EDUCATION AS A HUMAN RIGHT

Slightly revised version of a presentation made at a workshop "All Human Rights for All" at Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi, 25-26 March 1998.

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Mine is a somewhat mixed position. There is little to be gained by merely repeating that I am very much for the Indian Constitution to be amended and the making of education a fundamental right. What I would be briefly discussing is the nature of this demand and its implications. So as to be saying something interesting and useful, I would be looking critically at education as a human right.

Now, the best known document which deals with education as a human right is the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 26 which deals with this goes as follows:

"Article 26.

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. " (1)

This reveals an interesting position. Education is understood purely in the sense of formal schooling and colleging. That is, education is what takes place in separate institutions that are designated for that purpose, away from the rest of society. The educational impact of the family, the workplace, the playground, etc. are not recognized and are not considered worthy of protection.

Another interesting aspect of this resolution is that it is a position well within the socialist tradition - that the state be responsible for the welfare of its citizens. And this is a resolution that was given sanction by one of the most wide-based gathering of states in human history. It is good to remember this today when it is fashionable to attack the socialist tradition. It is also good to remember that before any talk of the right to education, one must talk of poverty and the right to sleep with a full stomach every night. This has implications for what I shall say later.

The next point in this Article 26 is also revealing. It goes:

"(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace. " (2)

This makes clear the individualism behind this notion of what is education. It also makes clear the idea that education is essentially a psychological affair and we need not be concerned with social realities. There can be, therefore, a single universal education for all.

However, in concrete situations, where opportunities for schooling and the paths of life history that it leads to are controlled by certain classes (and castes), merely speaking about the full development of the human personality leads us nowhere. It ignores the kind of conflicts that are driving the development of our society. For instance, is one to look for the greater development of the personality of the Dalits or to their access to positions of power. While these are not completely mutually exclusive goals, we are talking about two separate educational paths. Merely talking about personality development is a safe, innocuous kind of a discourse, ignoring the realities of the struggle for cultural power.

My central position here is this: that the question is not just that of education for all. It is one of what kind of education for all (3) .

And, it may be clearly said that formal schooling and colleging are only a small part of this question. Because they are only a small component of the education systems available here in India. The most extensive and the most powerful system here continues to be what may be loosely called apprenticeship. A system where the learner gains knowledge and skills by doing; by association and following the examples and instructions of those who are more proficient than him or her. The instances of this system are numerous and all around us - the woman who is a homemaker, the vast majority of our workforce who are tailors and sweepers and shopkeepers and craftsmen and fitters and mechanics and small scale industrialists and farmers and pastoralists and so on and on. And it is apprenticeship that holds the key to the hunger and poverty of India.

I cannot resist here a small comment on those who are opposed to child labour. Sure, it can be deadening and destroying of the spirit. But please consider that the vast majority of children and young people who are working do so after a consideration of their social circumstances by their families. Child labour is usually the result of the conclusion that given their own social and economic resources, the school holds out less promise to them than working in fields, shops, etc. in terms of the likely career paths available to them at that particular place and time. This is a deliberate rejection of the school system. For most cases of child labour this is a hard-headed and very realistic choice, for schooling leads most of them nowhere. A merely class X pass is often worse off than a class V dropout who has learnt a vocation or a skill. And work, too, can be inspiring and creative and liberating, which is why work experience has been lauded by Gandhi, Tagore, the Kothari Commission and many others.

One cannot, however, call most of our school and college education inspiring, creative and liberating. In many aspects its bears a striking similarity with the de-humanizing routine of the factory. There is complete control over the actions that are permissible in the premises of the institution. The day is rigidly measured out and coming in late and leaving early is strictly penalized. In the towns, especially, attending tuition classes often means an 8-10 hour working day, sometimes even more. Rigid deadlines are assigned for the production of various items and are enforced through a system of penalties. Discipline is a major ideal and personnel that do not ask questions that slow down the process are preferred over those who fritter valuable time away in idle curiosity.

It must also be kept in mind that for most of India, in any case the school is not meant to educate. Ever since the entry of British education and its close relationship first with the jobs available with the colonial state and then with the mercantile sector that grew up here, schools and colleges have been understood and sought after primarily as a means of access to what Gandhi called the charmed circles of power (4) . In contrast, for many centuries, most Indians got their education in the sense of a widening of horizons and liberation of the mind from what was done to them by the family, by religion, by elders and the peer group. This pattern continues to hold.

By focussing entirely on formal schooling and colleging, we are effectively looking only at a very small minority and pushing the rest of India out of our purview.

My position then is that more than the question of formal schooling and colleging as a human right, we need to look the broader question of culturally and socially appropriate education as a human right. What is culturally and socially appropriate education can be decided only by looking at the specific circumstances of that particular community. The conflicts within that community and also its place in the trajectory of the social and economic development of the region need to be carefully examined. Appropriate education cannot be blandly assumed to be whatever is going on in a public school or in a government school or what is recommended by the well-meaning folks at the CBSE.

What I have to say, I repeat, is nothing new. There are today many examples of people innovating down these lines. Consider, for purposes of illustration, one of the underlying principles that define the ideological content of NCERT’s Civics textbooks for classes 8th to 10th. NCERT’s textbooks are in keeping with overwhelming presence of the state in Indian polity as propagated by the Nehruvian era (5) . The state is all powerful and the solution to all problems may be sought only through recourse to the state’s machinery. Against this the social science textbooks prepared by the NGO Eklavya seek to give a sense of agency to the individual and to the local community. In class VI for instance, the description of the government starts from the local village panchayat and not from the Parliament as in the case of the NCERT. Further, the village panchayat is seen from the point of view of a child and a woman who is elected to it. Its functioning is discussed through a particular case - getting potable drinking water - and not just by a bland listing of the various functions of the panchayat. In NCERT’s Civics textbooks, things happen by themselves, with the government automatically being the best judge of what the populace needs and a myth of complete efficiency. In Eklavya’s textbooks, things are closer to reality, results come only when you work for them and the techniques used by the woman protagonist to finally get drinking water in her own ward include lobbying and dharnas. Such a chapter is then used for discussing with children the kinds of problems faced by their own villages and the way the panchayat functions there. It is only after this that larger political entities and concepts are introduced.

A similar way of teaching human rights, too, may be envisaged for IGNOU. But before we move to that, a small comment needs to be made on the larger role of IGNOU. I do not have the stature to be taken seriously on this, I know that. Still, for whatever it is worth, may I point out that the historical role of IGNOU was to focus primarily on the people who were being disregarded and left out by the formal school and college system. Unfortunately, my impression is that it seems to drift more and more away from its original vision. It is focussing more and more towards the conventional kind of courses. And in this it is condemned to failure. An Open University cannot possibly compete with the ordinary university. It does not have the kind of opportunities for classroom interaction to develop a comparable graduate degree system. And that is not its task. Its task is to strike out new grounds, to look towards people who are beyond the system of classrooms and degrees. It is the Open University that must innovate and provide the blacksmiths and the carpenters and the munims of this country the benefits of the modern forms of knowledge and organization. There ,and there alone, lies its historical, path-breaking role in the development of Indian society.

With this in mind, first of all the target group of the proposed certificate course on human rights should be carefully defined. The ordinary BA and MA courses, of course, should have human rights as part of their curriculum, but the people who enrol for BAs and MAs should not be made the target group of the proposed certificate course. Very few of them will ever really use the lessons of the course. Instead I suggest that IGNOU focus on trade unionists, NGOs and government officials. They are the people who come every day in contact with situations that demand a specialized understanding of human rights and need to know how to respond when these rights are in danger of being challenged or are actually being transgressed. It is they who will really benefit from the proposed course and I am sure they will respond actively to any overtures from the Open University.

The proposed target group would have one important characteristic: most trade unionists, NGO workers and government officials have poor skills in using and learning from a textbook. Hence, the course would have to be made very highly project centred. One way of doing this could be to ask the students after an initial familiarization to spend one month in investigating and writing a report on what concrete forms of oppression exist in their respective areas. Then after a discussion of these with reference to various documentary materials and political, philosophical and social issues, they could be asked to do another project on the existing forms of legal and social redress in their own respective areas. This could then be consolidated upon and larger forms of redress and greater generalizations could be discussed.

Clearly, all this cannot be possibly be done in a centralized fashion. The role of IGNOU’s regional centres and local co-ordinators would be critical. The role of the latter would actually make or break the course. But, then, that is the way education always functions. A good teacher is a necessary requirement for a course to succeed and no amount of technology can replace him or her.

(1) United Nations, 1948, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_udhr.htm , 17 May 1998.
(2) Ibid.
(3) The odd thing is that I am saying nothing particularly original. Among many others, the Kothari Commission Report, (Ministry of Education, Report of the Education Commission, 1964-66: Education & National Development, 1966, New Delhi: Manager of Publications, p 5) wrote 32 years ago : "A system of university education which produces a high proportion of competent professional manpower is of great assistance in increasing productivity and promoting economic growth. Another system of higher education with the same total output but producing a large proportion of indifferently educated graduates of arts, many of whom remain unemployed or are even unemployable, could create social tensions and retard economic growth. It is only the right type of education, provided on an adequate scale, that can lead to national development; when these conditions are not satisfied, the opposite effect may result."
What is puzzling is why so many people still do not understand this and persist in conflating any education with meaningful and social relevant education.
(4) M.K. Gandhi, 1991, orig. 1945, p. 27, Constructive programme: its meaning and place. Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House.
(5)cf. Amman Madan, "Nagarik shastra ki pustakon mein nagarikon ki chhavi", pp 88-94 in Shaikshik Sandarbh, May-June, 1996.