PRIMARY EDUCATION: Problem and Prospects
Primary Education is receiving greater attention form educational policy makers and planners in the wake of the implementation of a new policy. The greatest problem in Primary Education is the lack of conviction and will on the part of key persons in the field about the worthwhileness and feasibility of any comprehensive action in this area. The problems of enrolment and retention are so massive that it frightens is most administrators to near inaction. Planning being essentially sectoral and allocative, there is a flutter at the beginning of each Pian period for allocation of funds to this sector Most of this money is spent for providing infrastructure. In spite of the increase in inputs, the output is poor both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
In the name of planning, the country is engaged in a continuous exercise which sometimes verges on ludicrousness. In the 4th Plan in a particular sector in education an ambitious plan was prepared for 20 crores. By the time the Plan went through the Task Force, the Planning Commission, the Administrative Ministry, their internal finance and external finance, the final allocation came to 98 lakhs. As a lot of time had elapsed in the process and the cumbersome administrative mechanism exercised further checks and controls, 32 lakhs out of the 5th Plan for education which had started with 3,200 crores and ended almost in a pittance is still green in the minds of those who were associated with this exercise. Everybody in the Government is worried whether money is spent according to rules, nobody is bothered whether the money is spent for the purpose for which it was earmarked or whether it has yielded any results. Primary education has been put in the core sector. Yet state governments constantly keep on transferring funds from this core sector to other core sectors and come times even to non-core sectors. If one llooks at the fund allocation to Primary Education from the 1st Plan to the 5th, one will find that in spite of the overall increase in allocation, the increase in allocation is not commensurate with the increase in growth in this sector. Even the rate of increase itself in comparison to other sectors of education shows a disquieting trend. During the 30 years between 1947-77, Primary Education has increased threefold, whereas higher education has increased sixfold. Allocation of funds for Primary Education has dropped from 56 per cent in the 1st Plan to 28 per cent in the 5th Plan of the total outlay in Education. Under these circumstances the universalisation of Primary Education is bound to remain a slogan.
Nobody seems to be clear whether the aim is to universalise enrolment or universalise education, at the primary stage. When 75 to 85 out of every 100 drop out, wasted or stagnated by the end of Class V, there is no meaning in talking about enrolment figures. Yet the whole planning and debate on Primary Education seems to revolve around enrolment. Money is allocated for increasing enrolment, teachers are appointed on the basis of enrolment, mid-day meals and textbooks are provided on the basis of enrolment and consequently spurious statistics are worked out constantly. One is only to compare the primary enrolment figures with the drop out stagnation rate on the one hand and with that of the literacy figure on the other to discover the unreliability of this statistics. Everybody knows this but none dares challenge the vested interest and inertia.
In spite of all efforts the rate of growth of literacy is such that it is estimated that by 1981 the illiterate population would have crossed the total population in the country in 1961. That Primary Education is interlinked with this matter needs no demonstration other than showing that the 80 per cent drop out and stagnation and the 70 per cent illiteracy almost match to the point. Unless those who are enrolled are retained there is unlikely to be any perceptible improvement in the area of eradication of illiteracy.
There is a good deal of talk about motivating children to come to school, but there is little discussion about retaining those who are already sufficiently motivated to come. During the current planning exercise an effort has been made to focus attention on retention while increasing enrolment. Multiple point entry has been suggested as one of the strategies and curricular reform has also been suggested to the States. However, it must be understood that drop out and stagnation have many causes, prominent among which are the following(a): Gap between teacher competence and curricular demand. Unless new methods, materials and content developments are brought to the attention of the teacher, his teaching is bound to remain uninspiring. (b) Lack of a proper language strategy. Since language is a subject as well as the medium of thought and expression, only a proper language strategy which ensures identity affirmation, smooth transition form home language to school language and enables the child to study subjects through that medium can motivate the child to continue. Lack of control over language skills results in poor performance in numeracy and Maths. Lack of communication between the teacher and the taught due to difference in the home language and the school language of the child is a major factor in drop out and stagnation. (c) Irrelevance of education to the needs of the learner. Rigidity in th formal system does not permit the child to help the parents in productive activities and forces them to study a standardised textbook which is not built around his areas of interest and experience. Only need based curricula, flexibility in approach, diversified textual material relevant to the needs of learners, increasing the competence of teacher are answers to this problem. Educational administrators who are worried about investment in textbooks, their storage and sale, the profit made form it and their supply on time naturally shudder at the thought of decentralised curricula, need based textual material and flexibility in time for reaching the desired objectives. As long as serious attention is not given to these aspects, it will be difficult to arrest drop out and stagnation.
In the discussion about the physical amenities, buildings, population, distance, free meal, free clothing and free books, concerned people have lost sight of the purpose of education. If the main purpose of education is to develop the potential of human resources, the Primary Education has been a sad failure. Under the weight of uniformity of curriculum, textbooks and even of school timings and vacations, irrespective of the ecological conditions, all the group specific traits and needs are leveled down. There is no earthly reason why school timings should be same at all places and all the year round. The school timings need to be adjusted not only to free the child for certain period of the day to help the parents in productive activities or to engage them in creative activities but also free the school so that it could be used for other purposes, preferably as a Community Centre. Similarly there is no reason why the vacation should not be related to the regional cultural festivity, the crop cycle and the climatic condition. All this requires flexibility in the educational administration. Some of these have already been attempted in States like Manipur which shows that if other States so desire, these changes could be brought about.
There are confusions and contradictions all the way through. Non-formal education is a new entrant in the discussion parlour of Primary Education. Some visualise it as useful to the teachers whereas others think it necessary for students. While come conceive of non-formal education as imparting formal education through Radio, Television, Films, postal correspondence or a combination of some of these, others think of it as education through entertainment, without syllabus. Some even equate education with a vocational bias with non-formal education. Unfortunately, most people talking about it in the context of 6 to 11 group are not clear either about its content or its character. Many even believe that it is altogether a different kind of education with objectives different from formal schooling. It is heartening that under the new dispensation efforts are being made to try out non-formal programmes in this area. Hopefully this will bring about some clarity.
There is equal lack of clarity about curricular objectives. It is generally accepted by educationists that the Primary Education is essentially language education. Desheriyev, the famous Russian linguist and educationist, says that language is both the content and the medium of primary education. Language and arithmetic are considered by many as the most important subjects to emphasized at the primary level. Recent UNESCO Conference, while establishing links between the mathematical and language skills, suggests that if a child's language skills are poor, his mathematical skills are also found to be poor. The ambiguities inherent in language must be understood if mathematics is to be taught properly. In defining line and point, in explaining set and arrangement, for example, one can easily be tricked and create confusion because of uncritical use of language.
Whether for concept formation, creative and harmonious cognitive development, establishing cultural rootedness and yet curing the child of ethno-centricism, language education need receive priority at the primary stage. But all concerned are most reluctant to talk about it. There has been no effort to make empirical studies about language as a factor in unequal opportunities, wastage and stagnation.
Commissions and Committees which prescribe language formulas for education have seldom had the benefit of expert linguistic advice. Thus whether it is time allocation or textbook preparation, prescriptions are given without reference to needs, curricular objectives and teacher competence. The language needs of linguistic minorities are almost never touched by these pundits. As a result of the gross neglect of language education right form the primary stage, its cumulative effect has devastating consequences for higher education.
The constitution puts an obligation to provide primary education through the mother tongue. The concept of mother tongue is fuzzy and eliciting mother tongue through a self-evaluatory response yielded 1652 mother tongues in 1961, which included caste, place, sect and script names as mother tongue. In view of the multiplicity of mother tongues the planners are so scared to talk about the problem that they even refuse to discuss the need for evolving an academic strategy to help the child to switch over from the home language to the school language. They have no strategy to bring the 1652 tributaries to the 14 main streams in which higher education is available. Whenever this question is raised possible nor desirable to conventional pundits that it is neither possible nor desirable to teach the child his dialect; it is also not practicable to prepare textbooks in so many dialects. This is gross distortion of the concept of bilingual education which has been suggested as the programme to bridge the gap between the home language and the school language. The question is not one of teaching the dialect but recognising the language resources the child brings to the school as the basis to build further competence. The question is not of writing textbooks in each dialect, but orienting the teacher so that language resources of the child are used as foundation for further education. Since most primary teachers are recruited from the local areas this cannot be such and insurmountable problem.
The problem of dialect speakers, linguistic minorities and tribal children can only be solved through bilingual primary education. By bilingual primary education is meant here a strategy of transfer form the home language to school language in an orderly progression so that by the post primary stage the child is ready to study through the medium of that school language (Pattanayak 1977). This is not a detraction from the constitutional obligation, but a fulfilment. If the child learns entirely through, say Tamil in Calcutta, up to the 5th standard, at the 6th standard he is either forced to go to Tamilnadu where higher education is available through Tamil, or start Bengali in the 6th standard and carry the burden of inequality throughout his education career. The simple fact that a child cannot use the language as the medium if he does not know it sufficiently is not understood by educational planners. As it is preposterous to ask a child learning ABCD to read a lesson in Civics or Chemistry in English, it is equally ridiculous to ask the child learning Ka, Kha, Ga, Gha in Kannada, Marathi or Bengali to study subjects through the medium of that language. Unless the child coming form a dialect zone or a linguistic minority home speaking a language different from the school language in helped to acquire the school language to a level of proficiency which would permit him to stay near equal with those who use the school language as their home language, inequality is bound to persist.
The problem of the large majority of students whose home language is the same as the school language is no less acute. First of all there is the problem of curriculum. Over the years the mindless change of Social Studies into History, Geography and Civics, General Science into Physics, Chemistry, Biology, etc., and the introduction of new Mathematics, without taking into account the teacher competence and the teacher preparation has created a major crisis. The vested interest in textbook writing and textbook production are responsible for proliferation of textbooks. The parents accepted the increasing textbooks ad part of the modernisation of their children's education.
There is a good deal of talk about curricular load. Different people mean different things by this. Without going into the details of this question it may suffice to point out that the primary syllabus in Maharashtra in the year 1824 included "the study of Reading Writing, Arithmetic, History of England and India, Geography, Astronomy, Natural philosophy, Algebra, Euclidean Geometry" Even in 1940, the Primary Education Syllabus included "Mother tongue, Hindustani, Arithmetic, History and Civics, Geography, General Science, Domestic Science (for girls' schools) Hand-work, Needle work, Drawing and Physical Training". These were hailed as model syllabuses at that time. If the child is given proper language competence to handle the concepts in subjects and not loaded merely with information and textbooks, the education need not be considered as a burden.
The writers of the textbooks in almost all cases has no idea of the role of language both as subject and as medium. They have no idea of the grade specific vocabulary of the child. Skill oriented language teaching and the strategies to be adopted for them is aquite foreign to them. Subject specific books are information loaded and there is no effort to clarify concepts and indicate the interdisciplinary implications, thus laying the foundation for knowledge.
Educationists in their zeal to say something different often fall back on the slogan of more socially productive manual work for school children. Some have even recommended reduction of school time to provide for more manual work and recreation in school. One of the arguments put forward for drop out, wastage and stagnation is the prevalent condition where the child helps the family in productive activities. If it is so, then instead of recognising that work for academic purpose, what good would it do to provide, soap, disinfectant, detergent powder, hair oil, brooms waste paper baskets', etc., are more socially productive manual work than helping the parents in food gathering, agriculture or cattle tending? Do the teachers have the competence to carry on 'experiment with different kinds of soil seeds and manure, vegetable propagation by breeding and grafting, making of jam, jelley, etc., bakery items, white washing of walls, door polishing, toy making, pottery and painting'? I am afraid that this will result in further polarisation of rural and urban, socially backward and the privileged. Lessening the school time will also harm the interests of the socially backward who cannot compete with children form middle class homes who have the benefit of home study. It is most unfortunate that educationists who are responsible for education being what it is are called upon to provide leadership for a new revolution. It is no wonder that they either play the number game dividing the school education in different permutations and combinations or in spite of paying lip sympathy to change become prisoners of old thinking and old habits.
So far mid-day meal is considered to be the prime motivating factor for children. The financial exercise made in the beginning of the Fifth Plan shows that the country's resources are not adequate to bear the entire burden of mid-day meals for all children. It is high time that alternatives, no matter in howsoever small measures, be sought to this helpless dependence on one incentive scheme. One suggestion is to convert a limited number of primary schools in each state on an experimental basis as parent-student education centres. Each school or cluster of schools should have craft teachers who could teach crafts to the mothers and sisters of the children enrolled. Teaching of craft, if imaginatively selected would not only be a motivating factor, but also can be self-paying. While the adult women can create interest in the children in work through their own examples, they can also read and write with them. Literacy for them, thus, would form an integral part of this education, which could benefit both adults and children. This way the community not only partly assumes responsibility for the education of their children, better integration of the home the education of their children, better integration of the home and the school could be achieved in the process. Women's literacy, and the enrolment of girls which is the lowest in the country could also be handled in a meaningful way through these centres. If this experiment in community biased human development succeeds, this can be further expanded and the character of primary education can be radically changed.
Traditional education has been a passive career of middle class values, through an arbitrarily chosen standard. Unless an academic strategy bridges the people' languages with the chosen standards the mosaic of values of a pluralistic society are unlikely to be reflected in education. The present education aims at the conversion of the past into the future. It does not bring both past and the future to the present. The present education system as well as the educationists do not appreciate the fact that experience is filtered through language and making this experience a cognitive structure is possible through evolving and implementing a rational language policy. Unless the new thinking veers away form the textbook centred teacher dominated class room instruction and accepts the learning child as the centre of curriculum, there is little hope of any qualitative change in the field of Primary Education.