By H H Mohrmen.
The inauguration of the year-long platinum jubilee celebration of the Jowai Government boys Higher Secondary School recently is also an occasion to look back and assess how Jaintia hills has fared in higher education. It is pertinent to ask that after seventy five years had lapsed since the first school in the region was established in 1941, how much progress has the government been able to make in the field of higher education in the erstwhile Jaintia hills district.
No doubt SSA has been able to bring Lower Primary and Upper Primary School education to the door steps of the villagers in different parts of the district. Poor students have easy access to LP and UP schools nearby but the question is with regards to secondary and higher secondary schools.
But before we proceed further and examine the progress of higher education in the area, perhaps it is only fit and proper that we acquaint ourselves with a little bit of story about the beginning of the first high school in the entire Jaintia hills. In 1941 when the then British Government decided to start the one of its kind school in Jowai, Rev Annie Margaret Barr a minister of the Unitarian church and an educationist par-excellence was given the responsibility to do the honours. Rev Annie Margaret Bar has a degree in theology from Oxford and also in Teaching from Cambridge and most importantly she was a Gandhian to the core.
The story of how Kong Barr (as she was affectionately called by people who were dear to her) began her journey to the hills is also a fascinating one. The position of working with the Unitarian church in the Khasi-Jaintia and Mikir Hills was announced in the General Assembly of the British Unitarian. Kong Barr applied for the job only to be told that ‘it is no job for a woman.’ In October 1933 she travelled to India anyway and worked as a teacher in a school at Calcutta known as Gokhale Memorial Girls’ School and during the vacation she visited Khasi and Jaintia hills and later returned to England to tell those in the position in the GA that she had been to the Khasi and Jaintia hills. They then had no other option but to give her the job, but before that, Margaret Barr (through her sister Mary who was one of Gandhiji’s village workers) went to meet him in Wardha.
Gandhiji advised Kong Barr to stay away from jail and work in the rural areas where her service is much needed. Towards the end of the meeting the conversation went like this – Margaret Barr: “What do you really want your English friends to do, Bapuji? Gandhi: “Keep out of gaol now, don’t get mixed up in politics. Find some constructive work to do.” Margaret Barr: “And constructive work I suppose means village work?’’ Gandhi: “Of course, what else is worth doing in comparison with serving those who need you most!”
Annie Margaret Barr was not new to the Indian freedom movement. While serving as a minister of the Unitarian church of Our Father at Rotterdam from 1927-1933 she maintained a close relationship with the friends of India People and had also used the pulpit to educate the congregation about Indian freedom movement.
In 1941 the government decided to start a high school in Jowai and hoping that she would be able to achieve her twin objectives of starting a high school as well as a training centre for high school graduates to teach in the lower primary school she took the job. Kong Barr strongly felt the need to train teachers because she believed that until and unless a strong foundation at the primary level is built up it would be difficult for the students to proceed to the high school level. She resigned only few months after she was appointed the principal of the Jowai government school and the reason was because the government did not keep its promise. Before she took office, she made the government agree to her proposal to help start a school and at the same time train some of the students to become teachers but the government went back on its promise thereby forcing her to resign. Her meeting with the Director of Education then and subsequently even with the Governor did not bear fruit. She then started a teacher’s training school in Malki which was built in 1942. It was later renamed as Lady Reid non-sectarian school which was taken over by the government in 1949.
Kong Barr spent the remaining part of her life teaching and training young people at a centre she helped build in Kharang. After her demise people who live in the twelve villages which fall under Mawkynrew block decided to start a school in her memory and the school is still known as Kong Barr Secondary School.
In 1989-90, I met an elderly lady in England who fondly remembers Kong Barr and told me that during one of her visits to the country, people asked her if she was not afraid of walking alone in the hills? Kong Barr said, ‘I am more afraid of walking alone in the streets of London.’
Coming back to the status of higher education in Jaintia hills, one of the yardsticks to assess the Government’s success is to measure what it has been able to achieve in the field of education. No doubt since the first high school was started in the region many more schools have come up in different parts of Jaintia hills, but if one does a careful study of the higher education scenario one would find that most of the schools were either started by faith based organizations (FBOs), the Dorbar Shnong or Private individuals. There are now only few government schools in Jaintia hills and had it not been for the FBOs, the Dorbar Shnong and the private individuals we would not have been able to provide the much needed higher education to the people of the area.
And it is well and good for FBOs, Dorbar Shnongs and Individuals or families to start schools to provide higher education in the region, but at what cost? The government had not been able to start schools; neither was it able to provide proper financial support to these privates schools which cater to the needs of the students. There are very few secondary and higher secondary schools in the district which have been brought into the deficit system (where teachers are paid by government), but most of the secondary and higher secondary schools in the district are only supported by the government vide a grant- in- aid pattern only. And in this pattern the government is only supporting some part of the salary of the teachers in the schools.
What this means is that the schools are not being wholly supported by the government, hence the school managements need to generate funds to run the school. On this pretext the schools charge fees at their own whims and fancies and the monthly fees vary from one hundred to a few thousands rupees. It is also a matter of surprise that even schools run by FBOs or mission schools which are supposed to serve the poor and the needy section of the population charge an exorbitant amount as school fees.
The point therefore is that higher education is not free in Meghalaya because there are very few government schools which provide free education. In such a situation it is the poorer section of the society which is being hit the hardest because they cannot afford to send their kids to school. There is no equality because those who can pay send their kids to good schools but poor parents sometimes have to stop sending their schooling their children because they cannot afford to pay the fees in private schools and because there is no government school nearby. Higher education in the state is still reserved only for those who can afford it. The government can make tall claims about its achievements in providing education to the children, but as long as there are still some children who are denied education just because their parents cannot afford it, then the state still has a long way to go to fulfill its mandate of providing education to every citizen.
(Information about Margaret Barr are from, “A dream come true: the story of Kharang,” by Margaret Barr)