funding agencies also take this view and back such efforts. The expansion of CSR and corporate supported initiatives all bring in this emphasis on 'in data we trust'.

Unfortunately, there is not enough data to show that our education system ever pays serious attention to data on student learning, or classroom processes - and makes a difference accordingly. (That it should is another matter - the fact is that it doesn't.) Though a huge amount of data is collected, and the system itself does a great deal of the collecting, its impact on actual functioning is extremely limited. (For instance, which curricula or textbooks in any state have been influenced by such evidence-based approaches? Or by the NCERT's own data from country-wide surveys of learning levels, or even by ASER?) Where the data is used to some extent - as in the case of DISE - its actual reliability is in question. Attendance data, for example, is routinely manipulated to ensure that others can also get to 'eat'.  

The system has a way of being blind to facts right before its nose. For instance, with a PTR norm of 30:1, in the foreseeable future (i.e. next 30 years), the 'typical' school in India will be the small school multi-grade (with 90-100 children in 5 classes, with 2-3 teachers) - implying that a majority of teachers will be teaching in multi-grade situations. Yet all curricula and training presently assume a mono-grade situation and believe that multi-grade will only be an exception. 

Result: Data flows off the system, usually like water off a duck's back. "That's not how decisions are made" - is a commonly heard statement in government offices, which indicates that there are other reasons why things are done the way they are done!


For those NGOs, donors, VCs and others hoping that 'evidence-based' and 'data-driven' strategies can actually persuade the system to bring about changes, especially those that make a real difference to the lives of the marginalized and the disempowered, there is a serious need to re-examine this strategy.

Strategy 3: Intervene in policy and decision-making to the extent possible

If you've worked hard to reach a position where you can impact policy or decision-making, this is the strategy you would use. The late Vinod Raina is a good example of this, being part of CABE and involved in drafting of the RTE. Not everyone can achieve the status of being an 'eminent' invitee to important bodies and hence this is an option only a very few can access. (And even if invited, having an actual say is very difficult - in typical 'high-power' meetings, participants speak turn by turn, and the Chairman then winds up the meeting!) Most people/organizations trying this route reach only the point where they are part of certain committees or perhaps even the various groups related to the Planning Commission, such as the Steering Committee, etc.

Results: As the fate of some of the crucial RTE provisions shows, the more things change, the more they remain the same! I know this is not exactly true - sometimes, some of the things improve. And sometimes they worsen, as the total mis-communication on CCE indicates. Policies, decisions, projects and programmes all run the risk of being hijacked by mediocre implementation, corruption and deliberate diversion to benefit certain groups. Overall, this strategy definitely gives less than optimal results in today's context (everybody cannot be a Vinod Raina!). The primary reason is that it is governance itself which is the key issue, which often fails to get addressed here.


Strategy 4: Develop working models and ask the government or others to take them up

Eklavya, Digantar, Bodh, Srujanika and hundreds of other organizations and projects have implemented pilot projects, started schools, even initiated small interventions within the government system -- with a view to generate models that will hopefully be 'replicated' or scaled up within the government set up. In fact, government programmes such as DPEP and SSA also incorporate an 'innovation' budget head that enables the setting up of such models that might eventually be expanded to the larger system.

Results: The history of upscaling shows that powerful models often lead to 

•   conflict (as was the case with the Hoshangabad Science Teacher Programme in MP, or the DPEP pedagogy upscaling in Kerala), or to 

•   a major reduction in quality of the original (as in ABL in TN, where only 22% children reached age-appropriate learning levels, as shown in a state-wide study facilitated by me when the programme was at its peak; or in the case of KGBV models that initially started well when run by NGOs)

The rest of the efforts don't really reach scalability, or if they do, they somehow fizzle out without leaving much impact. (Take Digantar's schools in Jaipur, Srujanika's effort in Odisha or the 'Active Schools' of Latur, Maharashtra, or the 'Kunjapuri' model in HP or indeed the various 'Model Schools' set up by the government itself in many states. This is really an endless list.)


Strategy 5: Actually take over the delivery function on behalf of the government


Several organizations are actually working on the ground with the government to improve the service delivery. They could be corporate houses who are taking over the management of schools (as is the case with the Bharti foundation running hundreds of schools for the Government of Haryana) to Azim Premji Foundation, which is creating its own channels (district schools up to the Education University). [As of now, I'm keeping vendors - such as those IT companies implementing Computer Aided Learning on a Build-Own-Transfer model - out of this discussion, as they see themselves more as 'solution-providers' rather than change facilitators.]

Results: The jury is still out on the kind of strategy being implemented by the two organizations mentioned above. However, large-scale efforts of the kind where a group/programme actually took over the government's functions -- such as Lok Jumbish (funded by SIDA initially) or Shiksha Karmi, or APPEP in AP (funded by the then ODA of UK), or Janshala (run by five UN agencies) in some 20+ districts in the country, or the Child-Friendly Schools project of Unicef in many parts of the country -- all generated a great deal of energy in their time and people talk of them with much fondness even now, but those areas still struggle with quality of learning in government schools. 

Even in the NGO sector, many programmes / projects that appeared to have achieved a great deal, now do not show the expected dramatic improvement still surviving on the ground. Take the case of all the areas where Pratham ran its Read India project. If Pratham has stopped working in an area over three years ago, the levels of reading in that area are now likely to be of concern (even if they had improved earlier), and are a part of the 'declining levels of learning' being documented in ASER.

In the early days of DPEP, when it was seen as 'different' from government, states such as Haryana, Assam, Karnataka, UP made radically different textbooks and training (taking over the functions of the SCERTs and DIETs), actually implementing high-energy, high-quality training over 2-3 years across the state. Yet today many of these states are at the forefront of the quality crisis.

Bottom-line: you can bring about change as long as you are there, but things go back to what they used to be once you're not there!

So what is it that makes change in education so difficult? 

Perhaps we need to face up to what really lies behind things being bad in the first place. We tend to assume that there's an inability to make things better. But what if it has more to do with the ability to keep things as they are? This might a little more deliberate than the systemic 'inertia' we're used to talking about (though not necessarily as a conscious conspiracy). To begin 'appreciating' this, take a look who loses what if education, especially in the government system, actually improves.  

•   TEACHERS will find their income from private coaching reduced/lost altogether (this is starkly clear in secondary education, which is one reason why improving classroom processes in secondary schools is very difficult). 

•   PRINCIPALS and OFFICIALS will not have control over teachers/SMCs who teach well and have community support. (Wherever quality improvement efforts have succeeded, conflicts of this kind have increased. Eventually, the more powerful section 'wins'. Several state governments - or rather the education ministers - have had VECs or SMCs reconstituted since they didn't find them 'convenient'; another example: look at how the provision for SMCs to select books for their school libraries is being subverted through various means.)

•   OFFICIALS will also find academically strong teachers/HMs/SMCs and even students do not easily 'comply' - corruption will be difficult to practice. (When more teachers start teaching well, school inspectors always end up making less money. When anyone 'lower' in the hierarchy is empowered, those 'above' have a problem. And as everyone knows, whenever students ask questions, they're told: 'shut up and don't act over-smart!')

•   POLICY-MAKERS will have to create a whole lot of new jobs for the large numbers of the newly educated. (This is clearly not an easy thing to do - and one way to deal with this is to keep people in education for longer, as appears to be the case behind the recent shift to a FOUR YEAR graduation programme in Delhi University, despite various other claims being made for it.)

•   The POLITY will have to face voters who can think and ask questions of them. (In 2000, one political leader actually stopped a state curriculum from being implemented on the grounds that 'if this is what children learn, who will ever vote for us?')

•   Since the majority of people are in some way of the other 'under' someone, the questioning of authority will mean that all kinds of HIERARCHIES will be under threat if education really improves - age, seniority, caste, class, gender, ethnicity, religion! (When young girls refuse to get married, or children ask for reasons behind what they're being told to do, or groups raise voice against discrimination - you can be sure that someone powerful has a problem, and usually manages to find a 'solution'. From rising wages for domestic labour to resenting the 'lower' classes accessing 'higher' levels of goods - such as mobile phones - the middle class too is not comfortable with the spread of education.)

All of which is sufficient to ensure the quality of education will not improve, isn't it? Sure, buildings will be built, as will handpumps and toilets, books will be printed and teachers appointed - since these are opportunities for 'side' income and asserting control over resources and people, or appearing to hand out largesse and thus earning 'gratitude'. However, the actual change in the nature of teaching learning processes, a shift in the kind of relationships practiced, and the levels of learning outcomes attained, especially for the marginalized - does not take place at the same pace at which the provisioning grows. In fact, it is much, much slower, if not actually negative at times.

The "system's" strategies

And how is this ensured? Why does increased provisioning not lead to desired change? As anyone familiar with implementation at the field level will know, a number of powerful strategies are used to to ensure that the 'others' don't get what 'we' have today.  

•   neglect (take the case of DIETs, which continue to be ignored even after the new Teacher Education Scheme; or the case of hard to reach groups such as street children, working children, migrant groups, or those with disability; or how the north-east itself is missing from our history books; or how the knowledge of women is not reflected in the curriculum)

•   selective poor performance (the same government machinery that can do a fairly good job in conducting elections somehow fails at ordinary execution in education; an analysis of which files take the longest to move as against their expected time, will provide a good insight into this)

•   siphoning off inputs meant for the needy (from mid-day meals that kill children, buildings that need to be abandoned within ten years due to poor construction, textbooks on poor paper - name an input and you'll find that what reaches children is well below what should; this includes the teacher's time, which is the minimum the state should be able to guarantee, but is not able to due to the absenteeism that is allowed)

•   wasting time in doing things that appear to be important but are not (such as organizing 'functions' or 'attending' to a visiting officer or collecting data on a whole range of issues, which in turn is not used much either), 

•   rewarding the mediocre (as is common, officers 'attach' certain teachers for their administrative chores, thus relieving them from teaching; and of course everyone knows that the way 'up' the system hierarchy is not mainly through good work...)

•   demonizing and harassing the committed (anyone who works sincerely is usually called 'mad' by others; those who stand up for children and community are often hounded, as can be seen by the number of allegations that they face)

•   creating designs that ensure perpetuation of marginalization (e.g. expecting children to attend school every single day no matter how poor, deprived or ill they are; or using only 'state' language instead of mother-tongue) - and many other such 'devices'. 

Supplementing all this is, of course, the common strategy of deliberate discrimination in the actual teaching learning process, something far too well-known for it to be elaborated upon...

In many ways, such strategies are used in the larger community and society as well, to ensure that that those who have been put in their place, remain in that place. As I was recently reminded by a Facebook comment, ‘If everyone gets educated who will till the fields and who will pick up your trash?’ As anyone above the age of 20 will recall, when mobile phones became cheap, many of the then chatterati were dismayed that ‘even plumbers, vegetable sellers and maids now have mobile phones’. And as can be seen in the middle class response to the admission of children from economically weaker sections in private schools under the RTE (‘they will spoil our children’s education’) – the word ‘system’ should perhaps include the larger society and its network of exploitative relationships in which everyone is complicit.

Thinking ahead

You already know all this very well, of course, and in repeating it here the intention is not to imply that nothing can be done or to mount a raving critique of how bad things are. Instead, in the interest of children, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, this is an appeal to recognize that the 'system' has far more powerful strategies than those seeking to do 'good' are able to put into practice - and the results are visible everywhere.

Should we stop using the five strategies mentioned earlier? No, but it would be better to take a longer, deeper view than we tend to take at present. Perhaps we need to stop underestimating the difficulty of the task and take into account that it is not the system's incompetence at making things better but its competence in keeping things the way they are that needs to be addressed.

What this calls for is a better understanding of the situation, of our own unwitting involvement in perpetuating it – and far, far smarter strategies.  

Why do we need the system to change? And what kind of change?

Take a look at the video here.

From 'Teacher Condemnation' to 'System Condemnation'?

Years ago, it was felt that the root of all problems in education is the teacher. In fact, the MLLs (Minimum Levels of Learning, which served as the de fact national curriculum framework) in the late 80s and early 90s were designed to ensure 'teacher accountability' in terms of the minimum that would be achieved. A popular programme, Rishi Valley's multi-grade teaching  (adopted/adapted as 'activity based learning' in many states) actually originated from the desire to get children to be able to learn without needing the teacher (which is why there is so much of self learning in it).

People still continue to condemn the teacher and hold him responsible for all the ills in education. However, with the proliferation of so many 'reports' on education all around, there is now a great sense of intolerance towards the education system itself. The belief seems to be that not only government teachers and schools but the government education system itself is condemnable. Among NGOs, academics, commentators, researchers and intellectuals the general notion seems to be gathering steam that everything and everyone in the government system is the problem!

But what is a system if not the people in it, the way they work and the frame within which they work? From that point of view, I have to say that some of the finest people I've come across are 'system' people. Every year I get the chance to work with thousands of teachers who I see putting in 12-14 hour days when others from outside the system (e.g. NGOs) fade away after only 8 hrs of input. This is not to say everything is OK with the system or the policies or the people - it's just point out that a black and white view doesn't help. And that just as it is not possible to change a teacher while condemning him, it is not likely to be possible to improve a system while condemning it!

From Shirking To Working

One of the defining features of the government offices we visit is the number of people who seem to be comfortably sitting around doing nothing. Literally – nothing. You might find a chair occupier arrive, put away his lunch-box, arrange his things, have a drink of water and then sit down on his chair, make himself comfortable and then – simply sit there, look unseeingly in front. The more social / active among this population might move around talking with ‘friends’. The scholarly ones might unfurl a newspaper and go through it, all the while putting away files and documents absent-mindedly.

However, it would be really unfair to blame those in government service, for the desire to sit around and do nothing, especially if one is paid for it, may be found in almost as many places as you can imagine. The common view that ‘the moment a person becomes permanent he stops working’ does have plenty of reason to be so common! Those paid to do any work, if they do any work, often appear to be doing it under duress or at least clearly wishing they did not have to be doing it. So great is the aversion to actually working that it is common to hear people praise jobs where ‘pay is good but work is not hard.’

So why exactly is not working seen as better than working? Why would one deprive oneself of the satisfaction of becoming good at something, of being successful (and useful), of achieving results or a reputation? I think the reason is that these are precisely the things that most people in such positions can’t hope for. That is why for them, doing nothing is perhaps a better option.

Maybe a whole sociological / psychological / some-other-cal inquiry is needed to find out the underlying causes of this massive phenomenon. My amateurish take is that these people are in jobs that do not require them to think, take initiative or be responsible in any serious way. Their role is merely to follow instructions or – more commonly – pass on those instructions. Their chance of ever getting credit – is zero. Because there are no standards as to what it means to be ‘good’ in their work, they can never be appreciated or recognized or gain a real reputation.

So how do they respond? We know the answer…

The question for us: Is there any way in which shirkers can become workers? It might be simplistic but if we want to convert shirkers into workers we have to create conditions for success, where doing nothing is definitely worse than not working because it so clearly deprives you of so much that is so much more valuable! We need to think on the following:

•        Clarify where professional decisions must be taken by each ‘level’ of person
•        Identify standards of doing any task/job ‘well’ – so that it becomes possible for people to take pride in doing something well
•        Instead of relationships based on instructions, how about developing partnerships? 

This naturally seems idealistic, but one great thing is that this is one of those efforts that can begin at the top. Which means that instead of mobilizing masses, we need to convince a relatively smaller number of people. Once they do implement any of this, the results would speak for themselves.

PS:

The reason for my optimism? I’ve seen this work in far too many places to feel it can’t be done!