Back from India

I haven't written for a while because Gypsy, Lynell, and I were traveling to schools in India, along with the WCS/India coordinator, Deepak Pissurlenker. We have been to India often and have warm relationships with many Christian teachers.

The following is from and Indian friend and educator:

Although the noble ideal of 'education for all' is safeguarded by the Constitution and more Indians than ever before now have access to educational resources, the educational inequity that young people in India face today is at its harshest.

· Out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.
· For a country like India, where almost 40% of the population is under 15 years of age, these trends are troubling, and can prove disastrous over the long-term if they are left unchecked.

· Imagine the impact that we can make in the region, and the world, if every educated Indian would give a couple of years of their lives towards a national cause….says Rakesh Mani is a 2009 Teach for India fellow, working with low-income schools in Mumbai.

· Modelled on the successful Teach for America program, TFI places the country's most outstanding college graduates and young professionals as teachers in India's low-income schools for two years in order to expand the educational opportunities available to thousands of underprivileged children.

It is an unfortunate fact that despite India’s rapid economic ascent and her emergence on the global stage, millions of Indian citizens are still left out of the sun.


Without assured access to quality educational instruction, millions of children from low-income urban communities are often left illiterate, unable to break the cycle of poverty, find employment and participate in the opportunities that are shaping India’s tomorrow. Thanks to the twists of the Ovarian Lottery, India’s economically backward classes drop out of the race before they can even start.

Education in India has a history stretching back to the ancient urban centres of learning at Taxila and Nalanda. With the establishment of the British Raj, western education became ingrained into Indian society. Now in the modern Republic of India, education falls under the control of both the central government and the states, with various articles of the Indian constitution providing for education as a fundamental right of every citizen.

Yet although the noble ideal of 'education for all' is safeguarded by the Constitution and more Indians than ever before now have access to educational resources, the educational inequity that young people in India face today is at its harshest.



Sixty years on, groups of disadvantaged children --orphans, child-labourers, street children and victims of riots and natural disasters -- still do not have immediate access to schools. And when they do manage to attend school, they are channelled into the country’s bottom rung low-income private or municipal schools. This inequity is apparent in the numbers, and calls for grave reflection:



The average literacy rate hovers around 60% in India (for women, the number is much lower)

World Bank statistics show that fewer than 40% of adolescents in India attend secondary school.



According to a recent study, 15 out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.