India with a 1.1bn population and a student strength of about 300 mn (age 6-18) makes it the largest education setting in the world. We have by design, two different systems, one a public education system for about 200 mn underprivileged children and two a private system for about 100 mn privileged children.Intuitively, one can infer that the private education system had been responsible for making India join the $1 trillion GDP league. Imagine the potential existing in the public education system or more precisely, the potential of the 200mn children, which is yet to be unleashed.
There is plenty of literature available on the plight of the public education system. The subject of education has been analyzed using the glasses of almost every existing science like politics, sociology, philosophy, economics or management. However, little has been internalized by the system, and hardly any radical changes have been brought about in ensuring a rather simplistic goal of “every child in school and learning well”.
Without going into the merits or demerits of public service delivery of education, it would be interesting to question some of the basic tenets of the public education system and how does it lead to complicating the whole system.
Why does a child needs to learn?
A child needs to learn to be part of the society around her. She has to learn to be able to make informed decisions, rational judgments and sustain herself independently. Learning is not only confined to written text or past knowledge but learning is like fathoming the depths of the unknown. Learning is social interactions, gathering information from each other, and developing simple algorithms of sustaining everyday life. These are simple logics around which the complicated concepts of education are knitted.
Why does a child need a structured environment to learn?
If above is the logic to learn then an environment is required around the child which serves as a training ground for her to learn before she enters the larger and a more complicated world. A school is a miniature form of the society for the child where she does her social interactions, develops skills to make rational judgments and understand basic tenets of everyday life. The presence of adults (or teachers) in this world is to only facilitate their actions and the process of learning – nothing else!
Why is there a need of a trained system to deliver such a service?
Unfortunately, there is not enough motivation in the society to let such environments emerge on their own . Therefore public education systems are set-up to service the need. The system needs a series of skills to operate. It needs educators to decide the content of learning; it needs teachers to deliver/facilitate that content; it needs managers to coordinate the actions of stakeholders; it needs trainers to train the educators, teachers, managers; it needs evaluators to judge the performance of the system; and it needs custodians to preserve the system.
Why has the system become so complicated?
The combination of all of the above creates an organization which does not only have individual preferences and judgments, but also have different skills to influence each other, different behavioral patterns ranging from individual interests to public interests, different perception of goals to be achieved and different styles of operating. When all this operate in tandem, the system gets stretched in all directions leading to inefficiency and ineffectiveness in training, management, delivery, evaluation and all operations contributing to the system.
Like minded people in the system evolve a pattern of behaviour which becomes a norm of that group. For example, the academicians are always at loggerheads with the implementers or the hierarchy in the system always takes the teacher to the receiving end for all problems related to education. Rarely does policy gets questioned, or managers, trainers, content developers are brought to trial leading to complications which are little understood at the level of unions or teacher themselves. Similarly, social excuses related to children and their guardians are stereotyped and generalized to justify poor delivery. Similar pattern of behaviour can be seen in each of the groups at different levels in the organization. Over a period of time, biases and prejudices take the form of informal constraints which get institutionalized.
The complication escalate to an extent that the each stakeholder’s pay-offs also change significantly and move away from the social pay-off of the “child learning”. Each stakeholder or groups to be precise, develop pay-offs which are confined to themselves and all start attempting to optimize their personal returns.
Is there a way out?
The system has become too complicated to untangle and start afresh. However, breaking a norm is possible, changing the behaviour is possible, changing the structure is possible and strategically positioning the “learning of the child” as the centre point for all actions is possible.
Attempt has to be made to unlearn the processes which have not delivered in the past. Biases have to be overcome by opening channels of healthy communication. Restructuring to be done to target the real beneficiaries and not the free riders who have the capacity to be part of the private system. And reposition the objectives at all levels to focus on “learning” than anything else.
In this era of high aspirations, accessibility to alternatives and willingness to change, if the current education system does not respond to the changing demands, the collective power of the people may easily opt for alternative mechanisms and leave the present system to die its natural death.
There is plenty of literature available on the plight of the public education system. The subject of education has been analyzed using the glasses of almost every existing science like politics, sociology, philosophy, economics or management. However, little has been internalized by the system, and hardly any radical changes have been brought about in ensuring a rather simplistic goal of “every child in school and learning well”.
Without going into the merits or demerits of public service delivery of education, it would be interesting to question some of the basic tenets of the public education system and how does it lead to complicating the whole system.
Why does a child needs to learn?
A child needs to learn to be part of the society around her. She has to learn to be able to make informed decisions, rational judgments and sustain herself independently. Learning is not only confined to written text or past knowledge but learning is like fathoming the depths of the unknown. Learning is social interactions, gathering information from each other, and developing simple algorithms of sustaining everyday life. These are simple logics around which the complicated concepts of education are knitted.
Why does a child need a structured environment to learn?
If above is the logic to learn then an environment is required around the child which serves as a training ground for her to learn before she enters the larger and a more complicated world. A school is a miniature form of the society for the child where she does her social interactions, develops skills to make rational judgments and understand basic tenets of everyday life. The presence of adults (or teachers) in this world is to only facilitate their actions and the process of learning – nothing else!
Why is there a need of a trained system to deliver such a service?
Unfortunately, there is not enough motivation in the society to let such environments emerge on their own . Therefore public education systems are set-up to service the need. The system needs a series of skills to operate. It needs educators to decide the content of learning; it needs teachers to deliver/facilitate that content; it needs managers to coordinate the actions of stakeholders; it needs trainers to train the educators, teachers, managers; it needs evaluators to judge the performance of the system; and it needs custodians to preserve the system.
Why has the system become so complicated?
The combination of all of the above creates an organization which does not only have individual preferences and judgments, but also have different skills to influence each other, different behavioral patterns ranging from individual interests to public interests, different perception of goals to be achieved and different styles of operating. When all this operate in tandem, the system gets stretched in all directions leading to inefficiency and ineffectiveness in training, management, delivery, evaluation and all operations contributing to the system.
Like minded people in the system evolve a pattern of behaviour which becomes a norm of that group. For example, the academicians are always at loggerheads with the implementers or the hierarchy in the system always takes the teacher to the receiving end for all problems related to education. Rarely does policy gets questioned, or managers, trainers, content developers are brought to trial leading to complications which are little understood at the level of unions or teacher themselves. Similarly, social excuses related to children and their guardians are stereotyped and generalized to justify poor delivery. Similar pattern of behaviour can be seen in each of the groups at different levels in the organization. Over a period of time, biases and prejudices take the form of informal constraints which get institutionalized.
The complication escalate to an extent that the each stakeholder’s pay-offs also change significantly and move away from the social pay-off of the “child learning”. Each stakeholder or groups to be precise, develop pay-offs which are confined to themselves and all start attempting to optimize their personal returns.
Is there a way out?
The system has become too complicated to untangle and start afresh. However, breaking a norm is possible, changing the behaviour is possible, changing the structure is possible and strategically positioning the “learning of the child” as the centre point for all actions is possible.
Attempt has to be made to unlearn the processes which have not delivered in the past. Biases have to be overcome by opening channels of healthy communication. Restructuring to be done to target the real beneficiaries and not the free riders who have the capacity to be part of the private system. And reposition the objectives at all levels to focus on “learning” than anything else.
In this era of high aspirations, accessibility to alternatives and willingness to change, if the current education system does not respond to the changing demands, the collective power of the people may easily opt for alternative mechanisms and leave the present system to die its natural death.
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