(DAWN - October 30, 2004)
Politics of education
By Asghar Ali Engineer
In modern times, education is more a means for higher economic status than a search for truth or a search for meaning of life. No wonder, information technology is of utmost importance and is referred to as the knowledge industry, dragging knowledge to the level of information and reducing it to an industry - a profit making venture.
Thus, knowledge has lost its sanctity and it is no more a quest for the truth, but for money. It is no more a goal but an instrument, not an end but a means. As the well- known American philosopher Herbert Marcuse aptly said, "our universities are no more centres of knowledge but have become centres of acknowledgement and they are no more centres of cognition but are centres of recognition. Excellence in knowledge and learning is no more encouraged in these institutions. Competition for jobs has become its aim."
Today education is controlled by government on the one hand, and by the rich, on the other. Both have their own objectives and agenda. While government tries to promote its political ideology the rich try to enrich themselves.
In a country like India, government is still a major player in the field of education. It determines what to teach and prescribes text-books or, in other words, education is largely controlled by government.
India is a secular country but its education is far from being secular in content. The text books both at primary and higher levels are thoroughly contaminated by communal outlook.
We often blame the British rulers for their divide and rule policy but our text books even 57 years after independence are divisive in character with some honourable exception. It systematically cultivates communal outlook and creates hatred against minority communities.
Despite a sustained controversy against communalized textbooks, there are no concerted efforts to change them, make them a dynamic instrument for promoting secularism and secular values and respect for all religions, languages and cultures. Indian text books represent majoritarian outlook and fail to strengthen pluralist values.
Today in most of the schools one finds pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses and slokas from Hindu scriptures. Recently this writer visited a school run by Mumbai Municipal Corporation and found entire atmosphere suffused with of Hindu religion.
There was no representation of any other religion at all. Not a single picture or quotation from Bible or Qur'an or Sikhism. This obviously discourages children of other communities to study in such an atmosphere where they feel totally alienated.
The Latin American educationist Father Paul Ferear stresses interactive method of teaching so that students can discuss and raise questions on a subject. This method can develop students thinking and critical faculty. What Indian teachers do is to deposit information in the minds of their students and totally discourage any critical discussion. Also, real learning involves quest for truth, quest for knowledge and educational institutions are simply not equipped to promote this kind of learning.
Indian educational institutions do not cultivate universal humanitarian outlook. They perpetrate narrow sectarian thinking. These institutions promote majoritarian ethos and a sense of superiority in a majority culture and majority religion.
It holds good for our entire subcontinent which includes India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We simply take pride in our past and fail to build our future. We stress cultivating superiority of our respective religion and culture rather than universality and humanity.
We do not even stress core values of our religion and its spirituality. We simply promote certain rituals, customs and traditions. We do not promote love but hatred of others.
Indian textbooks still promote caste superiority and contempt for low castes. The exposures recently of some Gujarat textbooks were shocking, to say the least. A crow was likened with a safai kamgar i.e. with dalits.
Thus dalits are presented as ugly. How can we ever cultivate humanism in our students. At every step in our education institutions we stress discrimination on the basis of caste and creed.
No wonder, educated people are more communal than poor and illiterate persons who are found more humane. All these prejudices and stereotypical thinking is acquired through educational system.
When the BJP government came to power it tried its best to inject pride in the Hindu past and demonized the Muslim past. Past associated with one particular religion is glorified and the one associated with other religion is demonized. This is not history, it is its mockery.
Human society, past or present, has always been full of conflict and violence. It is not religion which makes a society good or bad as often thought. It is human beings who promote good or evil, depending on their interests.
There has not been a single era in history, that was without conflict whatever religion it was associated with. It is human interests which determine the dynamics of a society. Unfortunately it is human interests, not religious values, which occupy the centre stage of history.
Today, one finds fundamentalism and communalism spreading among the lower middle classes as well as upper classes though for different reasons. Among lower middle classes and backward castes and dalits as they go to municipal and government schools and acquire narrow and sectarian outlook through the textbooks and prevailing atmosphere. And as far as upper classes are concerned they concentrate more on their career through acquiring degrees and building professional future.
The writer is chairman of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai.
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