In any ideal democratic context, education is the foundational social leveller enabling all citizens to overcome their disadvantages. But, over the years, Karnataka’s education system has decelerated, losing even its minimal structures of inclusiveness and has become an exclusive system that denies equality of quality education and life opportunities for all.
The school education system, which in pockets had excellent government schools, has largely collapsed with the state permitting the growth of a large variety of private schools. The government school is no longer that key public institution that enabled a village’s children to shed their caste and class backgrounds and helped meld children together as citizens with shared values and friendship.
A range of schools claiming to be ‘convents’, ‘public schools’ and even ‘international schools’ now fragment any village’s options to send their children to differentiated schools. At the higher education level also, the state has permitted the withering of public universities and the flourishing of private universities, including international ones.
The proliferation of state universities, promoted on populist terms, currently serve no purpose other than to create a vote bank that caters to only a few but which distorts the very idea of higher education. Subsequently, what we are witness to are dual trends; poor quality ‘mass higher education’ which assures no real education and in contrast a growing pool of private and corporate education with exclusiveness and inequality built into it.
Given such trends and structures, the state has an obligation to stem such educational differences and to promote a system that assures equality of education opportunity for all.
Building on the premises of the Right to Education, the state must ensure that every hamlet and village has access to a government elementary school within one kilometer. Such schools should have the best of standards based on the dual-language formula and which builds on enabling children to learn in their mother tongue.
Cluster high schools can cater to a range of villages which are within three kilometers. For children from remote hamlets and schools, the current residential schools can continue to cater to their interests. To enable all rural children to have access to both vocational and professional education, taluka level community colleges should provide high standard education with a focus on enabling youth to identify their skills and aptitudes and support them in their growth.
Instead of the ‘mass’ character of education that imitates outdated education modules, pedagogies and texts, new composite and experiential learning should prepare youth to deal with their immediate worlds and the larger worlds.
Community colleges that are state-supported should enable youth to prepare for both employment and for citizenship responsibilities. Syllabi and curricula that enable youth to be recognized for their interests and abilities and which also support them in their career paths will be the panacea to many of the harrowing experiences, including the growing trends of suicide among youth.
Revamping state universities with professional personnel including appointing reputed vice-chancellors and providing sufficient funds and effective administrative processes are urgent measures that are needed to make these into attractive centres of learning. Instead of promoting and facilitating the growth of private universities, the state has an onus to develop a lead state university that can become a beacon for many who cannot afford the hefty fees of private universities. If Karnataka is to build on its reputation as a state that enables the welfare of the most marginalized, then a serious revamping of the current education system is required.
Instead of upholding the privatization of education, the state must see education as a priority sector which requires careful planning, sensitive programs, effective monitoring and administrative systems, and adequate budgets.