The Educated & The Really Educated
Today is Karnataka Rajyothsava, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of Karnataka as a State within the Indian Union. As such, it is a school holiday and our servant lady who comes by every day to wash clothes, vessels, and sweep and mop the floor brought along her young daughter, who played with our dog Dino and generally sat around while her mother worked.
While talking to this little girl, I got to know a little bit about the state of her education. She's apparently in the third grade and the medium of instruction in her school is Kannada, since she goes to a public-aided school. In Karnataka, the law requires that all schools that receive government money compulsarily teach in Kannada until at least the fifth grade, from which point onwards they may begin to teach in English, if they have the facilities. Consequently, this curious girl, who lingered around me and my laptop as I surfed thru CNN and The New York Times web pages, was unable to read any of the articles that I could open. On speaking to her, she told me that she knew a little bit of English to read and write, but not much.
Compare this to middle class and upper middle class children like myself who could afford to go to private schools and learnt to read and speak English by the first grade. Kids in the third and fourth grade in my neighborhood, also belonging to the middle class, roll around on their bicycles on the street in front of my house, pausing to pet Dino when I walk by them, talking to me and among themselves entirely in English, with a knowledge of grammar and diction that would put three-fourths of West Philadelphia to shame.
This is the state of education in India. The New York Times and the rest of the international media heaps laurels on the state of India's English-educated workforce, but the sad reality is that it often does not extend below the middle class. While it is encouraging that this girl is going to school and her parents realize the value of educating their children and also that she will be helped by caste-based quotas when she enrolls for college (although it is my fervent belief that quotas should be based on income, not caste, in which case this girl would still benefit), her knowledge of English will prove crucial in her eventual fight to obtain a good job in the competitive global marketplace that is today's working world.
The linguistic extremists in India have placed enough pressure on the government to ensure that all government-aided schools are taught only in Kannada medium, in their dogmatic efforts to "preserve" the local language, they are potentially compromising on these poor students' chances of upliftment in society. While the children can certainly learn English later on, it has been decisively proven that children pick up things best at an early age. The current state government has promised that English will be a mandatory class among other Kannada medium classes from the first grade onwards from this academic year. I wonder what the quality of those classes are, however.
And let's keep in mind, this is in Bangalore, India's silicon plateau. One can imagine the state of public education in the socially backward and uneducated rural hinterland of North India, especially in places like the Cow Belt.
Cow Belt = "The expanse of land stretching more or less horizontally across the `chest’ of India, below the northernmost states of Jammu and Kashmir, yet above the peninsular states such as Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, is often referred to as the `Cow Belt’. This isn’t just a mere reference to the fact that much of this area is dominated by agriculture (and bullocks, not tractors, are often the means to help plough fields). This has loads of other connotations. The fact, for instance, that it’s a pretty backward region, where issues that India would much rather sweep under the carpet, like poverty, illiteracy, caste discrimination, and the subjugation of women are more the rule than the exception. The people of the Cow Belt (of which Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest states) are said to know only one type of culture--agriculture."
While talking to this little girl, I got to know a little bit about the state of her education. She's apparently in the third grade and the medium of instruction in her school is Kannada, since she goes to a public-aided school. In Karnataka, the law requires that all schools that receive government money compulsarily teach in Kannada until at least the fifth grade, from which point onwards they may begin to teach in English, if they have the facilities. Consequently, this curious girl, who lingered around me and my laptop as I surfed thru CNN and The New York Times web pages, was unable to read any of the articles that I could open. On speaking to her, she told me that she knew a little bit of English to read and write, but not much.
Compare this to middle class and upper middle class children like myself who could afford to go to private schools and learnt to read and speak English by the first grade. Kids in the third and fourth grade in my neighborhood, also belonging to the middle class, roll around on their bicycles on the street in front of my house, pausing to pet Dino when I walk by them, talking to me and among themselves entirely in English, with a knowledge of grammar and diction that would put three-fourths of West Philadelphia to shame.
This is the state of education in India. The New York Times and the rest of the international media heaps laurels on the state of India's English-educated workforce, but the sad reality is that it often does not extend below the middle class. While it is encouraging that this girl is going to school and her parents realize the value of educating their children and also that she will be helped by caste-based quotas when she enrolls for college (although it is my fervent belief that quotas should be based on income, not caste, in which case this girl would still benefit), her knowledge of English will prove crucial in her eventual fight to obtain a good job in the competitive global marketplace that is today's working world.
The linguistic extremists in India have placed enough pressure on the government to ensure that all government-aided schools are taught only in Kannada medium, in their dogmatic efforts to "preserve" the local language, they are potentially compromising on these poor students' chances of upliftment in society. While the children can certainly learn English later on, it has been decisively proven that children pick up things best at an early age. The current state government has promised that English will be a mandatory class among other Kannada medium classes from the first grade onwards from this academic year. I wonder what the quality of those classes are, however.
And let's keep in mind, this is in Bangalore, India's silicon plateau. One can imagine the state of public education in the socially backward and uneducated rural hinterland of North India, especially in places like the Cow Belt.
Cow Belt = "The expanse of land stretching more or less horizontally across the `chest’ of India, below the northernmost states of Jammu and Kashmir, yet above the peninsular states such as Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, is often referred to as the `Cow Belt’. This isn’t just a mere reference to the fact that much of this area is dominated by agriculture (and bullocks, not tractors, are often the means to help plough fields). This has loads of other connotations. The fact, for instance, that it’s a pretty backward region, where issues that India would much rather sweep under the carpet, like poverty, illiteracy, caste discrimination, and the subjugation of women are more the rule than the exception. The people of the Cow Belt (of which Uttar Pradesh is one of the largest states) are said to know only one type of culture--agriculture."
posted by Vivek at 12:20 AM
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