Tags:
Journalism of Courage
This month when schools across Tamil Nadu reopened after summer vacation,a school in Erode created a bit of stir. Enrolled in the school,it turned out,was a six-year-old girl called Gopika,whose father happens to be the district collector,R. Anandakumar. The Tamil-medium Panchayat Union primary school has no other child of a government official and,reportedly,even teachers prefer to send their children elsewhere as it is their legitimate right to do,to enrol their children where they think their life chances are better served. Anandakumars decision to send his daughter to the panchayat school is,instead,a reminder of the need for the privileged and well-connected to be invested in state schools and to narrow the gap,both perceived and very real,with private schools.
A seemingly stray development after Gopikas enrolment is revealing. When news spread that the collectors child was a student there,officials of the panchayat visited the school to recce the facilities. Education is central to the promise of equality of opportunity,a crucial part of the essential contract of our Constitution. This contract has been dishonoured in many ways. In ways that curriculums have been framed,for instance,so that state schools have been denied a beneficially multilingual mix,in the name of protecting local languages. Yet when in such a policy framework when children of those who make and implement the policy are sent to private schools,mostly English-medium,it raises questions about sensitivity to aspirations. And as the Erode case shows,how facilities are checked when a child of a somebody enlists in state-run schools,the message is also reinforced that when the elites opt out of common schools,the responsibility to maintain them too is often abdicated.
It is a careful balance to maintain equality of opportunity without coercion,to have a level playing field in a way that raises the bar. By backing the right to education by law,one side of the problem has been sought to be addressed: private schools have to make available space to under-privileged children. But as the Erode collector has highlighted,there is a bigger challenge yet: to raise the bar at state schools,to pressure the authorities to deliver. It would help if the elite made common cause.
