By Patricia Mukhim
Some things are so difficult to change that the only way out is to dismantle the past system and like the song in the Sound of Music says, “Lets start at the very beginning..a very good place to start.” There is no text book written on the problems plaguing the education system in Meghalaya. Also one finds no intensive and extensive research on what and where exactly the problem is. It’s been the practice for many decades now that no MLA aspiring for ministership would want to be lumped with the Education Department. The problems are too embedded and trying to remedy a cancer means you either burn the thing off or you remove the problematic part of the cancer from the whole body. It’s not an accident of fate that Rakkam Sangma is holding this department. I guess it was dumped on him because no one else would touch it with a bargepole.
Once in a while we do get to read reports by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) – a nationwide household survey that captures the status of children’s enrolment and learning outcomes in rural India every year and we know that in Meghalaya a child of Class 5 can hardly read or solve arithmetic problems of Class 2. We have got used to such bad reports that they refuse to touch our conscience, more so because what happens in rural Meghalaya is not worth worrying about. This is how the Meghalaya Government has done business in 50 years. It’s largely an urban centric government.
We now have a bright young dynamic civil servant in Swapnil Tembe looking after school education and literacy. I listened to his interview with 4Front TV with great interest and have also noted that he dislikes criticism and feels that the media is largely anti-establishment. Well, the role of the media is certainly not to blow the trumpet of the government when things are working fine. Administrators are, after all, paid handsomely to administer governance down to the last person in the village – which is of course the biggest myth. The media is essentially a whistle blower and not a harbinger of good news. The media has to point out governance deficits, else such deficits will never be corrected and people who suffer because they have no voice will continue to suffer. So, on that score, the media will continue to do its work and let the IAS officers do theirs. But Mr Tembe is now saddled with a problem that started decades ago by short-sighted policy makers.
So much on the personal front. Mr Tembe has accurately defined Meghalaya’s education problem. There are too many categories of schools from fully government run schools to government aided ones to SSA to deficit schools amongst others. Tembe also spoke about the need to rationalise schools – meaning there cannot be too many different types of schools within short distances of one another with not enough students in either of the schools. This happened because of politics. Every MLA or political wannabe wants a school where people ask for one, without any study on the financial viability and economic feasibility of starting such schools in the long run. So now Meghalaya is saddled with a problem it finds difficult to extricate itself from and it’s a system that is so lacking in content and delivery that most kids in the villages prefer to stay out of school than to waste time inside a classroom. The question then is – whose fault is this? The children who want out or the teachers who couldn’t be bothered or the system which continues to spin on rusted wheels because changing the wheels means overhauling the entire education system?
First things first. Does Meghalaya really need a state board – MBOSE that is decrepit and has not changed gears to drive on the right track since its inception. The only time MBOSE was in the news was whether it should be located in Shillong or Tura. That incident led to a sad saga of firing where lives were lost. MBOSE continues to be headquartered in Tura with a functional office in Shillong. It is a Board with no new thinking; no creativity; no dynamism and no energy. Other than paying salaries to people who work in MBOSE there are no measurable educational outcomes other than conducting examinations and publishing results. So instead of using CBSE text books and tinkering with a defunct system, is it not better that all schools in Meghalaya affiliate themselves with the CBSE and ready their students to write their NEET and other entrance exams for entry into professional courses? I know this sounds like an insane suggestion but a decrepit institution does not lend itself to reforms. So that’s my two-penny outrageous and perhaps lousy suggestion to Mr Tembe.
My second suggestion is that Meghalaya needs a comprehensive survey/research on why students find learning so boring. What would they rather do? What would they want to do in the classroom? What co-curricular activities will help them learn better? Kids, especially the little ones, are bursting with energy. Today there was a function in my locality where a school was asked to bring their play-school kids to sing. You could see them brimming with zest and ardour; waving at their parents from the stage. They sang with all the passion at their command and loved what they were doing. So what happens to these same kids when they go to higher classes? Why do their energy levels drop? Mr Tembe spoke about their flagging attention span within 5 minutes of real teaching. Is there a disconnect between what children want to learn and what’s taught to them? Do we even bother to ask them?
I agree that it’s easy to jump to lousy solutions when we don’t have a strong grasp of the facts — and we can’t get that if we don’t leave our desks and gather facts from close observation over a period of time, not from a one-day question answer session. In fact the researcher should be allowed to quietly slip into the classroom while teaching is going on and observe the students’ body language; take note of how many are yawning and how many have their interests elsewhere. That’s the only way we can put our fingers on the pulse and address the problems.
Research is not always about data collection (quantitative). It’s about observing human reactions and taking note of them (qualitative). Data without facts give us a two-dimensional, black-and-white view of the world. Facts without data give us colour and texture, but not the detailed insights we need to solve the thorniest problems. Therefore, to arrive at useful conclusions both facts and data are important.
Research also means we frame our problems correctly. We really don’t know if the poor learning outcomes and behavioural issues of students could be because of poor nutrition, or because of lead in our water systems as has been borne out through research on lead contamination of water in different states of this country. When a problem statement is well framed it opens up avenues for discussion and perhaps finding a solution. A bad problem statement on the other hand narrows down or closes alternatives for thinking and takes us down a cul-de-sac of facile thinking.
A well-framed problem statement opens up avenues of discussion and options. A bad problem statement closes down alternatives and quickly sends you into a cul-de-sac of superficial thinking.
Suppose the problem statements are – School drop out at the primary and high school level is due to poverty. Adolescent girls that drop out of school tend to become victims of teenage pregnancy. Are both of the above problems or symptoms of a larger problem. I am putting these problem statements to be corrected by PhD scholars because I am not one. If we can get a handle on why a teenage girl jumps into a relationship and gets saddled with a child before she can even care for herself, we might start to do education the right way. So we really need to probe the minds of these child-mothers with empathy and love.
Asking “why” repeatedly before we settle on an answer is a powerful way to avoid jumping to conclusions or implementing weak solutions. Asking questions around the problem statements might help us get to the root cause, as each question pushes us to a deeper understanding of the real problem. We need a real solution to education; not a short term one that treats only the symptoms. Swapnil Tembe has very correctly articulated one of our persistent problems – the huge burden of untrained teachers at 43%. Also, the bulk of the money spent by the government amounting to Rs 3,600 crores goes into salary payment. Evidently the salary paid has not yielded results. Education reforms require a political spine but I am unsure who amongst the MDA ministers has that spine. If you ask me, this reform must be spearheaded by the Chief Minister himself. The task before the Education Department therefore is (a) conduct a comprehensive survey on reasons for school drop-outs (b) dismantle MBOSE and if necessary create a Board that is at par with the CBSE (c) many teachers are in the classroom to earn a salary, not to educate. Most teachers think that teaching is equivalent to educating. You teach a subject but you educate a human.
On that note I hope Mr Swapnil Tembe does not have sleepless nights thinking of the problems posed here and those he has himself figured out.