My good friend Kapil Sibal, former Union Education Minister and Senior Advocate, Indian Supreme Court, interviewed me on his show ‘Dil se’ about 2 weeks back
While Kapil was of the view that the present Constitutional system in India can be reformed, I was of the view that it is beyond redemption, and no amount of reforms can make any substantial or significant improvement. So a revolution is required, and is inevitable.
Kapil repeatedly kept emphasising on education as the means of solving India’s socio-economic problems. In principle I agree.
In his book ‘The Republic’ the famous ancient Greek philosopher Plato said ” With a good system of education, every improvement is possible. If education is neglected, it matters very little what else the state does ”.
I discussed in great detail the importance of education in the judgment below which I gave when a judge of the Allahabad High Court
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1817906/
The problem, however, is how do we have a good system of education ?
The condition of perhaps 90% schools in India is depicted in the videos below of a high school in a village in district Narsinghpur, Madhya Pradesh :
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BdVMcVBXF/?mibextid=wwXIfr
The truth about most schools in India is given in brief in this video :
Teachers are often appointed not on their merits, but by giving bribes. The result is that a large number of teachers in India are totally incompetent.
Even in India’s capital Delhi, schools are in a terrible condition, as pointed out by the Delhi High Court :
The same is the situation in Noida, which is adjacent to Delhi
https://groups.google.com/g/childrensrighttofood/c/dQLhykCecBo
A few years back I went to meet an old friend in his village Manjhanpur, district Allahabad, where he is a farmer. One of his grandsons had passed class 7 and gone to class 8 in his school. I asked him to bring to me his class 7 maths text book, which he did. I then asked him to solve some very simple maths problems in that text book, but he could not solve them. I then showed him how to solve them. He was a bright boy, and picked up the method, and then quickly solved the other problems in the book.
I then asked him did his teacher not teach the students all this ? He replied ” Master saheb thekedaari karne lage the, aur doosre master saheb school aate nahi hain ” ( i.e. our maths teacher had become a contractor, and the next teacher rarely comes to school ”.
This incident illustrates the plight of most of the schools in our country, particularly in rural India, where the majority of Indians still live.
When I was a judge of Allahabad High Court ( 1991-2004 ) I visited the C.A.V. Inter College, which was once a good college in Allahabad city. I found that in one section of a class there were 300 students. I asked the Principal how were 300 students admitted in one class when the rules permitted a maximum of 40 ? He said ” Netaon aur adhikaariyon ka dabaav hota hai ” ( i.e. because of pressure from politicians and officials ).
For imparting good education, personal attention has to be given by the teacher to the student. I remember that when I was a student of Boys High School, Allahabad ( 1951-61 ), the teacher, apart from teaching in class, would give us homework, which we had to do at home, and then submit our copies to him in a day or two. These copies were taken by the teacher to his home, who scrutinised them, and the next day in class he would point out any mistake we had made.
This personal attention is impossible in a class of 300 students. So what has happened in India is the growth of what is called ‘the tuition racket’. This means that the real education is imparted by the teacher at his home by private tuition, while what is done at school is just a formality. Of course not all students can afford paying both the school fee as well as the tuition fee, so only children of affluent students get real education. The teacher, of course, gets a double income.
One also hears of mass copying and NEET scandals in our educational institutions ( the latter has been highlighted by the ongoing Cockroach Janta Party agitation at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi ).
To change all this would require a huge amount of money, maybe thousands of crores of rupees. Moreover, the focus of our political leaders, of all parties, is not improvement in education, but how to win the next elections, which is done by polarising society, and inciting caste and communal hatred. No one is seriously interested in improving the educational system in India.
So which world is Kapil Sibal living in ?
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