 ROLES, GOALS AND VALUES IN EDUCATION

3.1.0 The goals of education have been defined again and again in different contexts. But it would seem appropriate to accept, as a frame of reference, the goal of education, as envisaged by the Father of the Nation, Gandhiji: " The goal of education is to establish a non-violent and non-exploitating social and economic order". Much reflection and wisdom had gone into this pithy statement, which is as relevant today as it was in his time or even more so. This is the purpose of education in a modern, democratic society, its long term goal. But can we define the role of education, more specifically and concretely, in terms of a process definition?

3.2.0 Education is a process, a long drawn out one, indeed a life- long process of Learning to Be by Learning To Become. It cannot, therefore, be linked merely to what takes place in a school, over a fixed period of hours or years. In order to qualify as an important first step of a process and of a lifelong process, it must equip the student with capabilities to continue to learn as well as to unlearn, seeing both learning and unlearning as important. Thus first or 'beginning education, is only the initiation of the child into the world of Knowledge, of Attitudes and Values and of Skills. The 'beginning education' must provide foundational knowledge (a mere heap of facts and data for memorisation, will not prove to be a foundation on which one can build later), a critical exploration into the perspectives and values of the community of people he lives and deals with, and the beginnings of a set of psycho-motor skills.

3.3.0 The major goals and roles of education may be further elaborated seeing the same as a process of empowerment and of becoming, (for the individual, which, for the same reason, also becomes) an instrument for social change. To specify:

a. Education must provide a techno-informative or a sound knowledge base, empowering the person through knowledge and on which one can build later on.

b. Education must also provide opportunities to aquire skills, through engaging the students in a variety of processes and situations. These skills would be basic life skills, such as foundational skills in communication, computation, social skills and manual skills, which would enable the student to develop specific job orientted skills later.

c. Education must further provide a climate for the nurture of values, both as a personalised set of values forming one's character and including necessarily social, cultural and national values, so as to have a

context and meaning for actions and decisions, and in order to enable the persons to act with conviction and commitment.

d. Education must play an interventionist and catalytic role too for promoting national cohesion and unity by empowering the students to become agents of social change.

3.4.0 Can education, a sub-system of the macro society, effectively influence the mass society? Seemingly difficult, almost impossible, to effect change from within the system. This is where the catalytic role (change from within) through intervention can make the difficult happen, the seemingly impossible, possible. How? Here are a few brief comments:

3.5.1 Present day curriculum is full of content, of techno -informative data, much of it neutral data, consisting of facts and figures, theories, inventions and laws etc. Several of these facts are also selected facts, namely some facts are selected in and others are selected out. To that extent, there is an open curriculum and an equally real hidden curriculum, the latter having as much or more influence on the students as the former. While one merely informs, the other effectively forms opinions, mind-sets, and values.

3.5.2 To illustrate: In the presentation of the history of India's freedom struggle, facts are mentioned, leading one to conclude that independence was won, without the involvement of a large mass of the people of India, particularly of the common and deprived sections of society. Social Studies lessons studiously avoid any reference to the inequalities and unfair treatment that the SC/ST and other minorities have been facing in free India. The student does not learn, from the curriculum, of the educational, social and economic disparities. Structures of the Government, of the courts etc are given in great detail, but little provision for legal literacy, namely to appreciate one's rights and also of one's duties. In fact, the section on fundamental duties, in the constitution, is among the most unread chapters. Though a work culture is an urgent national need, the curriculum does not include any significant treat of it. A common myth is created that the national wealth and the GNP is the work of a handful of States, of a few scientists and of industrial and business classes of people, leaving out the major contribution to the national economy by the common masses. When dealing with preventive and curative aspects of health, the rich traditional knowledge and skills for effective cures and preventions hardly find a mention. Many more such examples could be cited.

3.5.3 Such biased inclusions and exclusions form stereotypes and myths in the minds of the young. The prevalent attitude of not discussing items of life and reality in the classroom, even in the upper classes, out of fear that this will arouse communal passions or because they are seen as political and not educational(!) is an aspect that needs a second look. Are we

educating for life and for reality or merely for award of marks and certificates? Our present day education, at school and even University levels, provides little scope for organised and regular reflection, and even less for experimental learning, without which internalisation will not take place. Such education remains superficial.

3.5.4 Such internalisations will mean greater awareness and sensitization of the students and will prepare the way for action and decisions at the individual and community levels, by a group of informed citizens. Imitating the proverbial ostrich, which thinks that 'what I don't see, just isn't there' is not going to help in solving any of the problems. Far too little attention has been given to the third and fourth roles of education, namely the value education role and of being interventionist. Developing more appropriate curriculum, through new designs and planning of transaction methodologies will need urgent attention.

3.6.0 Education should pave the way for enhanced awareness, greater openness, and ability and courage to question, and toughness to search for solutions. In other words, initial education is to be a foundational experience, a starter for enabling the individual to enter effectively and creatively into the many tasks and challenges of life. It is not a tool box that s/he would carry through life, in the belief that all eventualities can be dealt with, with the aid of the tools in the box! That is why certificate or degree education can be so misleading (as it often has been) about the real role and purposes of education. one view is to see the goal of initial education as equipping one with basic minimum levels of knowledge, attitudes/values and skills to start one's life journey. It is quite another view to assume that first education, whether completed at the primary, secondary or even tertiary stage, will reach one to one's destination in life.

3.7.0 Education, as an instrument of development, must, therefore be also a truly freeing experience, a process of liberation. Liberation from what? In our Indian context, liberation from the numerous prejudices based on caste, gender, religion, region, language etc; from prejudices based on superstitious beliefs; from a variety of unfounded fears; and positively, freedom to explore, to investigate; freedom to accept truth, even when it goes against one's earlier notions and beliefs. In that frame of reference, the more educated a person is, the less prejudiced, the more open s/he should become, less fearful to stand by one's convictions and when need arises, make demands from oneself and from others as well as for them This is what is meant by education becoming a freeing experience, an instrument of liberation. True education must humanise the person. Our forefathers experienced an effortless harmony between themselves, others and nature. Bhuthdaya or a feeling of universal compassion is one of the finest expressions of this mind-set of our ancestors and of our cultural heritage.

3.8.0 The indicator of educational effectiveness is to see the kind of competencies that the person has acquired and is capable of acquiring, in terms of knowledge, attitudes and skills. Education, in other words, must initiate a life-long process of developmental exploration, within its two dimensions, one of the self and the second of the community and the wider society. Nothing less is genuine education.

3.9.1 What is happening on the ground today is indeed a matter of real concern. Students acquire the necessary techno-informative package and want success and instant success at that. They are impatient to wait. In the cauldron of competition, few, laws exsist and even these are not respected. As a result, there has been growing brutalisation of our society. Science and technology have made many seemingly impossible things possible. The human and the humane, have taken a back seat. We have accepted democracy in our country, not merely as a form of government, but also a value frame. The luminous words of the preamble to the Constitution is the articulation of that value frame. We need to find practical answers to safeguard the autonomy of the individual (one's democratic right), while also making him aware and responsive to the rights of others.

3.9.2 Already in 1961, Jawahar Lal Nehru convened the first National Integration Conference. It welcomed the suggestion of Akhil Bharat Sarva Seva Sangh to launch a mass campaign for the following pledge to be signed by every adult Indian:

"I, as a citizen of India, affirm my faith in the universal. principle of civilised society, namely that every dispute between citizens, or groups, institutions or organisations of citizens, should be settled by peaceful means; and, in view of the growing danger to the integrity and unity of the country, I hearby pledge myself never to resort to physical violence in the case of any dispute, whether in my neighbourhood or in any other part of India"

3.9.3 Among the principal causes for our national unity not being strong has been the mixing of religion and politics, overstress on regions and localities, leading to the adoption of the norm of 'jobs for the sons of the soil only' and caste and religion-based tensions and riots.

3.9.4 In 1986, the National Integration Council laid down the basic principle: "Secularism is the bedrock of our nationhood. Every Indian has the right, sanctified by the Constitution, to pursue his religious beliefs and practices in full freedom. At the same time, tolerance and fraternal feelings are enjoined upon all communities". Back in 1937, the Zakir Husain Committee, appointed by the All India National Education Conference, and presided over by Mahatma Gandhi, held up the ideal of development of a citizenship in an organised, civilised, democratic and cooperative community and recommended that a

course in history, in civics and in current events, combined with a reverential study of the different religions of the world, showing how in essentials they meet in perfect harmony should be introduced.

3.10.0 The honesty of science, in search of what is true, must find its reflection in personal and collective lives, as against the large- scale hyprocrisy of double standards and norms. Can such transformation take place without touching the deeper self in us, the mind and the spirit of man, namely what is spiritual? We are not referring to the role and relevance of religions here, but to the legitimacy of the role and place of the spiritual in an age of science, and perhaps, especially in an age of science.

3.11.1 Education is a multi-dimensional process. while developing the individual, there must also be a stress on education contributing to assist the student towards attaining national goals and purposes. There is a widespread feeling, among a cross section of the people in India today that all is not well with our body politic and that education must contribute actively and positively to find a part of the solution. Currently, national unity and secularism, scientific temper and modernisation, a work culture and work ethics, and above all a humane and caring society are among the pressing national goals. The Report on the National Commission on Teachers I (1983-85) mentions the following four national goals:

- A United, secular India

- A Modern Nation

- A Productive people

- A Humane and Caring Society.

3.11.2 There is enough attention paid to the development of the individual through education. The social dimension of education necessitates that education be essentially value-based. There cannot be an education that is neutral or of a uniform type. Hence there cannot be an educational process and objectives that would fit every people and every nation. Education has to be culturally coloured and enriched. We may view culture from three levels of depth: a) the superficial or external level gives a sense of identity to a community, group, region or nation. In our case, the different kinds of distinctive dresses, the way birth, marriage or death rites are performed by different groups, food preferences and preparations, celebration of festivals etc. fall into this category and level. b) at a deeper second level, the more substantive aspects of a culture and its achievements are to be found, such as the different dance forms, music traditions, art and architechture, literature, as well as planning, systems of management etc. c) at the third or deepest level lie the foundational values, world-views, perspectives, mind-sets, and the philosophy of a people about the way they view basic realities of life, relations and after life.

3.11.3 The process of modernisation will necessarily bring about changes at level one and also, though more slowly, at level two. Both will be influenced and guided by the perceptions and changes at level three. That is why, acculturation is seen as basic and essential to education, in the Policy. There cannot be culture-free education.

3.11.4 The growing malaise in modern education is that it is seen and practised merely or mainly as a means of acquiring techno- informative knowledge and skills, with little or no anchoring in the cultural roots of the country and its perspectives. We do not mean this in any narrow, parochial sense, namely education seen as a means of brain-washing the students, making them adopt fundamentalist positions, in the name of religion, region, language or caste or any other. But unless education helps the students to develop not only a personal identity but also a social and national identity (which essentially means a set of value perspectives and world views, linked to one's cultural traditions) education cannot be said to have fulfilled its essential role.

3.12.1 A major task of reconstruction of the education system is to re-establish the links between education and life, and hence between the school and the community. The teachers, by and. large, see themselves as responsible for teaching certain assigned subjects and to do certain other assigned tasks. They have little or no links with the concerns and situations of the community in which the school is placed and for the people, whose children they teach. This alienation has to be put an end to. We see the imperative need for every school to be, in the real sense, a Community School.

3.12.2 A Community School would mean that the school is not only teaching the children from the community or area that it serves but is organically linked with the community, has emotional attachment with it, and hence is actively involved with and extends itself into the life and concerns of the community. This linkage or bond will manifest itself in collaborating with the community for provision or support of various kinds of services. This kind of open-ended community and bridge building, breaking the traditional barriers, based on gender, group, caste, religion or language, is seen as an important role of education.

3.12.3 Such community schools did exist in some parts of the country, such as in Haryana, with the provision of hostels. In some tribal areas, "Ghotuls" still exist. These brought together the youth from the community, and involved themselves actively and in an organised fashion in outreach into the community, especially in times of special need. The Ghotul provided a structure for socialisation of the young, according to the community norms. Every school should develop into a community

school, so that it goes out to the community of people around and is involved actively with their concerns while the community also reaches into the school, using its resources and facilities for community purposes.

3.12.4 What precisely will be the form of such extension work will depend on the quality of commitment and the competencies of the Head and teachers of the school and of the community that it is linked to. It may be related to agriculture, health, animal husbandry, population and family education, environment conservation or a variety of other developmental areas,of interest to the particular community. For a competent and imaginative head, it may also mean an on-going provision of services to the community by students who have been specially trained for technical jobs and for which the community would pay. The list would indeed be a long one. But whatever extension work is undertaken, it has to be relevant and should find a ready participation from the community.

3.12.5 The majority of our schools in the country, being situated in the rural sector, are already common schools and neighbourhood schools. The problem lies only with the minority of schools in the urban sector. But whether urban or rural, Government or private, the average school remains divorced from the community. There are already many rules and conditions for recognition and affiliation of a school. We suggest that one of the essential conditions be that the school would engage itself in meaningful and on-going developmental work with the community. Not as a bit of ritual SUPW or donating some money for this or that need but entering into a long-term partnership with the community and selectively involving itself with it.

3.12.6 This would be an effective way for all schools, whether urban or rural, Government or private, to become community schools and for the minority of urban schools to get involved in the concerns of the community around. This would pave the way for the minority of present urban schools and especially the Englishmedium aided and unaided schools to become neighbourhood schools, as a first step towards fully entering into a Common School System. The schools need not see this as a tragedy or a sure means of loss of present standards. We suspect that the measure for standards is largely based, today, on the very inadequate yardstick of public examination results. The more meaningfully a school can establish links with the community, by connecting subjects and curricula of the school with the situations and demands of the community, the greater will be the quality of learning that would result and hence the quality of education. A sea change would also occur in the attitudes of the urban school children, in the present English-medium schools.