By Dr Samir Talati
Today is Teachers’ Day and it can be an occasion for people shaping the future of children to reflect critically on the type of context-specific education in the Northeast that responds to the region’s unique linguistic, cultural, and socio-economic landscapes and promotes equitable and effective learning outcomes for all. Amid the debate on demographic changes and ethnic conflicts around diverse identities and cultures in Northeast India, one notices a growing awareness and affirmation of ethnic identity. Responding to this challenge, some educationists advocate cultural pluralism in education, encouraging those involved in it to be responsive to the educational needs and social contexts of ethnic minority students, to which most tribal students of the region belong.
Education is a pedagogic medium that shapes the child’s attitudes, values, and behaviour, transmits language, culture, and social organisation, and develops an individual and group identity. It helps the individual to accept oneself and one’s cultural group and move from the state of “I” to “us”. Education, thus, functions as a vital agent of socialisation by transmitting values and historical narratives, sharing traditions, and fostering in individuals a strong sense of ethnic identity that reinforces in-group cohesion and continuity across generations. It is for this reason that John Dewey spoke of education as a means of social continuity of life. Educationists agree that the positive or negative attitudes formed early in life grow further with time.
Scholars point out that three issues are crucial in the education of ethnic minorities: culture, language, and identity. Preserving, protecting, and promoting them enables tribal students to withstand the challenges posed by neo-liberal and market-driven assimilation. A context-specific education that takes into account their aspirations for modernity, combined with their socio-cultural reality, is the need of the hour. In the multi-ethnic context of Northeast India, a “culturally responsive education” can offer a meaningful solution. Its features can be: (i) teachers develop a positive attitude towards the students’ socio-cultural context; (ii) open and free cultural exchange in schools; (iii) curriculum reflecting cultural diversity; and (iv) instructional strategies to be consistent with the student’s cultural experiences. Research shows that students learn a subject matter better if taught through examples of their own culture. Such an educational system requires teachers with sensitivity and respect for cultures other than their own. Educationists agree that a teacher’s knowledge of ethnic identity development processes is vital to the student’s success at school and to cognitive, physical, moral, social, linguistic, and personality development.
Studies show that the indigenous youth possess particular learning styles that put them at a disadvantage in schools that follow a uniform teaching method. Indigenous epistemology is both individual and communal, idiosyncratic, and contextualised. It recognises the stability that comes from acquiring life skills that help preserve indigenous knowledge, practices, and philosophies. It comes from gaining deep wisdom about the pressures of contemporary societal contexts. Besides paying close attention to ethnic epistemologies, educators also should take into account the general aptitudes, capabilities, and interests of minority students so that they, too, may derive optimum benefits from the education system. UNESCO’s call for “inclusive education” should encourage policy-makers and educators to adopt a pedagogy and school governance that are flexible, accommodative, and responsive to both the cultural context and community modes of formal and non-formal learning across generations. A multicultural approach to education can be the right step in this direction.
The local language in education is crucial in this context for identity formation, as a powerful tool of empowerment and an effective instrument of socialisation. Their own language enables minority groups to articulate effectively their history, culture, and political aspirations. It also helps them to develop a greater understanding of and love for their own culture. For the indigenous peoples, showing their indigenous roots is important not only for identity purposes but also to protect their legal rights to services, land, and welfare programmes. However, often even the best-intentioned educational policies can work to the detriment of indigenous language, culture, and identity preservation. Hence, education needs to be contextualised to give expression to local concerns and aspirations. However, the rights of minority groups should become part of the broader educational curriculum, and that can make students of dominant groups too aware of their responsibility towards minority communities.
The justification for culturally responsive education comes from a general belief that students of ethnic minorities consistently perform lower than their peers according to traditional measures of school achievement because their home culture is at odds with the culture and expectations of schools. This mismatch in culture results in the perennial “achievement gaps.” In response to these gaps, educators have theorised that schooling must be designed and practised in ways that more closely match the cultures students bring with them from home. Hence, in the light of the distinct historical, linguistic, and sociocultural realities of Northeast India’s tribal communities, adopting culturally relevant and context-specific education is imperative to ensure pedagogical inclusivity, sustain indigenous heritage, and promote equitable educational outcomes that are both academically rigorous and culturally affirming. Such a pedagogical approach will not only help preserve indigenous knowledge systems and affirm cultural identity but will also bridge educational disparities, fostering both academic success and socio-cultural empowerment of ethnic communities.
Ethnicity is a legitimate grouping in a pluralist nation-state. In a multicultural context, the needs of every sub-unit of the population are the responsibility of the state and of its citizens. State institutions have a pivotal role to play in inclusively embracing all social groupings with their diverse sociocultural expressions. The education system, in particular, with its emancipatory promises, can take along every aspiring group towards common nation-building while allowing the latter enough space to express their individualities.
While culturally relevant education is crucial for ethnic minorities, it is also important to remember that such an education cannot happen in isolation. Educational space for ethnic minorities should be created within the broader national educational framework. The students belonging to minority groups should be allowed freedom to explore and affirm their ethnic identities and provided with spaces for free expression of their ethnic individual identities within the broader social space of the country. It means that caution needs to be exercised while creating such an educational space. Inserting cultural knowledge as self-contained curricular material fundamentally changes the meaning of culture and forces students to choose between “academically successful” or being ‘a Bodo, Garo, Khasi, Naga’ and fails to alter the culture and structure of schooling. Culture is not something that can be taught as a discrete school subject. Rather, the focus of education should be on self-determination of ethnic minority groups, institutional discrimination, and indigenous epistemologies.
Advancing context-specific education for the tribal students of Northeast India is not merely an academic reform but also a strategic imperative to honour their cultural heritage, address unique socio-linguistic realities, and empower communities with learning that is both locally resonant and globally relevant.
(The writer is with North Eastern Social Research Centre, Guwahati [email protected]).