ABSTRACT
I have a friend. His name is Uttkarsh. He is hardly four years old. Naturally, he is full of life; his laughter is pure; his cry is intense; he is non-pretentious. He plays with his younger brother; imitates his father and uncle, does a lot of role-playing. At times, he imagines his toy cycle as a bike; he looks at aeroplanes, stray dogs, neelgais. When he comes to me, he observes me intensely; he asks all sorts of questions. He is in tune with life. But then, I have to remind his parents: This is the month of January; there is a huge rush for school admission; move around, collect application forms from as many schools as you can, and ensure that he gets admission for the nursery class in a school. Yes, Uttkarsh has to go to school. He sees birds; but he doesn’t know that ‘p’ means parrot; he knows his father’s name, my name, my daughter’s name; but he doesn’t know that there is something called national anthem, and Rabindranath Tagore wrote and composed it; he has an idea about his immediate locality—the road that goes to his father’s shop, the house where his friend stays; but he doesn’t know that we live in a nation called India, and it is part of Asia, and Asia is just one continent among many other continents; when I offer him biscuits, he knows that it is better to have two biscuits rather than one; experientially he knows that 2 is bigger than 1; but he does not know the mathematical symbol of ‘bigger’/’lesser’; he loves to play with football; but he does not know that that football is a sphere, and mathematicians want him to calculate its volume. Words flow like a fountain from 20his mouth; but he does not know that there is something called ‘noun’, ‘verb’, ‘adjective’, ‘adverb’, ‘preposition’. And in our times, it is said, all these pieces of information and knowledge are important, and informal socialization—this spontaneous interaction with grandparents, parents, friends, birds, trees, dogs—is not adequate. He has to come to a formal place called school, and learns what a complex society wants him to learn. And it is believed that learning takes place only in formal institutions—from schools to universities. Education is formalized and institutionalized. Hence, as part of a schooled society, I remind his parents: Do something for your child’s admission. So one day, Uttkarsh will go to school. With school uniform, water bottle and tiffin box he would look different. And of course, his school bag will carry more and more weight. Mathematics, history, geography, science, language, computer, drawing, grammar, home tasks, summer projects, parent-teacher meetings, exams and evaluation—with this culture of learning he would grow, and eventually learn a lesson that a schooled society wants him to learn: there is no education outside formal institutions and their certification, and hence those who have not gone to school are not ‘educated’ at all, or those who have spent less number of years in formal educational institutions are ‘less’ educated. So he would learn after a couple of years of schooling that he is more ‘educated’ than his father or mother because they have not gone to school although they have experienced the world, nurtured their children, taken care of their village land, cultivated rice and wheat ,earned their livelihood through hard labour. In fact, Uttkarsh would learn to believe that schooling is a must; more schooling means more ‘progress’, and it is measurable and quantified.
