Tag: School education

More Than Half 14–18 Year Olds in Rural India Cannot Do Simple Division: ASER Report

About 25% of 14–18-year-olds still cannot read a Class II level text fluently in their regional language.

New Delhi: The latest edition of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has revealed that more than half of 14- to 18-year-old children in rural India cannot solve a simple three-digit division problem that’s usually taught in Class 3-4. These older children, who will soon be embarking into their journeys as adults, were found to be struggling with everyday skills, including determining time and doing basic calculations, the report released on January 17 shows.

Since 2005, NGO Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) has been recording trends in school enrolment, attendance and reading and arithmetic abilities among children aged 6-14 years in rural areas of the country.

The recent ASER report, like the one released in 2017, trains its focus on older children, between the age group of 14 and 18, covering four important aspects like their educational and career pathways, their ability to apply foundational skills to daily life situations, their digital access and skills, and their aspirations for future.

For the 2023 report, the ASER team conducted surveys in 28 districts across 26 states and reached out to over 34,000 youth in the age group of 14-18 years. The study finds that 86.8% children of the studied age group are enrolled in an educational institution. While there is a small gender gap noticed, the more concerning trend that the report identifies is the notable differences visible by age. While only 3.9% of 14-year-old youth were out of school, the number went up to 32.6% for the 18 year olds. These numbers have, however, improved from the time of pandemic.

The study found that a higher percentage of males (40.3%) than females (28%) report doing work other than household work for at least 15 days during the preceding month. And when it is not the household work, the youth are found to be engaged in family farm work.

The study also takes a detailed look at the ability to read and comprehend among the surveyed age group. Some of the most concerning findings include: about 25% of 14–18-year-olds still cannot read a Class II level text fluently in their regional language. More than half struggle with division (3-digit by 1-digit) problems, a skill that is usually expected among children of Class III or IV.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, as the world became increasingly reliant on technology, ASER set out to explore the current scenario of digital awareness and ability among rural Indian youth. The study has found that close to 90% of all youth have a smartphone in the household and know how to use it. Of those who can use a smartphone, males (43.7%) are more than twice as likely to have their own smartphone than females (19.8%). Availability of a computer/laptop in the households is much lower, with only 9% having one at home. Youth who have a computer/laptop at home are much more likely to know how to use it (85%) than those who do not (33.9%). Females are less likely to know how to use a smartphone or computer as compared to males.

The study, ASER Centre director Wilima Wadhwa says, emphasises the importance of foundational learning and life skills for a reason. “Not just for academic advancement but also to traverse daily life,” Wilima Wadhwa said. “At some level, India is in a unique position right now… For India to become the world’s third largest economy, the quality of our labour force has to keep pace with our developmental needs. We can only reap the demographic dividend associated with a young population if our youth are well supported to achieve their aspirations and participate productively in the growth process of the economy.”

In an interview to the Indian Express, Dr Rukmini Banerjee, the CEO of Pratham, says that the majority of respondents in Class 11 or higher were studying humanities-related subjects could possibly be because that is available to the children in the village. “It is possible that someone wants to do science, but their local high school does not have science. But again, there may be other ways to connect to subjects that the local high school does not offer,” she says.

Number of Students in Delhi Govt Schools Down by 30,000 in This Academic Year

Only the districts of north west A and central Delhi have not seen a decline in the number of students enrolled, according to the Directorate of Education’s RTI reply. 

New Delhi: The number of students in Delhi government schools in the current academic year has decreased by more than 30,000 as compared to the previous session, according to an RTI reply quoted by PTI.

“After the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of students in government schools in 2022-23 academic session was 17,89,385, while this academic year it decreased to 17,58,986, which is 30,399 less than the previous session,” PTI reported.

Delhi has 1,050 government schools and 37 Dr BR Ambedkar Schools of Specialised Excellence.

Only the districts of north west A and central Delhi have not seen a decline in the number of students enrolled, according to the Directorate of Education’s RTI reply.

“There were more admissions in government schools of Delhi during the pandemic. But as the situation became normal, some students again moved to private schools,” a DoE official told PTI.

“In the last four years, the number of students in government schools in the academic session 2019-20 was 15,05,525, which increased during the pandemic period to 16,28,744 in 2020-21; 17,68,911 in 2021-22 and 17,89,385 in 2022-23,” PTI quoted the RTI response as stating.

Biology Without Darwin. Next, Physics Without Newton and Einstein?

The removal of Darwin from the school syllabus is not an innocuous change. Seen in the context of revivalism and a return to the so-called ancient science, it is a retrograde step for the teaching of science and an onslaught on rational thinking and scientific temper.

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has dropped the theory of evolution as propounded by Charles Darwin from the science syllabus for the tenth standard. This has been done as a part of the ‘rationalisation’ exercise taken up during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic to reduce the ‘content load’ on students. The purging of the section on evolution on the pretext of the pandemic could not have been more ironical – the novel coronavirus that caused the pandemic is indeed a result of the natural selection process that Darwin sought to explain and children ought to learn more about it. The theory of evolution is fundamental to understanding the basis of several sub-branches of modern biology like genetics, immunology and so on.

It is hard to believe that the change effected by NCERT, particularly relating to the chapter on evolution and heredity, has anything to the stated goal of reducing the burden on students in the wake of the pandemic. In 2018, minister of state for human resources development Satyapal Singh declared that Darwin’s theory of evolution was scientifically wrong because “no one had ever seen a monkey turn into a human” and that ever since man had come on the earth, he was a man. Singh later defended his comments and asserted that schools and colleges should stop teaching the evolution theory. Singh is no more in the education ministry but what he desired is being implemented.

Darwin has raised the hackles of obscurantist groups and different religions in many parts of the world including the US during the past several decades, but only a few have taken the extreme step of stopping teaching evolution to their children. Most of these countries are in the Middle East and India’s neighbourhood. Science textbooks in Pakistan, for instance, have been rubbishing the evolution theory for a long time. The theory has been banned completely in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Algeria and Morocco, and it is not taught in Lebanon. It is taught within the framework of religion in Jordan and is portrayed as an unproven hypothesis in textbooks in Egypt and Tunisia. Darwin is also a subject of many fatwas. In the US, a creationism lobby – backed by some Catholic groups – has been advocating the teaching of creationism as an alternative to the human evolution theory. Creationists believe that the world – humans, natural life, the universe – is a creation of the divine power or the god, and it did not evolve.

Implications

The removal of Darwin from the school syllabus is not an innocuous change. Seen in the context of revivalism and a return to the so-called ancient science, it is a retrograde step for the teaching of science and an onslaught on rational thinking and scientific temper. It can adversely impact the quality of higher education in science, scientific research and India’s position as a formidable science and technology power in the world community.

Also read: Weaponising History: The Hindutva Communal Project

The concept of evolution is fundamental to all branches of biology and research in this field is going to help the world fight against some of the biggest challenges facing humanity – be it climate change or antibiotic resistance or future pandemics emanating from the increased animal-human-environment interface. As it is, the teaching of science in Indian schools is a matter of concern. With the new changes in the school curriculum – and perhaps more in the future in line with the drive to reinforce traditional values and mythology – the teaching of science at the school and college levels could suffer more. Just imagine the state of Indian science in future if our schools start teaching Dashavatara as an alternative to the evolution theory. The dashavatara theory was propagated by Andhra University Vice Chancellor G. Nageshwar Rao at the Indian Science Congress session in 2019. ‘Papers’ were also presented debunking theories of Newton and Einstein at this meeting.

The school curriculum change has serious implications for scientific research in the country. In recent years, we have witnessed the rise of pseudoscience activities in research institutions and universities in the name of research on ancient knowledge and to provide a scientific basis to myths. Funding agencies like the Department of Science and Technology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have also been forced to support research on some topics concerning ‘ancient science’ – cow urine, cow dung, spiritual farming, medical astrology etc. With a state agency (NCERT) discarding the theory of evolution, funding agencies may soon have to deal with proposals to study alternatives to the evolution theory and to find a ‘scientific basis’ for ancient ideas. All such trends don’t augur well for the future of Indian science.

Response from scientific community

When Satyapal Singh rubbished the theory of evolution in 2018, the scientific community condemned it strongly. In a rare move, three academies – Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the Indian Academy of Science (IASc) and the National Academy of Sciences-India (NASI) – issued a joint statement. They categorically stated that “Evolutionary theory, to which Darwin made seminal contributions, is well established. There is no scientific dispute about the basic facts of evolution. This is a scientific theory, and one that has made many predictions that have been repeatedly confirmed by experiments and observation.”

Referring to Singh’s statement that the theory should be removed from the syllabus, the academies said: “It would be a retrograde step to remove the teaching of the theory of evolution from school and college curricula or to dilute this by offering non-scientific explanations or myths.” Evolutionary biologists presented their arguments and requested the minister to retract his statement. Now that what Singh said then is being implemented by NCERT, the academies should reiterate their stand and use their collective clout to reverse the decision. Science academies the world over have been fighting anti-science and pseudoscience tendencies, and proactively trying to promote public understanding of science. Indian science academies should be no exception.

Also read: The Orwellian Revision of Textbooks

An independent group of scientists and educators, Breakthrough Science Society, has written an open letter criticising NCERT. It said “an understanding of the process of evolution is also crucial in building a scientific temper and a rational worldview. The way Darwin’s painstaking observations and his keen insights led him to the theory of natural selection educates students about the process of science and the importance of critical thinking. Depriving
students, who do not go on to study biology after the 10th standard, of any exposure to this vitally important field, is a travesty of education.”

The voices of rationality need to become stronger because the onslaught against science is not going to stop at Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, if the developments leading to this decision are any indication. It should not be seen as just a matter of science education or science academies but as something that concerns society and the country as a whole.

Dr Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based journalist and author. His latest book is Indian Innovation, Not Jugaad: 100 Ideas That Transformed India (Roli Books, 2022).

National Curriculum Framework 2023: Whom Will This Structure of ‘Student Choice’ Benefit?

Without rigorous appraisal of our existing school systems, with studies on the preparedness of the present teacher education system, one wonders how such a major shift has been propounded.

Soon after the carefully chosen ‘deletions’ of the NCERT textbooks have framed what will be transacted during the academic year 2023-24, the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2023 has appeared as a draft for consultation. At over 625 pages it seems daunting for most readers trying to grapple with it. Almost like the 500-page Draft National Education Policy (DNEP, 2019), which was substantially trimmed when released later in 2020, during the pandemic.

What is a National Curriculum Framework meant to be?

Importantly, NCF 2023 is not what a ‘national curriculum framework’ is meant to be – a guiding document, for NCERT and the state nodal institutions to develop their own curricula, syllabi and  textbooks. Indeed as NCF 2005 (with 125 pages) had pointed out, the term ‘National Curriculum Framework’ can be wrongly understood as an instrument for imposing uniformity. It explained that a national framework as had been suggested by earlier policies, was expected to support a system of education to evolve into one that was capable of responding to India’s diverse geographical and cultural milieus, while ensuring the core constitutional values, with a focus on relevance, flexibility and academic quality.

Worryingly, NCF 2023 lays out an extremely detailed plan, through a micromanaged design for the entire spectrum of school stages – with details of the subject areas, the interdisciplinary areas and the cross-cutting themes it proposes. Spelling out a syllabus outline with sample lesson plans, it delineates learning standards, curricular goals and expected outcomes. Even time allocations for a school are indicated, “an assembly for 25 minutes with 05 minutes to reach the classroom”. This is not all; it declares that nine more volumes will follow, with greater details on specific matters, “to enable the implementation of the NCF, and its use by practitioners, from curriculum and textbook developers, to teachers and assessors”. These forthcoming volumes will be on each of the Curricular Areas – namely, Arts and Music, Languages, Math, Science, Social Science and Humanities, Sports, and Vocational Education, and a volume on School Culture and Processes.

This overly elaborate centralised curriculum design is precisely what NCF 2005 had warned against, of an instrument for imposing uniformity, contrary to the concurrent nature of education in the federal structure, and the role of states in ensuring cultural diversity and equity.

How will this major restructuring work in the system?

Another major issue that forms a thrust of NCF 2023 is a total restructuring of the secondary stage comprising of Grades 9-12. While there are problems with the overall pattern of restructured stages, especially with the approach to the foundational stage, here our focus is on the terminal stage of school.

The existing pattern divides students in higher secondary school, Grades 11-12, into three streams – science, arts/humanities, and commerce. NCF 2023 proposes to completely change this, claiming that the new design will enable breadth in Grades 9-10 through a broad spectrum of courses across streams, and depth in Grades 11-12 in certain areas according to students’ choice.

Listen: ‘Text Books Are Being Changed Because RSS is Very Clear, It Wants to Catch Them Young’

The new ‘Secondary Stage’ (Grades 9-12) is proposed to be divided into two phases:

1. In Grades 9-10, there will be eight broad Curricular Areas. The Curricular Areas are: Humanities (that includes languages), Social Science, Science, Mathematics & Computing, Vocational Education, Physical Education, Arts, and Interdisciplinary Areas.

To complete Grade 10, students will need to complete two Essential Courses from each of the eight Curricular Areas i.e., a total of 16 Essential Courses. In Grades 9 and 10 there will be an annual examination, with the final certification based on the cumulative result of each of the examinations.

2. In Grades 11-12, students have to choose Disciplines (e.g., History, Physics, Language) from at least three Curricular Areas. For each Discipline they choose, they have to complete four choice-based courses in that Discipline. This phase of the secondary stage is divided into semesters and each choice-based course will be for one semester (presumably for six months). To complete Grade 12, students must complete 16 choice-based courses.

Table: Secondary Stage Curricular Areas and Disciplines

 Curricular Areas     Disciplines (four courses within each discipline)
1 Humanities Languages, Literature, Philosophy
2 Social Science History, Geography, Political Science, Psychology, Economics, Sociology
3 Science Physics, Chemistry, Biology
4 Mathematics & Computing Mathematics, Computer Science, Business Mathematics
5 Arts Music, Dance, Theatre, Sculpture, Painting, Film-appreciation, Script writing, Set design
6 Vocational Education Aligned to the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF)
7 Sports Courses on specific sports/games/yoga
8 Interdisciplinary Areas Commerce, Sustainability and Climate Change, Health (Public, community health), Media and Journalism, Family and Community Sciences (current form of Home

Science), Knowledge of India/Indian Knowledge, Traditions and Practices/Indian Knowledge Systems, Legal studies. List may be enhanced continually.

The NCF states that students have a ‘choice’ in selecting specific areas and disciplines (see Table), which they will decide based on their interests and future plans after school. However, this issue of ‘choice’ is most misleading – even in the existing streams the majority of students cannot choose – it depends entirely on which streams their school offers, and how teachers perceive their abilities along with their marks in school tests and the Grade 10 board examinations.

Serious problems show up at the point where NCF mentions ‘implications for secondary schools’. For all students to complete Grade 10, all secondary schools will need to offer Essential Courses in all the Curricular Areas. NCF acknowledges that many schools might not be in a position to offer the entire range of disciplines at Grade 11 and 12.

The catch and the conundrum of choice

In order to allow students to have “a reasonable choice”, NCF proposes that secondary schools, to begin with, must offer at least one Curricular Area from each of the following categories:

Category 1: Humanities or Social Science or Science or Mathematics and Computing
Category 2: Inter-disciplinary Areas
Category 3: Arts or Sports or Courses on specific sports/games/yoga.

Here lies the catch, where the pedestal of ‘choice’, of so-called varying breadth and depth at the secondary stage, falls flat. This minimalist clause above will allow schools to function with an extremely narrow and problematic curricular spectrum. For example, schools could offer the following three Curricular Areas:

1. Humanities: either of these Disciplines – say Languages and Literature

2. Inter-disciplinary Areas: any of these Disciplines – Knowledge of India or Indian Knowledge; Systems, Family and Community Sciences (new form of Home Science)

3. Sports: Disciplinary Courses on any game, or yoga.

This inventive structure seems to open its doors to low-cost private institutions offering permutations of questionable quality, and also those that may come under the rubric of Indian Knowledge Systems (IKS) favoured by the ruling dispensation. In fact the National Credits Framework (NcrF) recently released by the University Grants Commission has included Indian Knowledge System and now added a list of Vidyas or theoretical disciplines, and kalas or applied sciences and vocational crafts that will be counted to earn credits during school education.

Also read: ‘Text Books Are Being Changed Because RSS is Very Clear, It Wants to Catch Them Young’

The NCF accords legitimacy to a structure of courses of carefully differentiated status, to sort students from disadvantaged backgrounds into constricted curricular silos. The notion of flexible ‘interdisciplinary learning’ and the rhetoric of ‘choice’, popularly imagined as available in elite IB school curricula, allows NCF 2023 to judiciously administer a feel-good dose of wishful credence to the middle classes.

Without rigorous appraisal of our existing school systems, with studies on the preparedness of the present teacher education system, one wonders how such a major shift has been propounded. For instance, several years after the introduction of integrated ‘general science’ for Grades 9-10, teacher educators do not feel confident to teach the pedagogy for this course, claiming they have studied either biology, chemistry or physics. Textbooks too contain chapters from either of these disciplines, since developing creative ‘interdisciplinary’ pedagogic material is not as simple as it is portrayed.

At a glance: The status of a current Grade 12 inter-disciplinary course 

Tarun (name changed) has just finished his Grade 12 board examinations and says he hopes to pass, even in Hindi and Sanskrit, which he did not find interesting in school, and in which he has not answered well the examination questions. However he says his ‘Home Science’ paper was easy, since most of the information he had memorised.

During the entire year they never entered what was meant to be the laboratory, and did no practical work. Even the board practical examination was easy; they were asked to bring from home something they were supposed to cook, and submit a piece of batik cloth, which friends had shared. Before the external examiner came in, their school teacher asked them to copy some portion from the textbook, and that was all for the viva.

Despite this almost farcical situation of the interdisciplinary course he was taught, he hopes it will allow him to study hotel management at college. The prospects of that possibility however need further examination, of his eligibility, the affordable programmes available, since he belongs to a poor family with working parents who manage to earn around Rs 16,000 between them.

The CBSE Grade 12 home science (theory) examination paper

Some of the questions Tarun had to answer, as part of his Home Science (Theory) paper (bilingual) for the CBSE Grade 12 board examination are as follows:

Q.  ———- provides hospitality to people who go hiking, undertake adventure sports, etc.

a) Lodge; b) Resort;  c) Furnished camp;  d) Motel.

Q.  Match the following:

(i)  Food and Beverage department                1. Receptionist

(ii) Front Office                                              2. Accountant

(iii) Housekeeping department                       3. Chef-de-partie

(iv) Support service department                     4. Room attendant

Q. Identify the methods of washing clothes in a top-loading washing machine.

a) Research Scholar; b) Tumbling; c)  Calendering;  d) Pulsation.

Options are given as of pairs of combinations.

Q. Give full forms of the following international organisations dealing with food standards, quality and trade.

a) CAC; b) ISO;   c) WTO.

Q. a). Which five knowledge and skills are required by a recipe development professional involved in Food Processing and Technology industry? Elaborate in detail.

OR

b) Define Toxicity and Hazard. Explain three types of hazards in food with examples.

Q. How are phytochemicals different from medical foods?

Q. a) List four pillars on which the science of ergonomics is set.

OR

b) Why are social entrepreneurs called ‘social catalysts’? Write any two characteristics of an entrepreneur.

Q. Mandeep wants to buy a readymade pant and shirt. Explain two ways by which he can bring harmony in it.

Q. Name the colour harmony scheme where only neutral colours are used.

a) Split complementary; b) Monochromatic; c) Achromatic; d) Triadic

Tarun has answered the questions in Hindi, where in some cases the terms used are uncommon and difficult. We must remember that these questions would have been given to a large number of poor students who would not be familiar with many of these contexts.

The NCERT textbooks of ‘Home Science’, (earlier named ‘Human Ecology and Family Sciences’), were revised in 2016, and have units on five domains – namely, Food and Nutrition, Human Development and Family Studies, Fabric and Apparel, Resource Management, and Communication and Extension. The introduction to the textbook states that each of these domains was included and named in a way that aligns with specialisations offered in various colleges and universities, and the expanding horizons and needs of families, industries and society. It claims these domains provide interdisciplinary perspectives and opportunities to work in industry/corporate sector, teaching, research and development, and in various cadres in the public sector, as well as in regional, national and international organisations. More importantly, it states that “the practicals have been designed to enable learners to gain insights and also have a bird’s eye view of the tasks and challenges inherent in the various professional careers and avenues. Considerable emphasis is laid on ‘construction of knowledge’ through field exposure and first-hand experiences”.

We have seen how Tarun was taught without ever having done any practicals. He studied at a school run by the Delhi government, which pats itself on the back for an ‘Education Revolution’ and uses discriminatory ways of sorting students and pushing them out to the Open School System, to flaunt its board results. Some students who last year got a compartment in the Class 12 board, though technically eligible to reappear in the supplementary exam after two months, were pushed out and enrolled in the Open School. As far as ‘choice’ goes, a reply to a Right to Information question had shown that in Delhi less than one-third schools offer science at Grades 11-12, as there are no laboratories for each of the science subjects, no adequate facilities or teachers, and students have to get 50-55% marks in Grade 10 to be eligible for science.

Policies and frameworks may present promises on paper, but the demeaning quality of education and the ‘paper’ certificates doled out to the precariat, even in well-resourced urban environments, are of deep concern. How far are these new course structures mandated to address the ‘choices’ and aspirations of all our students, especially the disadvantaged thrown out early, sacrificed to the glossy facade of ‘excellence’? Worryingly, our education system is on a precarious roll, brazenly abandoning concerns of quality and equity, embracing commercial ‘content creators’, with courses that increasingly tend to align with the precarity of the gig economy.

 Anita Rampal taught at the Faculty of Education, Delhi University; was Chairperson of the NCERT Textbook Development Committees at Primary Stage, under NCF 2005.

Are Indian Kids Getting Enough Opportunities to Realise Their Capabilities?

We asked students in Bihar and Delhi about their access to eight different activities including painting, athletics, singing, theatre, chess, coding and mental mathematics.

Recent estimates predict that India is going to overtake China in population this year and will also become the world’s third largest economy by 2030, overtaking Japan. But India is not as good at winning Olympic medals or capturing scientific patents like other societies.

Sweden – whose nine million people won 11 Olympic medals (in 2016), achieving a rate of more than one medal per million – also secures more than 300 scientific patents per million people. On the other hand, India with more than 100 times as many people, wins far fewer Olympic medals (two medals in 2016 at a rate of one medal per 500 million people) and many fewer patents (6.25 patent applications per million people). The question is – is India bereft of talent or are its talents not ferreted out as effectively?

In every society, the children of the super-rich get every opportunity. The question of ferreting out talent revolves on the children of the poor and on whether they are given opportunities. National performance as well as social justice hinge upon the same fundamental concept – equality of opportunity, i.e., equally hardworking and talented individuals should be able to rise as high, irrespective of their income, gender, caste and locality.

Students in Bihar. Photo: Sujeet Kumar

How deeply does India dig for its sports and its scientific talent? To what extent do people in different segments of Indian society have the opportunity to show their talents for sports and mathematics and painting and writing and other achievements? Little is known on the subject. Methodical studies are just beginning.

We contribute to this important and growing body of knowledge in our recent working paper, asking 806 students (410 in rural Bihar, 103 in slums in Patna and 293 in slums in Delhi) between 12 and 14 years in age, enrolled in government schools, about their access to eight different activities including painting, athletics, singing, theatre, chess, coding and mental mathematics. We also asked about these Class 7 and 8 students’ career preferences and willingness to take part in talent-spotting events of different kinds and about a small number of socio-economic indicators.

Students in Bihar. Photo: Sujeet Kumar

To our dismay, we find that as many as 42% of the Bihar sample have the lowest participation score, zero points, meaning that they had no opportunity whatsoever, at school or outside, for taking part in any of the eight activities over all of the previous five years! A total of 80% took part in a painting event on one or two occasions, a few took part in singing once or twice – and that was it, over all of five years. The situation in Delhi is only marginally better. Among the sample from Delhi slums, 24% have the lowest participation score, zero points, while as many as 90% have scores of 10 points or fewer, indicating that the individual took part in one or two activities at the entry level once or twice over five years – but had no chances of competing at any higher level nor even any regularity of training and competition.

The average participation scores for each activity are very, very low. Take for instance the score of access to athletics competition, the score for Bihar is 0.34, which means that at most 34% of sample had access once (and only once) to entry-level competition while the remaining 66% did not have a single opportunity for all of the past five years. In Delhi, 59% had no access whatsoever to sporting competitions and 88% had no access to mental mathematics or chess. If there is a hidden talent – and there must be very many hidden talents in these large populations – how are these talents going to be discovered?

Gender and caste gaps are significant, though given the very low level of participation overall, the difference is that between low and lower. The data reveals that girls have lower participation scores but in particular activities (singing and story writing) their low participation rates are less low than those of boys.

Hardly anyone takes part in multiple competitions. Those who participate more intensively at the entry level are unable to move up to a higher level of competition. Even as schoolteachers would like to see their pupils’ capacities grow, no child from any of these schools, whether in Bihar or Delhi, has moved up the ladder in the art world or in athletics or coding or any of the other lines.

Hundreds of thousands of talented individuals remain unaware of the talents within them. Simply because the mechanisms of talent identification and development are under-developed, the nation performs well below its true potential.

Students in Bihar. Photo: Sujeet Kumar

It is not a case of unwilling participants as much one of absence of opportunities. More than two-thirds of young respondents are eager to take part if such competitions were organised within reaching distance.

Absent opportunity, the value of talent plummets. Poverty persists, despite abundant capability. How does a boy come to know he has the talent to be a successful artist unless he has access to paints and to painting competitions? How does a girl know she can become a star athlete until she has the chance to show her worth at athletics meets at successively higher levels?

This is not the fault of any particular government, but probably more, a consequence of a long-held belief that there is only one proper way for an individual to advance – through academic studies. A jingle in Bihar goes  – padhoge likhoge banogey nawaab, khelogey koodogey banogey kharaab (by studying hard you become worthy, by playing and extra-curriculars you destroy your life) – and thus, families’ and communities’ and the state’s efforts almost entirely go into developing one kind of talent.

But this robs individuals of opportunities while making it harder for the nation to ferret out talent. It is time we got ourselves out of this conundrum. Research and practice both need to rise to the challenge. Talent is the resource a 21st-century India cannot afford to squander. What needs to be done can be learned from illustrative national and international examples.

Sujeet Kumar is at the Centre for Policy Research and Anirudh Krishna is at Duke University.

Five Charts on the Status of School Education in India

ASER 2022 shows a steep decline in the reading ability of school children during the pandemic.

Mumbai: As the COVID-19 pandemic hit India in March 2020, schools across the country were completely shut down. “Zoom classes” were held irrespective of internet connectivity and the availability of mobile phones and computers. Online schooling came to be accepted as a “new normal”. This replacement, however, has had a major bearing on children’s basic ability to read and comprehend. The findings of the 2022 Annual Status of Education Report, the first in four years, offer some significant takeaways.

The ASER 2022 is a nationwide citizen-led household survey that provides a snapshot of children’s schooling and learning in rural India. ASER 2022 studied almost all rural districts of India, and generated district, state and national level estimates of children’s enrolment status and foundational skills. Information about enrolment in school or preschool was collected for all children aged 3-16, and children aged 5-16 were tested one-on-one to understand their reading, arithmetic and English skills.

Among the most startling data is the steep decline in the reading ability of school children. The reading ability, the study finds, has dropped to pre-2012 levels. This drop is seen across both government and private schools in most states and among both boys and girls.

The study highlights a disturbing trend through numbers. Barring Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, which already did very poorly in comparison with other states, there is a remarkable dip in the percentage of children able to read and comprehend words appropriate to the age and standard they are studying in. Bihar, which was at a 12.3% reading ability scale in 2018, has shown a marginal improvement to 12.9% in 2022. Similarly, in UP, the number has improved from 12.3 % to 16.4%.

States like Kerala and Maharashtra which have otherwise had a better educational outlook, were shown to have done poorly in the past four years. In Maharashtra, the study points out that 44.2% of surveyed children showed adequate reading ability in 2018. It has now plummeted to 26.1%. Similarly, Kerala has slid from 43.4% in 2018 to 31.6% in 2022.

While the pandemic has had a deep impact, leading to learning loss, what the ASER 2022 figures seem to suggest is that the loss is much greater in reading as compared to arithmetic.

Another reassuring trend that the study finds is the impressive decline in school dropout among both boys and girls. The pandemic-induced school closures didn’t have any bearing as far as school enrolment is concerned, the data collected by the ASER researchers indicates. Pre-COVID, the last national ASER rural field survey was conducted in 2018. That year, the all-India enrolment figure for the age group 6 to 14 was 97.2%. The 2022 data shows that this number has increased to 98.4%.

Along with rising overall enrolment in the period 2018-2022, in practically all states and for all age groups, there has been a significant shift in enrolment away from private schools into government schools. For the country as a whole (all of India rural), the percentage of all children aged 11 to 14 who are enrolled in government schools has risen from 65% in 2018 to 71.7% in 2022.

The private tuition incidence which remained flat at about 25% for many years, saw a sharp rise of almost 40% in 2021. In 2022, it came down to 30%, yet higher than in 2018. While the average doesn’t seem as alarming, individual states give a clearer picture of the impact.

Bihar and Jharkhand are high tuition states – 70% of children in Bihar and 45% in Jharkhand were taking tuition classes in 2022, the study finds. In Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra, 10% and 15% students are availing private tuitions, respectively.

Private tuitions are a direct commentary on the education imparted in schools. The higher number of children enrolling in private tuition, however, does not necessarily correspond to their parent’s capacity to pay. Among the very poor population too, there is an increase in the numbers. If anything, this is a reflection of the parents’ desperation to impart better education to their children.

ASER has also made school-level observations to see how accessible education is to students. One of the most common phenomena that the study captures is small and multi-grade classrooms.

The proportion of government schools with less than 60 students enrolled has increased every year over the last decade. Nationally, this figure was 17.3% in 2010, 24% in 2014, 29.4% in 2018, and stands at 29.9% in 2022. The states with the highest proportion of small schools in 2022 include Himachal Pradesh (81.4%) and Uttarakhand (74%). However, some states show a decrease in the fraction of small schools, such as Uttar Pradesh (from 10.4% in 2018 to 7.9% in 2022) and Kerala (from 24.1% in 2018 to 16.2% in 2022).

The proportion of multigrade Std II and Std IV classrooms also shows a steady increase over the past decade. For example, the proportion of Std II classrooms observed to be sitting with children from other grade(s) was 54.8% in 2010, 61.6% in 2014, 62.4% in 2018, and stands at 65.5% in 2022. Increases over 2018 levels are visible in Gujarat (from 50.9% in 2018 to 69.3% in 2022) and Chhattisgarh (from 71.3% in 2018 to 79.5% in 2022), among others.

After the pandemic, the general fear was that economic stress might lead to children dropping out of school but this has not happened. Instead, the already low proportion of not-enrolled children in the 6-14 age group has halved from 2.8% to 1.6% over four years. Another change is that a very large proportion of children have moved from private schools to government schools. An increase in government school enrolment is visible for almost every state in the country, the study finds. The study shows that not just the enrolment but the attendance too has improved in the last four years.

In this study, ASER introduced a new component – the availability of facilities in pre-schools. Since this was the first time this was done, there is no baseline to compare the data with. But the corresponding enrolment data suggests that the proportion of young children enrolled in government school-based preschool classes is only a fraction of those going either to AWCs or to private LKG/UKG classes. Further, across all states in the country, this proportion has increased significantly only in Himachal Pradesh (from 3.1% of 3-6-year-olds in 2018 to 11.6% in 2022).

Nationally, the report suggests, small improvements are visible in all Right to Education-related indicators over 2018 levels. An important component here is useable toilets for girl students. The fraction of schools with useable girls’ toilets increased from 66.4% in 2018 to 68.4% in 2022, the study has found. Similarly, the proportion of schools with drinking water available increased from 74.8% to 76%, and the proportion of schools with books other than textbooks being used by students increased from 36.9% to 44% over the same period.

How Online Education Exposed West Bengal’s Fault-Ridden Education System

While several institutional failures had existed for years, they were made starkly clear with the advent of online learning due to the pandemic.

Kolkata: With a Trinamool Congress (TMC) party flag in hand, high school students shouted, “Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar hai hai (down with Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar).”

The students of this North Bengal institution named after the great reformer of Bengali education had been protesting after failing their uccha madhyamik or higher secondary (HS) examinations, demanding that they be passed.

Similar protests by thousands of students took place across West Bengal following the publication of the results of the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education (WBCHSE) – the state’s governing body for higher secondary education – on June 10. This year, 88.44% of the students who took the HS exams passed. In 2021, however, the pass rate for these exams was 98% after the exams were called off due to the pandemic and the students were marked on their classroom assignments instead.

“Last year everyone passed without even appearing for the HS exams. This year we wrote the papers and yet we have been failed,” the protesting students reportedly said during demonstrations outside the office of the education ministry. “Don’t we deserve to get the minimum passing marks? We want to be passed. A year of our lives cannot be destroyed.”

While the HS students protested, there were also protests by students of several colleges and universities, demanding online examinations for the semesters in which they had had only online teaching. After a prolonged period of online education, colleges and universities had finally opened up for in-person classes and many had declared that their exams would similarly be held in-person.

But thousands of students of these institutions organised demonstrations against this decision; some even became violent. Many students began a hunger strike and threatened suicide if their demand for online exams was not met.

Behind the protests

The protests by HS, college and university students sent shockwaves across institutions and amongst educationists. But as inappropriate as this clamour might have seemed, the protesting students exposed several fault lines in West Bengal’s state-sponsored education system. While many of these institutional failures had existed unaddressed for years, they were made starkly clear with the advent of online education due to the pandemic.

“In our last semester we had classes in the online mode for only about two-and-half months and even then, nothing was taught properly. Professors either gave half-hearted lectures or provided PDFs and asked us to study on our own. This is how it has been since the pandemic began,” said Gaurav Sarkar, a final year student of BA (Economics) in Jadavpur University (JU).

“We have been yearning to go to our colleges and universities and study as we used to. We are ready for offline exams. But before that, our institutions need to complete the syllabus,” the JU student added.

Sarkar was echoed by Debalina Daw, an MA (English) student at West Bengal State University (WBSU) who is awaiting her final semester results. “When all our classes for the last semester were online, it was unfair to force offline exams on us,” she said.

Generally, exams conducted online cannot be invigilated due to sloppy digital infrastructure, leaving the students free to refer to their notes and textbooks while writing their papers.

The students argued that online exams would be fairer to them because many of their teachers had left the syllabi incomplete while conducting classes online. Likewise, many of the students could not even attend their online classes due to a lack of WiFi and cellular networks in their regions and in many cases, the lack even of a smartphone or other internet-connected device in their households.

According to a survey conducted among 232 college and university-going students mainly in the North Bengal districts of Darjeeling, Malda and Dakshin Dinajpur, only 14.1% of the students surveyed attended online classes regularly, while 54% managed to attend classes only three days a week. The survey was part of a 2020 paper published in Elsevier’s Children and Youth Services Review, an international journal that focuses on disadvantaged children.

“The students were also facing problems related to poor internet connectivity (32.4%), followed by the absence of a favourable environment to study at home (12.6%). Students residing in rural and remote areas may face poor internet connectivity,” the paper said. “Moreover, poor economic conditions might be a reason for the unfavourable environment and lack of separate room for their study.”

The paper substantiated what students like Sarkar and Daw told The Wire. “Only 27 (11.6%) students reported that over 50% of their syllabus was covered,” the paper said.

“The students protesting offline exams had demanded either the reduction of the syllabus, or the completion of the syllabus with in-person classes, or online exams. If the institutions did not teach us certain topics, why should they expect us to learn them on our own for exams?” asked Darpan Mukherjee, a third year law student at Bankura University.

The widespread phenomenon of unfinished syllabi across institutions in West Bengal can be defined as a consequence of the state’s Pupil to Teacher Ratio (PTR) of 40 in universities and colleges in comparison to the national average of 32. West Bengal has, for years, fared poorly in this category, but online learning exacerbated its impact due to the fact that lecturing students via a screen drastically reduces the engagement and interaction that a physical classroom offers.

“Limited class interaction and inefficient time table significantly affected the satisfaction levels among students. The peer-to-peer impact in the school environment motivates individuals to work hard and learn social skills, which may not be possible in an online setting,” said another paper in the 2020 edition of Elsevier’s Children and Youth Services Review.

The researchers behind this paper conducted several surveys among more than 1,182 students, 58.7% of whom were in the age group of 18-22. In one survey 51.4% of the students reported they had not utilised their time properly during the lockdown and their health conditions had also deteriorated significantly due to disturbances in “sleeping habits, daily fitness routines, and social interaction”. With the availability of more trained teachers, these drawbacks could have been avoided.

Teacher discrimination

The PTR alone is not a major issue in West Bengal’s higher education system. Other states have worse ratios. But coupled with underpaid and exploited part-time and contractual educators at institutions, West Bengal’s higher-than-average PTR spells danger for not just the students but the teaching faculty as well.

According to a paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2019, approximately 32,000 teaching faculties were required in West Bengal’s government-aided colleges that year. But there were only “6,000 full-time faculty and 668 contractual whole time teachers and 4,688 part-time teachers, excluding 65 superannuated teachers”, the paper said.

Even though regular and part-time or contractual teachers share an equal proportion of the workload, the contractual and part-time faculties are paid considerably less than the full-time staff. Apart from questioning their competence whenever the contractual and part-time staff demand the regularisation of their employment or an increase in pay, West Bengal’s education system does not run any performance tracking procedure for them.

As a result, “to supplement their meagre income, many contractual and part-time teachers have resorted to other options such as private tuitions, small business, etc”, diverting their focus from their original job of teaching at colleges and universities and thus paying less attention to the students.

Schools in trouble

While the manner in which online education was conducted in India hurt college and university students, the worst hit among all of India’s students were those in school.

According to a 2021 report by UNESCO, only “54% of urban and 32% of the rural population of 12+ years had internet access” in India in 2019. As a result, more than 50% of Indian children were subjected to a stark digital discrimination due to online education.

The UNESCO report also stated that in digital learning, only 36% of all enrolled children received learning materials or activities from their teachers. “Of the enrolled children who didn’t receive any learning materials, 68% of parents cited schools not sending materials, while 24% of households stated not owning a smartphone as the reason,” the report said, highlighting the lukewarm efforts of institutions in educating children digitally.

The numbers turn more egregious when one looks at the results of a survey led by development economists Jean Drèze and Ritika Khera along with two Ranchi-based researchers. The 32-page report found only 23% of children in urban areas and only 8% in rural areas had adequate access to online education in 15+ Indian states, including West Bengal.

Two points mentioned in the report, which is titled ‘Locked Out: Emergency Report on School Education’, should be an eye opener for West Bengal’s educationists and policy makers. The report revealed that “about half of the children currently enrolled in Grades 3-5 were unable to read more than a few words”, while at the upper-primary level (Grades 6-8), just about 50% of the children were able to read fluently.

“To some extent, the dismal results of the reading test reflect the poor quality of schooling prior to the lockout,” the report said, adding “many children have forgotten much of whatever little they had learnt earlier”.

Coupled with the oppressive irregularities in education among school-going children, the promotion of children to two grades above the pre-lockdown level proved to be a major stumbling block. “As schools reopen, children are all set to find themselves ‘thrice removed’ from their grade’s curriculum,” the report said. “This triple gap consists of (1) the pre-lockout gap, (2) the decline of literacy and related abilities during the lockout, and (3) the onward march of the curriculum in that period.”

Education vs pass marks

The ruinous repercussions of ‘promotion without progress’ were on full display in West Bengal’s madhyamik (the board exam for class 10) and uccha madhyamik in 2022. Several students failed to form basic words and sentences even in Bengali, leave alone in English. Many used their answer sheets to write memes, while some filled pages after pages with swear words.

“Students were not just promoted without any exam but they were awarded high marks. It was unbelievable how many students scored above 90% in the two board exams in 2021,” said Pabitra Sarkar, former vice chancellor of Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University and a noted educationist.

In 2018, 2019 and 2020, the pass rates of students who took the madhyamik exams were 85.49, 86.07 and 86.34 respectively. In the uccha madhyamik in the same years, the numbers were 83.75, 86.92 and 90.13 respectively. Several papers of the uccha madhyamik exams had been cancelled in 2020 when the nationwide lockdown was announced. The highest marks acquired by a student in a paper for which an exam had been conducted were awarded for the cancelled papers as well.

According to Sarkar, the current system of evaluation in West Bengal – and in India – had sustained the idea of promotion without progress for a long time even before the pandemic.

“Exams here mean sets of similar questions and answers. Students buy question banks of the last 10 years and memorise answers. Then our question paper setters have a pattern of skipping the previous year’s questions while setting papers for the current exams. Even teachers follow this pattern,” Sarkar said.

In their desperation to somehow pass the exams, students end up uneducated, said Sarkar. “Unbounded promotion in 2021 gave children the belief they could pass without studying. So, when they got the reality check this year, they couldn’t control themselves,” he said.

He blamed the students’ mental health and administrative malfeasances such as the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam for the reaction of the students to failing this year’s board exams.

“Locked in their houses for days and not meeting friends and teachers in person resulted in psychological issues for many students. What worsened the problem was that many didn’t even realise what was happening to them,” Sarkar said.

The SSC scam, on the other hand, exposed how the very foundation of the state’s education has been contaminated by the TMC regime in West Bengal, claimed Sarkar. “This government doesn’t want to educate children. It is just manufacturing criminal minds en masse and leading to the lumpenisation of society,” Sarkar alleged.

“Students who think they can pass without studying will naturally inherit the idea that they can also earn a livelihood without working, and there are not many teachers left in the system who can bring them to the right path,” he added, explaining what corruption in the teacher recruitment process can do to school students.

Fear of the future

Last month, the protests by the HS students took a fatal turn when a student in Malda district, who couldn’t pass in English, died by suicide on June 18. Her parents claimed the 17-year-old had been depressed since the HS results were declared and had participated in the then ongoing students’ movement. Another incident of suicide was reported from East Bardhaman district, where a student hanged herself after failing two subjects in her HS exams. Yet another student threatened to die by suicide if she was not passed.

Alleging conspiracy and malpractice by teachers in checking their answer sheets, students also attempted to storm Bikash Bhavan, the Ministry of Education office in Kolkata, and even blocked the highways and clashed with the police.

However, Tapas Kumar Mukherjee, secretary of the WBCHSE, does not believe that the student protests are a serious issue.

“Don’t pay much attention to those protests. What the failed students did was irresponsible and unacceptable. Initially they thought by putting pressure on the authorities they might be passed. But everything is under control now. That some will pass and some will fail is what exams are about,” Mukherjee told The Wire.

Apart from the systemic failures amplified by online learning, West Bengal’s education system is also plagued by the state’s low Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education compared to the national averages, as well as low employment opportunities.

Niladry Sarkar is an independent journalist based in West Bengal.

Countering Bigotry in the Indian Classroom

Young people (teenagers, especially) are open to reason and there is a very good chance they will listen to facts if we will but dialogue with them calmly, objectively, and respectfully.

For many years now I have conducted a workshop called ‘Finding You’ for high school students. It is aimed at helping teenagers find their own unique voice and identity, and deal with the existential angst that invariably accompanies the adolescent years. One of the activities during this workshop involves students cutting and pasting pictures from magazines and newspapers and making individual collages depicting their hopes, dreams and unique personalities. For this purpose, I ask them to bring old magazines and newspapers from their homes.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant closure of schools, however, brought a two-year hiatus in these sessions. As I resumed workshops once again this year, I wondered just how much the students’ worldviews have changed over the last couple of years, considering how Hindutva propaganda has now all but saturated print, electronic and social media.

I found my answer soon enough. In the years before the pandemic, students would bring magazines like India Today, Conde Nast Traveller, Vogue, etc. for the aforementioned collage-making activity. This time, to my consternation, I saw something I have never seen before in the pile – copies of Panchajanya, the RSS publication that openly advocates the idea of a Hindu rashtra. I decided to hold my peace and see how things developed. And develop they did!

As they were making their collages, the topic of ancestry came up amongst a couple of them. One of them cheerfully remarked to the other, “My grandparents came from Pakistan and I wouldn’t mind visiting it for a bit. I’ve heard the people there are quite hospitable and the food is great!”

The other student, a girl, immediately retorted, “I would never go there! I hate Muslims!”

Overhearing this, I said, “That’s a strong statement! Why do you hate Muslims? Have they ever done anything to hurt you?”

“Well, no…” she responded hesitantly, “but my parents tell me they are dangerous people.”

“But have you personally interacted with any Muslim people to know this for sure?” I persisted.

“I haven’t,” she replied with a tone of finality, “but my parents hate them, and so do I.”

Migrants waiting to go home during the lockdown. Photo: Rohit Kumar

The thing I had been afraid of had happened. The poison of communalism had entered their minds and homes. That night I tossed and turned, wondering how to address this. The following morning, I decided to talk about prejudice and asked the students for examples of stereotyping. They came up with many, and finally the student who had wanted to taste Pakistani cuisine said slowly and tentatively, “I hear all the time that all terrorists are Muslims.”

I asked the class how many of them had heard that before as well. Slowly, they all raised their hands.

I asked them if they remembered the first major lockdown in March 2020. They said they did. Just to refresh their memory, I reminded them how, as the country went on a 21-day lockdown with only four hours’ notice, lakhs of migrant workers suddenly found themselves out of work and without money or a place to stay. Unable to sustain themselves in the cities, and with no transport available to return to their hometowns or villages hundreds of kilometres away, they simply started walking or cycling home. Many were beaten by the police. Some were sprayed down with chemicals. Many died on the way.

I told the students that a couple of days after the migrant exodus began, a friend of mine sent me an anguished message in the middle of the night saying, “We need to help these people!”

The next morning this friend, who is originally from Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh but who was living in Delhi at the time told me he was getting desperate appeals for help from migrant workers from Sitapur who were stuck in Delhi. He suggested we try to hire buses and help these people get home. I agreed.

We called the project ‘Destination Home’ and put out an appeal on social media. Within hours, help started pouring in and by the end of two months we had managed to send nearly 2,000 migrant workers home by bus and train.

I told the students how difficult it was to get permissions at that time for these buses to cross borders and how my friend not only ran from pillar to post every single day in the blistering heat of summer to get bus permits, but how he also arranged food packets for these families and called every single migrant worker on his list to make sure no one was left behind.

I showed the students photos and videos of the migrant workers boarding the buses, including four who had bicycled to south Delhi all the way from Sonipat on the hottest day of the year just to be able to get on one of these buses and go home to Sitapur, and who had blistered hands and swollen feet as a result.

Suffice it to say, the students were moved.

Children of migrants waiting to go home during the lockdown. Photo: Rohit Kumar

And then I said, “By the way, this friend of mine that I’ve been talking about, his name is Zartab bhai. He is a Muslim and he did all this while keeping his rozas. Still think Muslims are awful people?”

What followed next was ‘pin-drop silence’. And then slowly, one student started clapping, followed by another and then another. The whole class then burst into sincere, heartfelt applause that went on for a long time. It was a beautiful moment.

An animated discussion about the importance of resisting bigotry ensued. Much of the class confessed that they too had believed there is something intrinsically ‘dangerous’ about Muslims, but that this story had given them something to think about. (It was interesting to note that there were no Muslim students in this class.) We finally arrived at the conclusion that it is wrong and dangerous to stereotype people by religion or community.

The girl who had been convinced she ‘hated Muslims’ told me she was embarrassed by how wrong she had been in her sweeping generalisations. I commended her for being willing to change her mind. I wondered if she would discuss this with her parents. If she did, I wondered how they would respond.

It is tempting to fear that in the face of Hindutva’s relentless propaganda onslaught our youth are all but lost to critical thinking, but this is not true. As this experience showed, young people (teenagers, especially) are open to reason and there is a very good chance they will listen to facts if we will but dialogue with them calmly, objectively, and respectfully – and with real-life examples of the values we espouse.

Rohit Kumar is an educator and can be reached at letsempathize@gmail.com.

How Tenable Is It to Teach Just One Scriptural Text in State-Funded or Aided Institutions?

If moral teaching is to be part of a school curriculum in a multi-religious polity like our republic, there should be no argument against including moral insights from all our religions.

News has come in that the Gujarat and Karnataka governments mean to induct the Srimadbhagwat Gita into school curricula under the rubric of “moral education”.

Now there can be little doubt that the Gita is an outstandingly stimulating read, unique in the modernity of its Q&A between Arjun, the first of avant-garde anti-war humanists, and Lord Krishna.

Indeed, the openness of the text lies in the fact that it not only seeks to answer many philosophical conundrums, but it also leaves room for further enquiry despite the authoritative assertions.

For example, we may still ask whether the Lord’s admonition to Arjun at one point to follow his Shatriya dharma is or is not construable as a problematic invocation of a social identity — a subject that has much troubled our republic in recent years.

Also read: Bhagavad Gita in Schools: Rote Learning of Illiberal Theological Text Will Trump Rational Inquiry

Or, what may be the implications of that other admonition, namely, that we must follow our designated karmic actions and refrain from seeking the fruit of those actions for modern-day capitalists who must after all look to enhance their “bottom lines”; and whether the recommended selflessness may not after all have the effect of keeping the labouring classes from raising demands.

Be that as it may, the other question for our day is this: given that the Gita is the centrepiece, undeniably, of the Hindu religious epic, The Mahabharata, how does the Gujarat and Karnataka government’s proposal square with the explicit injunction of Article 28 of India’s still “secular” constitution, which reads:

Clause 1: “No religious instruction shall be provided in an educational institution wholly maintained out of state funds.”

Clause 3: “No person attending any educational institution recognised by the state or receiving aid out of state funds shall be required to take part in any religious worship that may be conducted in such institution any premises attached thereto.”

We may recall that keeping in mind the religious plurality of India, Mahatma Gandhi’s prayer meetings used to be inclusive of texts from all Indian religions — a course of reflection and action that he clearly sought to press into service to consolidate and further communal harmony and unity among all Indians. Few Hindus indeed may have practiced the noble humanist precept of Sarvadharma samabhav (equal respect for all religions) as he did, although, sadly, following this article of belief often propounded by ideologues of the Sangh did not win him any laurels from the self-appointed authenticators of true Sanatan faith.

Some spokespersons of the ruling BJP have countered the constitutional difficulty by arguing that the teachings of the Gita are more moral than religious, and therefore of universal application.

That position then raises other questions: why are not the equally excellent moral instructions embedded in the scriptures of other Indian religions of equal moral validity?

Take Sikhism. It may be argued with force that the quatrain at the very beginning of the Guru Granth Sahib furnishes an insight that if we all followed could set at rest much of our sectarian hate and violence towards one another across religious communities. Here is what it says:

“Avle Allah Noor jo paya/Qudrat de sab bande/Ek hee Noor toun sab jug upja/Kaun bhale, kaun mande.”

Translation: The first Light that God created/Of that Light  is all humankind  made/Thus where is the question of who is high, or who is low.

What indeed may be a more unarguably encompassing moral teaching than what is encapsulated in those lines?

Indeed, keeping in mind India’s plurality, should it not be a great humanising lesson to school-going children that the Granth incorporates in its text the sayings/enunciations of saints who were Muslims and Dalits?

Also read: There’s a Right – and Wrong – Way to Teach Scriptures in Government Schools

Or that the Guru’s Langar (hearth/provisions) remain accessible to women, men, children of all faiths, and of all status without discrimination, or how they are all obliged to do seva (service), including cleaning out their plates after they have been fed?

Go to the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament of the Bible, and we read such things as the following:

– Love thy neighbour as thyself.

– Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

– Lay not thy treasure upon the earth, for thieves shall come and steal it; lay thy treasure in heaven…

– As a good tree is known by its good fruit, so good men are known by their good deeds.

– Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall inherit heaven.

– It is as difficult for a rich man to enter heaven as for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

And elsewhere in the book, the violent lynching instincts of a rabidly self-righteous mob is quelled thus:

“Whoever among you is without sin may cast the first stone.”

Are these not moral teachings of the deepest worth, deserving of being offered to our young ones for moral edification?

In the much-maligned Islam, here is a gem-like instruction from the Quran – “Lukum Deen-a-qum Walia Deen” – ergo, to you your religion, to me mine.

Can there be a more succinct guide to communal harmony and religious tolerance?

Then there is the injunction to spare from each one’s earning a portion (Zakat) for the collective welfare of the less fortunate, especially widows and orphans.

Is that a course not worth inculcating in a country which ranks at the near-bottom in the Global Hunger Index?

And, from the Dhamma of Buddhism: accept nothing that your best reason rejects as false, distorted, questionable – regardless of which authority it comes from.

What could be a more precious piece of moral teaching in days when an uncritically blind cult-worship afflicts so many parts of the world, including today’s Bharat?

That is, if indeed our educational system desires to enable our wards to grow to be intellectually self-reliant rather than conformist drum-beaters to authority and the untenable shibboleths it seeks to promote.

Then, as in the Bible, is the creed of non-violence enshrined in Jainist/Buddhist thought which holds up the non-affliction of pain on others as the ultimate moral high (Ahimsa Parmo Dharma).

And so on.

So, it may be asked – if moral teaching is to be part of a school curriculum in a multi-religious polity like our republic in which all citizens thus far remain equal before law and have the right to equality of all other kinds, including the right to “profess, practice, and propagate” whatever religion they follow, what can be the argument against including moral insights and teachings from all our religions? Especially since school-going boys and girls comprise young ones from all denominations that constitute the people of India who gave a constitution to themselves?

Or, have we forgotten?

And the fact that there can be no argument fuels the suspicion that the inclusion of the magnificent Gita all by itself to the exclusion of the texts mentioned above (and many others not mentioned here for lack of space) may have less to do with moral teachings and more to do with a dominant politics that continues to seek ways in which, subtly or not, a far-reaching transformation in the character of the polity and the state be effected, debilitating the majesty of the constitution to a point where a fait accompli confronts the secular-democratic republic .

After all, sophistry, however sophisticated it may be, has its limits even in a post-truth world.

Bhagavad Gita in Schools: Rote Learning of Illiberal Theological Text Will Trump Rational Inquiry

The book is full of obscurantist themes and ideas which require critical engagement of the kind school teachers will not be willing or able to provide.

Earlier this week, the Gujarat government announced that the Bhagavad Gita will be part of the school syllabus for classes VI to XII across the state from the academic year 2022-23. The Karnataka government is also considering introducing the Gita as part of ‘moral education’ in state schools. It can be expected that other Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, and perhaps the Central Board of Secondary Education too, may follow soon.

Gujarat education minister Jitu Vaghani says that the decision to introduce the Gita is in line with the Union government’s New Education Policy, which advocates the introduction of traditional and ancient culture that will make students proud of India’s glorious past.

Even earlier, changes had been made in NCERT textbooks to reflect grand narratives of ‘pride in our rich cultural heritage’. Such moves make the intentions of the BJP clear: to push their ideological agenda by giving a eulogistic account of our glorious past.

The Gita has acquired a certain popularity in the world of Hindu thought. Though Hindus see the Gita’s message as a ‘universal truth’, it remains a religious text. If it is to be part of the school curriculum, it is hard to see why Muslim and Christian teachings – which their adherents also believe are ‘universal’ – should not also be taught. Unless, of course, the aim is to underline the salience (and even superiority) of Hinduism over other religions that Indians profess.

But there is a deeper, pedagogic point of concern as well. Though touted as a popular text on which great personalities have provided their commentaries, the Gita is full of obscurantist themes and ideas which require critical engagement of the kind school teachers will not be willing or able to provide. This will make it difficult for students to make much sense of the text in the classroom, and will lead to rote learning without any sense of understanding. Given the prevailing pedagogy, teachers will stifle the rational sensibilities of their students and encourage them merely to commit to memory the verses of the Gita. In fact, this is how the exposure of the members of the laity to Gita has happened at the popular level. It is this aspect of memorisation as a propaganda tool that has made it popular as a theological text.

Why should the Gita be considered an obscurantist theological text? A short review of the Gita and B.R. Ambedkar’s critique of the text will provide an appropriate answer to this question.

In the 18 chapters comprising 700 shlokas (verse-form), the Bhagavad Gita is presented as a narrative where Lord Krishna is in conversation with the Pandava prince Arjuna in the middle of the battlefield. Arjuna breaks down and refuses to fight at the start of the battle against his Kaurava cousins as he is overcome with grief and confusion at the thought of the loss of life of his kith and kin during the course of the ensuing battle.  The lord then presents the illusoriness of grief to Arjuna and expounds on the nature of the self or the soul.

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Beyond this basic ‘storyline’, the Gita’s substance is essentially theological. The central concepts that it deals with in this exposition are karma, samkhya and yoga. There are differences among different commentators about what these concepts mean. But essentially these are theological themes dealt with in the Gita. How can a text whose substance is theological be thrust upon students?

One of its central themes is karma and the most popular verse often quoted is the one that says we are not entitled to the fruits of our actions (Chapter 2, verse 47):

karmaṇy-evādhikāras te mā phaleṣhu kadāchana
mā karma-phala-hetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ’stvakarmaṇi

(‘You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.’)

 What is the message conveyed by this shloka? It goes against the very practical psychology of why we work. What should young students make out of this and how should one follow this as a value? Children go to school to acquire knowledge and aspire to do better in life. That is the value of hard work that is taught to them. But here is a statement from the Gita presented as a gospel truth that is in conflict with the value of hard work.

What good does this do for school-going children? In fact, this will demotivate them as this shloka strongly suggests that they should not have right to fruits of their action and, by implication, arrest their aspirations. Further, there is no philosophical argument for this statement – no reference to the greater good of all. The shloka is merely a theological statement as what follows from this in the Gita is that all actions have to be surrendered to the lord.

Babasaheb Ambedkar is right when he says that “it is neither a book of religion nor a treatise on philosophy”. In the chapter titled ‘Essays on the Bhagwat Gita: Philosophic Defence of Counter-Revolution: Krishna and His Gita’ (Volume 3 of his writings and speeches published by the Maharashtra government), Ambedkar begins by questioning what exactly is the teaching of the Gita. Quoting extensively from different scholars with a variety of opinions which are incompatible with each other, he concludes that there is no clear message in the Gita.

However, Ambedkar has been a bit generous in his critique of the Gita when he says that it is a book that defends religious dogmas on philosophic grounds and so “uses philosophy to defend religion”. Sadly, the Gita even fails to do that. It actually defends one dogma by appealing to the other. This can be seen by examining a verse of the Gita on caste.

The theology of the Gita, through the idea of karma, unfolds the caste system. In fact Lord Krishna proclaims that he is the creator of the four-fold social order Chaturvarnya (Chapter 4, verse 13). Ambedkar also mentions this verse as an illustration of one of the dogmas of Gita:

chātur-varṇyaṁ-mayā sṛiṣhṭaṁ guṇa-karma-vibhāgaśhaḥ
tasya kartāram api māṁ viddhyakartāram avyayam

(‘The four categories of occupations were created by Me according to people’s qualities and activities. Although I am the Creator of this system, know Me to be the Non-doer and Eternal’.)

Are students supposed to learn the moral rightness of the caste system that has been ordained by the lord himself? However cleverly the modern-day casteists attempt to offer a scholarly defence (one that can be obviously read as extremely pretentious) of this social order – interpreting it differently by appealing to symbolic meanings in terms of qualities and actions of human beings – it just does not appear to be convincing.

If it is claimed, as some orthodox scholars do, that the categories are based on innate qualities and activities, then a counter question can be posed as: why does he (the lord) create such differences in qualities. There is no answer and sometimes a tepid response is given in terms of karma theory which is another theological explanation devoid of philosophical substance. It is a case of defending one dogma by the other.

Ambedkar, therefore, is right when he contends that it is not a philosophical text. He gives an example of how a dogma is defended in the Gita. In response to Arjuna’s remorse in the battlefield, Lord Krishna provides a justification of the war. He preaches that there is no ground for remorse in war and killing because the soul knows no death and cannot be killed and it is only the body which is destroyed. But the body is unreal and the soul is real. In that case, how does one answer the following: If the body is not real, why did the Lord create an illusory body and then put the soul into it?

Also read: Reading ‘The Gita’ Without Glossing Over Its Contradictions

These are not philosophical defences but one dogma being defended by invoking another dogma. When asked what the validity of this statement is – i.e. the dogma invoked to defend an earlier dogma – the Gita appeals to the Vedas as the source of this statement, which has to be accepted as authoritative. If at all there is any semblance of an argument in the Gita it is by defending the indefensible by invoking one dogma to defend the other one. The Gita, thus, is an illiberal theological text with regressive ideas.

When a theological text is elevated to the status of “unique universal inspiration” and is taught by teachers as part of the curriculum, what is likely to be the fate of students who seek to subject the shlokas to logic and analysis? Instead of developing a rational outlook and an attitude of critical enquiry, it is obvious that students will be driven to learn the Gita by heart. What purpose will be served by this kind of rote learning should be obvious.

S.K. Arun Murthi taught philosophy in the humanities and social sciences department, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali, Punjab.