Education News

Sex education furore

In Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous (175 million) state, which according to the National Aids Control Society (NACO) has reported 1,750 cases of AIDS and 5,000 new cases of HIV in the past 18 months, teachers of the state-run UP Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (state examination board) have taken it upon themselves to censor sex education from textbooks prescribed for class IX and XI students.

The queerest manifestation of this protest was witnessed on July 21, when teachers in 70 districts made a bonfire of the prescribed texts. Far from being pulled up for indiscipline or being prosecuted, the agitating teachers complaining about "sanskritik pradushan" (cultural pollution), had the full support of the newly constituted Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly (402 MLAs in the lower house, 108 in the upper house) cutting across party lines.

The assembly which was in its budget session, witnessed uproarious scenes when the texts were introduced in the first week of July. Following full-throated cries of "Yon shiksha hai hai" (‘Down with sex education’), Swami Prasad Maurya, leader of the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party in the legislative assembly promised that "all objectionable references in the lesson will be removed. If necessary we shall scrap the lesson altogether". This promise was followed by an order dated July 10, from the state government’s secondary education department to withdraw the texts at once.

Saner voices in the teachers’ community and beyond express bafflement, for the impugned texts have been part of the curriculum for over one year. Taught under the aegis of an Adolescent Education Programme (AEP), this was prescribed as a lesson contained in a primer on adolescent health issues and HIV/AIDS, developed in conjunction with Unicef. In the past academic year AEP was taught in 7,028 of the state’s 12,316 UP board affiliated schools.

The row erupted because this year onwards the lesson was to become compulsory teaching in all the 12,316 state board affiliated schools. Couched in stern moralistic language, the contents of the 12 page primer included in a 300-page social science text were scheduled to be taught across 16 teaching sessions to class IX and XI students through the academic year.

Little wonder Prem Chandra Yadav, principal of a Lucknow school and nodal officer for AEP, describes the furore over so-called sex education as "senseless opposition". "Dealing with adolescent curiosities that come with physical changes cannot be obscene. If we don’t provide students with this information, they will turn to uninformed sources. Opposition to AEP is being led by teachers who regard teaching this subject an additional burden. They have deliberately made a big deal of some flip charts and teaching aids meant for teachers. This material was never meant to be shown to students," says Yadav.

Meanwhile following the huge furore, the state government ordered a four-day review of the texts beginning July 25. The initial two days of the review have resulted in experts drawn from the state’s education department, medical and teaching communities protesting the mention of prostitutes and condoms.

Lalita Pradeep, principal of Lucknow’s District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) and a member of the review committee, believes that the controversy will clear the air and result in the redesign of a more appropriate AEP. "We are all in agreement that children must be educated. But the prescribed texts have been hastily prepared. This is a first of its kind review which will impart greater scientific temper to the lesson. We should make sure the AEP doesn’t scare children," she says.

However the review and redesign of AEP has to be completed quickly. An Action Aid (an international anti-poverty agency active in 24 Indian states) study titled Scenario of HIV Vulnerability and Prevalence in Uttar Pradesh, 2006 indicates that in a sample size of 17,516 government school students, 30 percent believe that HIV infected students should be kept in isolation while 78 percent opine that HIV positive children should not be allowed to enter schools at all — reflecting abysmal understanding of the affiliction.

It’s to counter such ignorance, irrational fear and to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS in India’s most populous state, that the AEP — in whatever form — needs to be urgently introduced.

Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)

Madrassa regulation proposal

The Pakistan army’s ‘Operation Silence’, conducted over several days in mid July on Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (mosque) complex to flush out Islamic militants, has prompted a focus on madrassa (Muslim religious school) education in New Delhi. According to informed sources, the Union HRD ministry is drafting legislation to register, finance and regulate an estimated 1 million madrassa schools across the country. Earlier this April, the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI) submitted a 40-page report to the HRD ministry in which it recommended a Madrassa Board modelled on the lines of the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), with a corpus of Rs.500 crore to fund infrastructure facilities such as modern laboratories, libraries etc and enable madrassas to pay teachers on a par with government school teachers.

"The silent majority of Muslims in this country are for empowerment, mainstreaming and integration, which can only happen through provision of modern secular education. Even a large number of clerics support community development through education. It’s only after extensive deliberations within the Muslim community, that we have suggested formation of a board with powers of certification equivalent to CBSE. It is now up to the government to action our proposal," says Justice (Retd) M.S.A. Siddiqui, a former judge of the Delhi high court and chairman of the commission.

The NCMEI recommendation that investment in education is the best bulwark against the rising tide of Islamic militancy in the subcontinent, is significant because the Justice Sachar Committee which submitted its sensational report to the prime minister in November last year highlighting the socio-economic deprivation of India’s 120 million strong Muslim community, also advocated a focus on minority education, particularly upgrading of madrassas. Now the onus is on the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre to act on the recommendations of the two committees, particularly since the party is a self-proclaimed champion of the Muslim minority community

However the party will have to ready itself for a storm of protest if it does so because it’s no secret that the mullahs and clerics running madrassas have a substantial vested interest in keeping these institutions beyond any regulation. Every year they pack their bags during the Ramazan/Bakrid season with photographs of deprived Muslim children in tatters, and take off for Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Oman and Saudi Arabia to collect zakat (alms/donations). Through this exercise they raise an estimated Rs.200 crore annually, of which they retain as much as 40 percent or Rs.80 crore for their personal use. Moreover in the cause of Islam and armed with the power to issue fatwas, they lord it over illiterate Muslims, transforming them into obedient vote banks.

Expectedly, the community’s religious leaders and madrassa managements have stipulated a powerless board without government interference, optional affiliation, no power to interfere in religious curriculums and bereft of authority to audit accounts. "There is increasing awareness within the Muslim masses that it is in their interest to unreservedly embrace modern secular education. It’s a myth that we will lose our identity if we introduce science and maths in the madrassas. I have survived and succeeded because of modern education and I continue to be a good Muslim," says Anjum Masood, a filmmaker.

In a related development, the Delhi-based Jamia Millia Islamia University has recently introduced a Masters programme in ‘Social Exclusion and Inclusive Growth’ to address the problem of social exclusion in minority communities. "This is a first of its kind study programme in India and we are sure it will create a pool of experts with greater knowledge of social exclusion and its economic consequences," says Mohammed Mujitaba Khan, director of the K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minority Studies at Jamia Millia.

Since independence the need for the Muslim community to look inwards to discourage religious extremism and social exclusion within Indian society has never been felt as badly as now in the wake of the failed Glasgow bombings, which shattered the myth of Indian Muslims being immune to extremist propaganda. The NCMEI report is a welcome step in that direction.

Autar Nehru (New Delhi)

Prank or terrorism?

On July 16, three sutli (faux) bombs timed with incense sticks erupted within a time span of five minutes in Mumbai’s Kapol Bank School (KBS), a few seconds after the school’s morning prayer session at which the entire enrollment of 1,200 students was present. While the bombs made of fire crackers were not powerful and nobody was injured, the school management describes the explosion as a dangerous prank which could have triggered a stampede. Run by the Adarsh Education Society, KBS is an English medium, co-educational institution affiliated with the Maharashtra state secondary school certificate examinations board.

The police who appeared at the school within 15 minutes refused to comment on the matter. But principal Reshma Hegde says she has enough evidence to indicate that a gang of three-four boys from classes VIII and IX of KBS were behind the explosions. Fortunately the school’s teachers remained calm and forestalled a stampede, getting children to file out of the prayer session in an orderly manner.

Given that the city has been on edge with the trial of over 100 alleged terrorists including film star Sanjay Dutt nearing completion, the KBS management has refused to dismiss the explosions as a schoolboys’ prank. An investigative meeting was held the following day with all students of class VIII-IX and their teachers, to which a group of child psychologists was also invited. While it was not immediately clear to the public and the press whether the guilty students have been identified, Jiten Modi, chairman of the Adarsh Education Society informed the press that parents of five male students believed to be behind the explosions were summoned to the school.

However principal Hegde ruled out rustication of the boys and recommended counselling instead, blaming the culture of violence propagated by television and movies for the incident. "The school conducts value education classes regularly but the boys watch crime movies on cable television," she added. "Today the boys used firecrackers to make the bombs. Tomorrow, God forbid they could graduate to using deadly materials."

While the KBS prank explosions made banner headlines in the Mumbai media, psychologists and counsellors tend to take a more lenient view of the episode. "This is not an isolated case," says leading Mumbai psychiatrist Dr. Harish Shetty. "I know of about eight similar cases which have occurred over the past year or so, though they haven’t attracted public notice. The appropriate response to such incidents should be the appointment of professional counsellors in schools."

A difficult proposition in a society in which the national teacher-pupil ratio is 1:60, according to World Bank data.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Curious child centrism

The imbroglio over ‘derecognition’ of Karnataka’s 2,215 private primary schools, which committed the cardinal sin of teaching in the English instead of Kannada medium in which they were licensed to teach, is becoming more complicated with every passing day.

Behind the bitter battle between government and private school managements which has put the education of over 300,000 children aged between five and 12 years at risk, is a murky mix of language chauvinism and commercial calculation. Although even the poorest households aspire to enroll their children in English-medium schools, the state’s Janata Dal (S)-BJP government and education minister Basavaraj Horatti in particular, are hell-bent upon thrusting Kannada medium education down the throats of children not only in government primaries but in private schools as well. According to knowledgeable educationists, huge Kannada textbooks printing contracts are at stake.

The genesis of this language impasse can be traced back to 1994 when the then JD (S) government following a populist surge of sub-nationalism, made it mandatory for all new state board affiliated primaries to teach either in Kannada or the mother tongue from classes I-V. The teaching of English even as a secondary language was prohibited in classes I-V. Only from the start of the current academic year (2007-08) following intense public pressure, has teaching of English as a second language in primary school been permitted.

Yet with parents in all income groups demanding English medium education for their children, the managements of privately promoted primaries were driven to signing forms and affidavits agreeing to abide by the official medium of instruction policy, while actually teaching in the English medium. This arrangement suited Karnataka’s notoriously bribe-hungry educrats and school inspectors admirably. The number of English medium private primaries grew from 2,500 in 1990 to an estimated 7,500 currently.

However following the defeat of the Congress government in the state assembly in 2006, a coalition government led by the rural-base Janata Dal (S) was once again sworn into office. Its education minister Horatti discovered that over 2,000 schools were in violation of the 1994 school language policy. He passed orders insisting that all primaries started post 1994 revert to Kannada or the mother tongue as medium of instruction, or face immediate derecognition and closure.

Inevitably, private school managements grouped under the umbrella of KUSMA (Karnataka Unaided School Managements Association) filed a writ petition in the Karnataka high court challenging Horatti’s diktat. The legal battle between the Karnataka state government and KUSMA reached a climax on June 25 this year when the Karnataka high court issued a complex order directing private schools to partially fall in line. The two-judge division bench headed by Chief Justice Cyriac Joseph ordered the erring schools to file affidavits undertaking they would teach newly admitted children in class I in Kannada or the mother tongue as per the terms of their licences, but allowed them to continue teaching classes II-V students in the English medium. The court also set a deadline of July 18 for all schools in breach of their licence agreement to file affidavits in court stating that they would abide by the court order.

Although KUSMA members met and passed a six-point resolution on June 29, calling upon member schools to comply with the high court judgement on or before July 16, there is no closure on the issue. "While rich children who study in CISCE and CBSE schools which don’t fall within purview of the order receive English medium education, lower-middle class students in state board affiliated schools are compelled to study in the Kannada medium, although their parents are in favour of English. This is discriminatory and we have moved the Supreme Court against the state government’s language policy," says G.S. Sharma, founder-president of KUSMA.

According to Sharma, parental choice rather than government diktat should decide the type of education children receive. "India is a signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, which gives parents the right to choose the type of education for their children. Our member schools had to switch to English medium education under parental pressure, and our prime responsibility is towards fee paying parents," adds Sharma.

Ironically the right of parents to choose the medium of instruction for their children was upheld by the Madras high court in Association of English Medium Schools vs. State of Tamil Nadu (1999) when it quashed a similar state government order making Tamil the compulsory medium of instruction in all schools in the state up to class V. But this judgement has been ignored by the Karnataka state government.

The import of the Supreme Court’s judgements in TMA Pai Foundation (2002) and P.A. Inamdar vs. Government of Maha-rashtra (2005) cases which upheld the fundamental right of every citizen "to establish and administer education institutions of their choice," has also been ignored by the state government. Legal opinion on whether these full bench Supreme Court judgements ipso facto nullify the state government’s 1994 order is divided. "This is a matter of breach of contract while the TMA Pai Foundation Case judgement pertains to establishment of new education institutions. These are different issues and should be dealt with separately. If these primary schools want to teach in English they should challenge the state’s language policy in court. This is what we have done and our appeal is pending in the Supreme Court," says R. Mohan, KUSMA’s advocate.

In all this confusion with legal writs flying thick and fast and appeals being filed in the courts by school managements and the state government, the interests of Karnataka’s children — especially children of the poor — seem to have fallen by the wayside. As they always have been.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

Tight party grip

A huge row has erupted in Kolkata’s academia following the announcement of West Bengal higher education minister Sudarshan Roychowdhury that the state’s Left Front government has vetoed a proposal to grant autonomy to the city’s showpiece Presidency College (estb. 1817). Speaking in the state legislative assembly on July 9, Roychowdhury blandly informed the house that "Presidency remains within the Calcutta University’s affiliating system."

The outcome of this veto by the Communist Party (Marxist)-led state government is that despite this 190-year college being the most respected and experienced institution of higher education in West Bengal, it cannot introduce a new study programme or change the academic content of an approved programme without the say-so of Calcutta University. Nor does it have the power to amend its fees structure. Cocking a snook at the University Grants Commission under whose guidelines Presidency is eminently qualified for autonomy, Roychowdhury informed the legislative assembly: "We want to create our own model of autonomy for state-controlled colleges."

In Kolkata’s academic circles, the Left Front government’s credibility on this issue is rock bottom because it has chosen to hide behind the fig leaf of the report of a carefully packed committee. In May 2006, a group of senior commissars at CPM headquarters in Alimuddin street, Kolkata which dictates state policy on education, had reportedly told the government to constitute an "expert committee to examine all the concerned issues for up-gradation of standards of Presidency College, Kolkata". The seven nominated ‘experts’ were Justice Chittatosh Mookherjee, Prof. Ashesh Prasad Mitra, Prof. Barun De, Dr. Bimal Jalan, Prof. Bhabatosh Dutta, Prof. Pradip Narayan Ghosh and Prof. Subimal Sen, all Presidency alumni.

Critics were quick to point out that though the nominated members were eminent educationists in their own right, they were out of touch with current trends and ground realities in education, and committed leftists. Moreover according to insider sources, because of clashing dates the full committee rarely met. Therefore the expert committee’s report was actually drafted by a three member sub-committee chaired by Prof. Barun De, a die-hard CPM supporter.

Interestingly, this is the third committee set up by the Left Front government, which has been ruling West Bengal since 1977, to specifically look into the case for granting autonomy to Presidency College. The first one was constituted in 1981 and the second in 1991. Both these committee reports were shelved because their recommendations did not suit the requirements of Alimuddin Street. This time after packing the committee with party sympathisers, its report which endorses the CPM politburo’s point of view in toto, has been accepted.

But objective liberal opinion in Kolkata is unimpressed by the expert committee’s report. "What is difficult to understand is why (the Left Front government) needed a motley and meaningless committee of so-called educationists to recommend that West Bengal’s most famous college should not be granted autonomy… In fact, the committee, by design or otherwise, has done exactly what the teachers’ front of CPM would expect it to do. This casts doubts on the credibility of the committee and its ability to comprehend the needs and functioning of a modern university. It has sacrificed excellence at the altar of political expediency," commented a lead editorial in Kolkata’s No. 1 daily The Telegraph (July 11).

Now several inconvenient questions are being asked in academic circles in Kolkata, to the discomfiture of the pro-government college teachers association. Why did the Left Front government hurriedly accept the committee’s report without a public debate? To what extent is the CPM’s stubborn refusal to accept Presidency autonomy driven by the party’s fear of losing control over higher education? Why weren’t the views of Presidency College’s governing council placed on record?

In its editorial cited above The Telegraph provides the answer: "The Communist Party of India Marxist) might forsake Karl Marx, but it will never surrender its control over education."

Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)

Biting the bullet

Following almost a decade of year-on-year GDP growth averaging 7-8 percent after the Indian economy was liberalised and deregulated in 1991, the jobs market in the country has changed beyond recognition.

In particular the demand for minimally qualified engineers from the Indian IT-BPO (information technology and business process outsourcing) industry whose annual revenue is all set to breach the $50 billion (Rs.230,000 crore — a sum twice the annual national outlay for education) barrier, is going through the roof. The employee base of the IT-BPO sector is expected to double from 1.6 million currently to 3.2 million in the next three years. Yet, paradoxically only 8-10 percent of the 495,000 graduates churned out annually by India’s 2,240 engineering colleges, are qualified to work in this sunrise industry. The rest are unemployable according to IT-BPO industry spokespersons.

The looming manpower crunch of the IT-BPO industry and revamp of the Indian education system were the key themes at the NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Services Companies) HR Summit 2007, held in Chennai on July 5-6. NASSCOM spokespersons highlighted education initiatives launched by it in partnership with government and academia to build an employable workforce.

"One of the biggest manpower challenges in tertiary education is the paucity of Ph Ds and research scientists. Postgraduate education presently lags behind undergrad education with barely a handful of takers for top-of-the-line Ph D programmes. To create highly skilled professionals at the top of the employment pyramid, NASSCOM and the IT industry together with the Union ministry of human resource development has drawn up a blueprint to establish five new Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) based on the public-private partnership model by the year 2008. We will also roll out our NASSCOM Assessment and Certifi-cation-Tech (NAC-Tech) programme which will make it easier for IT-BPO companies to evaluate job aspirants. Moreover finishing schools have been started to make candidates industry-ready," says Kiran Karnik, president of NASSCOM.

This belated IT industry initiative to promote high quality professional education institutes modelled on the highly successful IIIT-Bangalore (estb. 1999) — an initiative of the IT industry and Karnataka state government — was wildly applauded at the NASSCOM HR Summit. As has often been reported in EducationWorld, it is no secret that science and technology syllabuses and pedagogies are obsolete and the great majority of the country’s 2,240 engineering colleges lack the infrastructure and faculty to produce skilled and talented graduates to meet the fast changing and advanced requirements of industry, and the IT industry in particular. Hitherto captains of the booming IT industry, which has long enjoyed corporate income tax exemption enabling companies to declare huge profits and make massive dividend payouts, were content to weakly bleat about the inadequacies of the technical education system. Now this tight-fisted fraternity is beginning to put its money where its mouth is and refreshingly, speak up.

"The education sector should be opened up to enable corporates to set up private universities and produce industry-ready graduates with specialised skill sets. The government should do away with stringent regulation of higher education, liberalise the sector and allow IIT and IIM equivalents to be easily promoted. India should become an international hub for education and attract international students, instead of standing by while our students go abroad for higher education. We should follow the example of China which has made it easy for US and European universities to set up colleges in that country," says C. Lakshmi Narayanan, vice chairman, Cognizant Technology Solutions Ltd and incumbent chairman of NASSCOM.

The positive outcome of the recently concluded NASSCOM HR Summit in Chennai, is that confronted with the prospect of a massive shortage of skilled professionals, the IT-BPO industry has bit the bullet and invested in institutional development with the promotion of five new IIITs. Quite obviously captains of this thriving industry need to learn about institutional funding and development from their American counterparts who have played a major role in transforming education institutions in the US into the world’s best.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)