article from India

From time to time friends involved in teaching in India send me information that is helpful. The following is from one such article:

Larger Socio-cultural ethos:

* We live in a society where people are born unequal. Women have the lowest status – lower than animals. Your status starts to change once your children get married (old age is revered). Equality of all is in our constitution, but not seen in practice – because it’s not part of our cultural belief.
* Children with learning difficulties/ special needs – seen as the result of karma, seen as a burden on society. (Although a lot of times also people may simply not know how to help children with special needs – negative attitude may develop as a result of helplessness/ as a defense mechanism)
* Priority given to gifted students, older students (vs. pre-primary), richer students
* Low status of children in Indian society,
* the low status of women and consequently teachers who are predominantly female.
* Teaching is not seen as a calling; the teaching profession is usually considered a last resort – few youngsters choose teaching as a profession of choice.
* According to Prof. Krishna Kumar, one of the greatest problems plaguing Indian education is the fact that Indians do not see children as their collective responsibility: “a lot of people perceive education as a private concern, in the sense that they worry about their own children but don’t feel hurt or pained when they see others’ children exploited or treated badly. In such a social ethos, any government will have difficulty in pushing radical educational reforms.”1
* People do not feel angry about the injustice of our society and our education system, and thus little real attention is given to improving education for the poor. sees poverty as ordained by karma and does not feel personal responsibility for transforming injustice.
* The dominant Hindu worldview sees worldly reality as maya and sees glaring economic and social inequalities as merely part of the fleeting worldly reality which must be accepted rather than fought against.
* The hierarchical worldview prevailing in our society leads far too many people to believe that only the so-called bright or smart children matter and deserve education of the best quality.
* Hierarchical social relations: If all my life I have been told what to do – then I can never exhibit independent thinking or learning. I will always wait for my boss, my teacher, my parent or some one to give me instructions on what to do.
* Promoting a culture of independent thinking requires a deep faith in and commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals, egalitarian patterns of relations, democratic ways of solving problems, willingness to share power with those that are 'lower'; the human capability to reason, the precious value and innate capabilities of every child,. Many of these things may be different from the mindset teachers and parents imbibe from society.
* Some ethnographic and sociological analyses of Indian classrooms have identified several worldview elements that strongly influence educational practice in India (eg. Gupta, 2006; Sarangapani, 2003; Clarke, 2003; Clarke; 2001; Kakar, 1978). Some of these are:
o a collectivist notion of self,
o a duty-based code of living with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for members,
o the hierarchical organization of social structures, (à hierarchical relationship between teacher and student, ) and
o holism as a shared worldview that encourages openness to regulation (Clarke 2001). For example, these contribute to the
o students’ openness to direct regulation by teachers,
o teachers’ acceptance of regulation in their practice both by the prescribed syllabus and by school authorities.
o cultural assumptions such as collective decision-making, the hierarchical view of society, the assumption that the teacher has all authority and command over “valid” knowledge, prevented the teachers from fully appropriating the concept of going down to the child’s level,
* For example, the organization Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh found that in order to train teachers to adopt a more learner-centred interactive approach to social science teaching, it was necessary to first engage with teachers’ own assumptions, beliefs and attitudes on social issues such as gender, caste, social hierarchies, development, religion, tribal culture and national identities (Batra 2008). Teachers were found to be steeped in the conditioned notions on these questions, such as the view that social hierarchies are divinely ordained or that social inequality results from karma, which would hinder them from promoting critical discussions on these issues in their own social science classrooms.
* Similarly, in Science teaching, teachers’ own astrological or religious beliefs about natural phenomena may affect the extent to which they promote a questioning stance among students towards scientific phenomena.