Prof. Bhaskar analyses subaltern families in India increasingly choosing private English education for better prospects, overcoming financial and guidance hurdles, exclusively for Different Truths.
One of the major reasons I thought to pen what follows is the middle-class critique of the subaltern families in major regions of India sending their sons and daughters to private English-medium schools over the past decade or so. There are reasons for this critique because in many such situations the children are first-generation learners, and in the absence of anybody in their families to guide them in their studies, it may be a Herculean task for the child to cope with a medium of instruction that is of foreign origin in education, apart from the family budget constraints.
To begin with, let me assume that the institutional education in the European frame in continuation since nearly two centuries is yet to wither away in post-colonial India pending the utmost effort of a dominant cultural wing to bring back ‘Gurukul’ or the pre-British educational system in India’s civilisation.
Socio-Sociocultural Alienation
Whether or not India’s English-based institutional education by its utility is understood by the manual workers like electricians and plumbers, rickshaw pullers and domestic workers, most of them understand socio-cultural alienation or ‘social distancing’ from the privileged society that determines and defines them or job deprivation because of English poverty, linguistically speaking. These families started calculating the cost-benefit for their children. Hence, some migrated to long-distance cities to earn more to eliminate at least the first barrier, which is the absence of money to admit their children to private English-medium schools. Metropolitan cities also assured them anonymity. Those who could not migrate to stay at the destination city for a long duration also learned the advantages of vocal English in the job market.
This is not to imply that most of the subaltern families in suburban areas could afford to admit their children to private English-medium schools. The inability is not because of the children often thought of as ‘unwilling to learn’ but because of factors like family budget and logistics, apart from the hesitation of the guardians to step inside through the iron gate protected by the security guard in uniform of these private-run English-medium schools.
The supply side seems not much brighter for the mushroom growth of these ‘claimed’ English-medium schools as observed in suburban West Bengal. It could have been similar in other states, also in India, with exceptions. It is next to impossible for the non-informed families to admit their children for an education that promises a definite future.
Cost-free Education is no Education
One will find co-existence of different types of schools like Anganwadi, which is the provider of Mid-Day Meal for children; public cost-free schools; private cost-loaded schools; and other types. Food for education is an inescapable opportunity for families living at the bottom of the economic ladder. Some relatively well-off families think that cost-free education is not education at all—there must be a price. So, privately owned schools flourish.
Birth was a major determinant, if not the only determinant, in India’s education system in the prehistoric period or the period of mythology that was non-institutional. The Brahmins and Kshatriyas had the right to education, and the former were delinked from manual work. Even after education became universal, thanks to the efforts of Vidyasagar and others, women were not much in the education system formally. The nation thus took centuries to give education a shape of universality. The status of education changed both because of colonisation and decolonisation, and the basic tenets of education by institutions remained unchanged in decolonised India, as it inherited them from the colonial rulers. Education was the primary means to rule, and hence, the Bhadralok was created in undivided Bengal. But that is a different story.
But why education? One, it is meant to be a weapon in the hands of the rulers. Second, it is also a weapon for civil society, to some extent ‘Bhadralok’-led society. Of course, which one is mightier—pen or sword—has remained somewhat inconclusive in the history of mankind. The state needed education to create bureaucracy on the trajectory of the unthinking linear model to execute orders that would come from the legislature. The aberrations and deviations from the prevailing laws were to be judged by the judiciary. Whatever it was or is, education became a ‘merit’ good that attracted almost all in years in ascending order. People learned to spend money on education, often more than on food. Future food security is attempted to be ensured, and intergenerational dignity with security is attempted to be ensured by dint of education.
Up to a point, the people at the bottom started opting for education beyond the primary level in some regions of India, maybe the major regions, aiming to make their sons employable in the police force and military. Local power is probably embedded in such thinking and practices. Education for the middle section probably aimed to create ‘Babu’ and bureaucrats and scientists for the tiny few backed by merit and privilege.
The Authority of an Educated Person
Coming back to the core point, thus. The people at the bottom of the economic ladder started to get their children admitted to schools because they understood the relevance and authority of an educated person. The socio-cultural barriers continue to exist, of course, like the admission of the children of Dalit families into institutions of learning, getting proper mid-day meals, the right not to be discriminated against in schools, and all that. These are bigger questions, but associated questions, and here, providing evidence by quantitative data is difficult. However, consequences in the processes as well as at the end of the education trajectory may provide partial evidence, like the number of children who dropped out at an early stage and from which families by socio-economic category, the number of graduates from such families, and their accommodation in dignified jobs.
Psycho-cultural scrutiny of education as a basic need or as a ‘merit’ good requires primary survey-based data on both the core sample and the control sample—the first one distanced from education and the second one deep in education—that this article lacks. Education is unending—so is this article.
Picture design by Anumita Roy
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