SIMULTANEOUS SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
2.01 Education cannot be considered in a vacuum. It is a subsystem of the society and is closely related to its cultural, economic, and political aspects. One can, therefore, talk meaningfully of education only against the background of (1) the diagnosis of the major weaknesses of the existing social order, (2) the concept of a desirable society, (3) the probable process of change from the existing to the desired social order, and (4) the role of education in bringing about this social transformation.
2.02 Indian Society. It is to be regretted that the national debate which Mahatma Gandhi initiated on the desirable society has been almost abandoned for the past several years and that it has not been possible to project a clear image of the society which we would like to create in our country. This is a task to which we should now address ourselves on a priority basis. But whatever the ideological or other differences on the subject, there seems to be unanimity on the view that the most objectionable aspects of our society are inequality and poverty. For centuries, the Indian society has been a dual, highly unequal society in which a few castes or classes at the top have wielded almost all the economic, political, and knowledge power, while the vast bulk of the people, who had no access to education and no part in political power, lived in great poverty, often at sub-human levels. During the past 175 years, several changes have taken place in the over-all social scene. The princes and zamindars have disappeared; but feudal values and life-styles still dominate the society in many ways, in both political and economic spheres. The base of the ruling groups has widened to include several middle castes as well as the rural elite. The upper and middle classes, who, taken together, form the top 30 per cent of the income groups, wield most of the economic and political power and are also the principal beneficiaries of the modern system of education. At the same time, the poor people have increased considerably in absolute numbers and have been
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totally marginalized. They have little control over economic resources and large numbers of them live a life of drudgery and abject poverty. They have benefited only marginally from the formal system of education and still continue to be educated through the traditional forms of incidental and non-formal education which have been even more outmoded with the passage of time. In spite of adult franchise, they have little effective political power, partly because it is not supported by either economic or knowledge power, but mainly because they are fragmented and unorganized. They thus mostly live in feudal, semi-feudal or primitive conditions, deprived of most good things of life. In spite of our acceptance of the goal of creating a new social order based on freedom, justice, equality, and the dignity of the individual, Indian society still continues to be highly stratified and unequal with a very wide gap separating the standards of living and life-styles of the few rich and well-to-do and the many who are poor and extremely poor. The most significant aspects of the social transformation we need will, therefore, include an egalitarian change wherein the vast masses of our people will be awakened and organized, will have a decent standard of living, will enjoy adequate political power, and participate effectively in decision making in all aspects of social and national life and will have the necessary facilities for their cultural and educational advancement. The most significant and essential step in securing this transformation is the awakening and organization of the people; and whether this will or will not involve a violent upheaval will depend largely upon the attitude the `haves' will adopt. If they try to impede the awakening and organization of the people or to suppress it, violence would be inevitable. But it would be possible to avoid it if they can read the writing on the wall and adjust themselves gracefully to the inevitable.
2.03 Indian Education. India was, at one time, one of the most advanced countries of the world in education and made significant contributions to the development of man's knowledge and culture; and its seats of-learning or universities attracted scholars from far and wide. At the beginning of the nineteenth century when the foundations of the modern system of education began to the laid, this ancient glory had mostly vanished. But even the remnants of the traditional educational system as had then survived made it compare favourably with many contemporary nations of the world, although the situation can only be described as unsatisfactory by modern standards. At that time, the right to the highest education was the privilege only of the
Simultaneous Social and Educational Transformation 11
small upper crust of society, consisting invariably of the higher varnas. Instruction was imparted in a classical language which was not the language of the people and laid emphasis on religion and ritual. Even formal elementary education was considered to be necessary for boys belonging to the rich and well-to-do classes or the high castes only, and a very small proportion of girls and children of the common people had access to it. Moreover, education was meant only for children and youth and not for adults so that life-long education became the privilege of a microscopic minority.
2.04 It would have been in the larger interests of the country if the British administrators had built the new education system on the foundations of this traditional one. But they either ignored it or deliberately destroyed it and tried to create a new educational system, modelled after that in the U.K., with the objective of creating a class of educated persons who would know English, become familiar with Western knowledge through it, and act as interpreters and intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled. Incidentally, they also tried to spread education among girls and the common people, including the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. But they consistently refused to accept responsibility for the education of the people on administrative and financial considerations, which, in their opinion, had `decisive weight'. They believed in the `downward filtration theory' under which education and culture percolates inevitably from the classes to the masses. They, therefore, argued that they would only create an educated class in the first instance and that it would be the responsibility of this class, in due course, to educate the masses. They did realize this limited objective so that, when their rule came to an end in 1947, their main educational legary was the creation of the new system of formal education through which the upper and the middle classes benefited themselves. The poor people still remained outside the system: vast numbers of their children did not go to school; a large proportion of those enrolled dropped out very early; and the percentage of literacy was only about 14.
2.05 As a part of the struggle for political freedom, attempts were made between 1900 and 1947, to create a network of national schools and universities outside the formal education system which was controlled by the British Administration. But these remained very limited in scale. When education was transferred to Indian control in 1921, the Provincial Education Ministers, responsible to the legislatures with an elected majority, tried to promote programmes of
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adult and universal elementary education but could not achieve much, due largely to political and financial constraints. The main educational contribution of the educated classes in the pre- independence period was, therefore, to help themselves, i.e., they helped to spread secondary and higher education widely among the upper and middle classes through the private secondary schools and colleges which they organized, and they argued that once the impediment of British Rule was out of the way, they would take the earliest and the most effective steps to spread education among the people. That is why Gokhale observed that the educated people of this country would be on their trail when freedom would be won.
2.06 It is a pity that these promises to the people were mostly forgotten in the post-independence period and, instead of the most energetic drive for the education of the people which was expected, we had a large-scale linear expansion of the formal education system created by the British. It may be pointed out that we appointed a University Education Commission in 1948, a high-level Technical Man- power Committee in 1949, and a Secondary Education Commission in 1952. All these merely strengthened the British tradition of the education of the classes and over-emphasis on secondary and university education which now receive about 60 per cent of the total educational expenditure. On the other hand, no Elementary Education Commission has been appointed at all. It is true that Article 45 of the Constitution does lay down that the state shall `strive' to provide, by 1960, compulsory and free education for all children till they reach the age of 14 years. But this provision has no effective sanction and has not been implemented even to this date. Adult education has been almost totally ignored and receives less than one per cent of the total educational outlay. Even the hope that the institutions of national education would blaze out a new trial has been destroyed because they were soon coopted within the formal education system which is now a gigantic structure with about 700,000 educational institutions, 100 million students, more than 3.5 million teachers, and an expenditure of about Rs.25,000 million which is next only to that on defence. In spite of all this expansion and all the changes made therein, however, the educational system still continues to benefit mainly the upper and middle classes for whom it was originally designed. It still makes only a marginal contribution to the education of the people, and especially of the poor people, who have only a limited access to it, both qualitatively and quantitatively. In
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fact, the total injustice of the system and its unpardonable discrimination against the poor can be highlighted by the following indisputable facts:
1. About 60 per cent of the people (age 10 and over) are still illiterate and have received none of the benefits of this vast educational system.
2. About 20 per cent of the children, mostly the lowest of the low, never enter the schools at all. They are born poor and continue to be poor and the formal system of education bypasses them altogether.
3. Of those children that enter the schools, nearly half drop out by class V and nearly three-fourths drop out by class VIII; only about 15 per cent reaches class XII, and less than one per cent get the first degree.
4. As pointed out above, the system accords very low priority to programmes such as adult education, universal elementary education, or non-formal education which would benefit the masses especially the poor. On the other hand, it accords high priority and invests the bulk of its resources in secondary and higher education which benefit mostly the top 30 per cent of the population.
5. The children from poor families generally get an unfair deal in the system whose entire ethos is oriented to the needs and aspirations of the upper and middle classes and which still continues to use English as the medium of instruction in higher education and thereby encourages the use of English as a medium at the school stage also.
2.07 It would, therefore, be incorrect to describe the existing educational system as an instrument for educating the people; the evidence adduced above clearly shows that it is more appropriately designed for not educating them. In fact, the primary objective of the system is not to spread education among the people, but to function as an efficient and merciless mechanism to select individuals who should continue to remain in the privileged sector or enter it afresh. It does not discharge even this task impartially and, as we shall see presently, functions in such a biased fashion that those who are already in the priviledged sector find it easier to continue therein while the underprivileged find that the access to the privileged sector through the portals of education is becoming more restricted and increasingly
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dependent on chance rather than on merit. The main achievement of the system, therefore, is to condemn the bulk of the children of the common people as drop-outs and failures and to consign them to a life of drudgery and poverty which has hardly any parallel in the contemporary world or even in our own earlier history.
2.08 This neglect of the people of India, in whom the Constitution vests the ultimate sovereign authority, is harmful, not only to the common man, but also to the health and development of the nation as a whole. As native talent is randomly distributed among the people, we have one-seventh of the potential talent of the world; and yet our achievements in every sphere are negligible for the simple reasons that a vast reservoir of our talent remains unidentified and uncultivated. This jeopardizes the future of the entire country and eventually of the upper and middle classes as well. Even from the point of view of narrow self-interest, therefore, the ruling groups must realize that they are harming themselves and the ultimate development of the country itself by keeping the common man of India continually deprived of education and other good things of life.
2.09 Education and Society. It will thus be seen that our educational and social systems reinforce one another: both are highly unjust and inegalitarian; the beneficiaries of both are the upper and middle classes; and both marginalize the common people. What is worse, the inherent tendency of our system of formal education (on which we place an almost exclusive emphasis) is to continue the status quo and perpetuate the wide differences between the rich and well-to- do on the one hand and the poor people on the other. As is well known, our educational system has a small group of good quality and prestigious schools (including the public and English-medium schools) which are availed of by the rich and well-to-do and a large number of government and other publicly maintained schools whose standards are unsatisfactory and which are mostly used by the poor people. The children of the rich and well-to-do classes, therefore, get into the good quality schools and later come to hold important and prestigious positions in life for which the schools qualify them. On the other hand, a significant proportion of the children of the poor people do not enter the school system at all, or get into the poor quality schools, drop out sooner rather than later, and excepting for a few who get into the privileged sector, generally get back into the same underprivileged social groups to which they originally belonged. Besides, the children from the well-to-do classes who enter the system earlier study under
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better conditions and stay longer, get an essential superiority over the children from the poor social groups who have none of these advantages, and find it comparatively easy to continue in the privileged group. Even if a child from the poorer social groups has the same attainments as that of a child from the privileged groups (and this really involves a much larger effort), he is still at a disadvantage vis-a-vis his well-to-do rival in a society where `who knows who' is so important. The net result of all these factors is that, our inegalitarian and hierarchical educational system leads to an inegalitarian and hierarchical social system, just as the inegalitarian educational system arose, in the first instance, from the inegalitarian social system itself.
2.10 This does not mean that there are no forces for change in the system. In fact, there is an under-current of egalitarian change, in both education and society, which reflects itself through such programmes as universalization of elementary education, provision of scholarships to talented but economically handicapped children, special effort for the spread of education among girls or schemes of special assistance for scheduled castes and tribes. Unfortunately, slogans have been more forceful than action in these important programmes so that all that we have been able to achieve is to provide some vertical mobility to a fortunate few among the deprived groups. But such individuals are readily coopted within the system which merely helps to legitimize it, in spite of all its grave injustices to the common man.
2.11 What is the precise relationship between educational and social transformation? The most commonly accepted view romanticizes this relationship and argues that we must begin with a radical transformation in education which, in its turn, will bring about a radical transformation in society. On the other hand, there is also a view that the social structure will always be reflected within the education system which it dominates so that no worthwhile educational reform is possible unless a social revolution is first brought about. The truth is probably neither so simple nor so direct. The educational system has a duty to make a critical analysis of the social system, to focus attention as its internal contradiction and on the gap between slogans and practice, and to highlight the need for structural changes, where necessary, including those needed within the educational system itself. Education can thus play a useful role in promoting the desire for a radical social change and also help in deciding the nature of such change as well as the manner of bringing it about. Similarly, education is essential to complete and consolidate a
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social change decided and implemented through political means, whether by bullets or by the ballot. The education system can also remedy social deficiencies which are due to educational factors. But it can have little effect on social deficiencies which arise elsewhere, say, in the economic or political sub-systems. We must also remember that, while it is comparatively easy to introduce educational reforms that support the existing social structure, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement radical educational reforms which threaten the existing social structure or run counter to its imperatives. All things considered, it appears that, if we desire to get out of this vicious circle wherein an inegalitarian society creates an inegalitarian educational system and vice versa, we must mount a big offensive on both social and educational fronts.
2.12 The major implications of this proposal, for both social and educational reforms, can be briefly indicated.
(1) In society, the basic minimum change required is to narrow down the existing wide gap between the life-styles and standards of living of the upper and middle classes and the common people by,
- eliminating or at least minimizing all direct and indirect forms of exploitation;
- imposing limits and curbs on the consumption of the rich and the well-to-do through a modification of the existing arbitrary and inegalitarian wage-structure and other allied measures;