This is how

This is how other nations build themselves, block by block, alphabet by alphabet. In 1868, as part of its restoration, the government of Japan set up an education committee, forming several sub-groups to examine how students were educated in different parts of the world. On returning, they created a 200-year education plan for Japan and within the next 40 years, Japan became the first Asian country to become 100 per cent literate. Related links The cutting edge Future in the making Let talent blossom Not by books alone Thinking beyond classrooms A fine balance No chalk and talk How to bring back dropouts Expansion with access Private is not a dirty word Learning while earning Back to the futureIn China, more recently, after the chaos of the cultural revolution, Deng Xiaoping re-introduced the university system. There was a large-scale upgrade of colleges to universities, campuses were built in a frenzied fashion, universities were merged and enrolment was expanded on a mass scale. The result: if in 1977, only one in 32 students could enter university, by 2003, the number increased to 13.2 per cent.Not to say that large numbers of those graduates are not now unemployed, but the lesson is that education doesn"t need short-term solutions or quick fix announcements. It doesn"t need shifting goalposts and lowered standards. It needs a constant commitment to young people and a belief in the future. As Sam Pitroda, who heads the soon-to-be-disbanded National Knowledge Commission says, education models the world-over are 200 years old. We have to now plan for the university and school of 2050. Much of this long-term thinking is possible in theory by the government, which at Rs 44,528 crore a year remains the biggest spender in the field, but which in practice gets bogged down by petty politics. But as the following pages show, a handful of individuals can also usher change..preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;}At the heart of the transformation has to be the drive to make every child a productive youngster. And to resolve the paradox of what economist A.K. Shivakumar points out is the children of rich going to public universities and the children of poor going to private money-squeezing institutes. Many of these have become second-rate institutes that turn out second-rate students, condemning the peripheral to further periphery. Listen, for instance, to what one Gargi College student wrote to NCERT Director Krishna Kumar in a B.Ed class he was taking: When you teach me, I become something else. Why should 20 crore children who drop out of school between the ages of six and 14 be denied that privilege? Why should every child not be like 17-year-old Swapna Patnaik from East Singhbhum, who studied in a free school, Prem Jyoti Prangan, set up with help from TISCO in Jamshedpur, and got 83 per cent in her Class X boards? Why should Ranjit Kumar Bahri, son of a 42-year-old autorickshaw driver, not be able to learn a computer course at Delhi"s Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and get at least a clerical job that pays him Rs 10,000 a month?Even as we struggle with issues of basic education"only 11 per cent of school leavers actually make it to college"new ways of thinking are sweeping the cobwebs away. The new HRD Minister, Kapil Sibal, seems an enthusiastic, though somewhat confusing proponent of several simultaneous changes, but it is clear that the time for talk has ended. Already enough has been done on reforming the pedagogy and practice of education. Some are just going ahead with the change, regardless. Report card blues There is a 40 per cent shortage of trained faculty in higher education institutions in India. In 2007, half of the children in government schools couldn"t read or write even after attending school for four-five years. India has the third highest number of students in the higher education sector after China and the US. The country earns Rs 2,000 cr every year from 50,000 foreign students who come here for studies. Indian universities charge about $10,000 for a course in business management whereas in the US it would cost $80,000. 9.19 per cent of rural India"s primaryto higher secondary schools had a single classroom in 2007-08.Take former Thermax chairperson Anu Aga, who has adopted two municipal schools in Pune and converted them to English medium. Or another similarly inclined philanthropic individual Rohini Nilekani, who has put her money into the Public Health Foundation of India which runs public health courses at three new, currently rented, campuses in Gurgaon, Gandhinagar and Hyderabad, in order to fill the yawning gap in professionals in this area.At both the high and low ends of the technological spectrum, other individuals have created empires of the mind. Take Vijay Thadani and Rajendra Pawar"s NIIT.With an initial investment of Rs 1 crore, of which Rs 15 lakh were from their personal savings, they set up a software-producing giant on the McDonald"s franchise model. At the other end, take an institution such as the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research which was set up by the formidable chemist CNR Rao in 1989 at a cost of Rs 4 crore to promote high-end scientific research and training. Sometimes, individuals have simply exercised their right to autonomy as Narendra Jadhav did as vice-chancellor of the University of Pune, leaving it with a deficit of Rs 156 crore but proud of spending every rupee for the right cause.These are men and women who have not been defeated by red tape, just as the government should not be daunted by the enormity of its task. As our guest columnists have written, practically everything is a priority, whether it is school education, vocational education or higher education. The inept regulatory authorities at various levels, especially in professional education, have resulted in privatisation by stealth, as Deepak Nayyar calls it. The new minister has smartly laid out the goals of education reform: access to education at all levels, which is far behind the global average; equity, which for both SCST and certain minorities is even below the poor national average; and quality, which is evident only in a few centres of excellence.Yes, there are questions to be debated. Should India be relegated to a blue-collar S&T nation, as scientist Roddam Narasimha rues, or should it try to revive the drive to do pure science, as Jawaharlal Nehru had envisaged? Should corporates fund institutions without waiting for the government to accord its approval, finding ways to beat the system by offering diplomas or ensuring state university accreditation or should they wait till the regulatory mechanism is perfect? Should we bask in the glory of Barack Obama telling American schoolchildren to learn from India ("The Chinese, the Indians, they"re coming at us, and they"re coming at us hard, and they"re hungry, and they"re really buckling down") or try putting each child into a classroom, out of factories, tea stalls and off the streets?As Manish Sabharwal, of TeamLease Services, which has built its equity by re-training and then employing vanilla graduates for specific jobs in the service sector, says there is no shortage of ideas. They"re falling off the table, he says, and progress lies in reducing the transmission losses between theory and practice. It"s a question of wanting to implement the ideas. As the individuals and institutions singled out here show, sometimes it"s best to start small.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Jul 23, 2009--- ENDS ---

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