By T Fightingstar Mawlong
‘Children’ are the key to a society’s future and deserve to be educated in the best tradition. Since my childhood I have heard talks about placing our faith on children, and hence to properly fix, finance and strengthen our State’s schools. Well, much has been done to increase both the ‘standard’ and the ‘coverage’ of elementary education, of that I have no doubt. However the 11th Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2016 reveals shocking facts about the standard of education in rural Meghalaya as reported in this esteemed daily “Edu quality falters in rural M’laya despite high enrolment”(ST, Jan-19, 2017). The shockingly low quality of education is seen in class III students of rural Meghalaya in all fields including reading (2.4% of students can’t even read alphabets, 13.6 % can read letters but not words, 37.5 % can read words but not class I textbooks, 27.2 % can read class I but not class II textbooks.) In Arithmetic, 69.1 % of students cannot do subtraction, only 1% can do division, and in English comprehension as many as 54.5. % of students can’t even read sentences. The question then is, who should be held accountable for this colossal failure seen in our children’s school education.
Of all the elements involving the life of a child, teachers are the most decisive when it comes to the quality of children’s education. Teachers possess tremendous power; they can be the tools of torture or instruments of inspiration in the classroom. They can humiliate or humour a child. They can make a child enjoy learning or make him/her miserable.
The shockingly low standard of school education in our rural areas mirrors the serious problem of low teaching efficiency there. We all know that the flaw lies in the teaching method. Mindless rote learning without comprehension is doing great disservice to education. In most rural schools, classroom teaching has downgraded to a mere Khasi translation of paragraphs in English textbooks, or in many cases, plain reading of those textbook paragraphs to the class… I know because I came from an absolute rural background myself. Also instead of learning the skills and techniques, students are made to endlessly chant those multiplication tables. And guess what, those who could memorize faster are rewarded.
It is so unfortunate that students are trained to focus more on memorization rather than comprehension or competency. Secondly, school teachers tend to focus mainly on children who are performing better and much less on the weaker students who actually need special attention. The first boys and the first girls would receive a pat on their backs for having done their school proud, and they would receive much attention; whereas the last boys and last girls hardly get the attention they so deserve and are unjustly neglected. This insensitivity together with a flawed teaching method is an important clue to the society’s inability to improve elementary school education. Thirdly, there is usually high frequency of teacher’s absenteeism in government schools in rural areas. And even those who attend hardly show any real passion to teach. Fourthly, teachers unions are more concerned with their salaries, pension and other self-centered interests. They hardly show any social responsibility and would hardly press for improving work culture in schools, or for improving the poor or deficient education arrangement in rural areas for that matter.
The above are just a few issues. There can be many other unpleasant facts hidden beneath the surface, like, for example, the health condition of rural children, unfair domestic treatments that rural children are receiving, etc. It is quite chilling to see the complacency and lack of seriousness of the society (especially in rural areas) when it comes to children’s education. If rural children continue to get this kind of education, they would stand multiple times greater chances of being admitted to a mental hospital than to a university! This is because the way they are being educated will never equip them to face the challenges of an ever increasingly competitive and complex world.
I therefore call on all teachers to give their best in their duty to properly educate children. We can start by dispensing our fatalistic notion that nothing can be done to improve education standards in the rural areas.