Combating the learning crisis in South Asia

Amongst a range of development challenges that South Asian countries face is that of poor education – both in terms of literacy rates and quality of education imparted to those counted as ‘literate’.  While governments are attempting to increase literacy levels in their respective countries through policy interventions for improved infrastructure and greater access to schools, they seem to have progressed much less in addressing the learning crisis that has enveloped most of the South Asia today.

The present scenario of education in South Asia  

In May 2018, UNICEF noted that only about half of primary-aged children currently receive education with minimum learning standards. Looking into the micro picture further reveals the dismal state of education in the region. According to the World Development Report 2018, India topped the list of countries where a grade two student could not perform two-digit subtraction and was ranked second in the list of countries where a grade two student could not read a single word of a short text. As per a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper published in 2006, less than 20% of children in Pakistan are capable of comprehending a simple paragraph, with most of them not being able to write a simple sentence with a word like “school” in the national language of the country.

While these statistics give an initial peek into the state of learning in these countries, a closer look at the education priorities of South Asian governments reveal that ‘learning outcomes’ have a rather peripheral status. The focus of most governments is on access, enrolment, and completion rates. There is a lack of adequate measurement of learning outcomes. For example, in Bangladesh only 1 in 12 performance indicators set by the government targets learning. The evaluation of the Education For All initiative in Nepal revealed an absence of mechanisms to monitor classroom environments and progress in learning levels. Other countries in the region including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan have reported low levels of learning despite relative increase in literacy rates. Maldives, despite an impressive literacy rate of 98%, faces challenges in terms of quality. According to a UNICEF report, untrained teachers, regional inequality in teaching standards, emphasis on rote-learning, and gender-bias in curricula are some of the problems that this almost universally literate country faces.

Contributing factors to the learning crisis

In this section, we attempt to flag some of the factors that have led to this learning crisis in the region. First, learning is not given prominence in policies and strategies to improve education. Rising the share of education budgets in countries like Pakistan and Nepal accompanied by a persistent lack of learning quality bears testimony to the neglect of the ‘learning’ aspect of education. In India, despite regular alarms raised by the Annual Status of Education Reports regarding low learning levels, the country has not seen any significant success in changing the status quo.

Second, the role of teachers in the learning process is not paid enough attention. Teachers are supposed to not just be subject experts but also ensure that students from various socio-economic backgrounds are integrated into the classroom space. In the South Asian context where teacher absenteeism, inadequate teacher training, and incidents of discrimination by teachers are prevalent, teachers form a significant part of the problem.

Third, in a region like South Asia that faces deprivation, education has to be envisaged as a tool to alleviate poverty. This can only be done if what students learn in schools is aligned with professional skills and economic opportunities. Presently, there exists a mismatch between school curricula and the demands of the economies.

Fourth, learning deficits are greater for learners from economically disadvantaged families compared to those from well-off families. The family background of a child which includes socio-economic status, home environment and the educational status of the parents remains a huge determinant of learning outcomes. Learning gaps between the poor and rich students increase as they move to higher classes.

Fifth, there is neglect of careful curriculum design to suit the needs of the population being educated. There seems to be a trend of importing course content predominantly from Western education systems and placing it in the midst of a very different target audience. This lack of context-specific curriculum makes learning not just less relatable and thus harder to grasp for students, but also does little to equip them to think of locally relevant solutions to the everyday problems they grapple with.

The learning crisis has a causal relation with the economic wellbeing of a population and development prospects in general. If more generations of learners continue to graduate out of schools without basic skills like reading, writing, comprehension, and analytical thinking, it is naive to expect them to be active participants in the economic growth of the region. The learning crisis also negatively impacts the political development and civic engagement of a nation. People who are more educated tend to participate more in civic activities compared to those who are less educated.

Potential solutions for improving education

Be it for economic, political, and social gains or for the intrinsic importance of learning in education, this major issue that South Asian countries face needs to be dealt with. For this, the following solutions may be considered.

1. Measurement of learning: The first step towards addressing the learning crisis is making it visible through an effective and efficient measurement system. Lack of a proper assessment of learning gives authorities the leverage to ignore the outcomes of education. Proper evaluation of learning outcomes shall also lead to awareness of the poor quality of education among parents and who may consequently demand the government to improve it.
2. Early childhood development programmes: Acquisition of foundational skills during early childhood is essential for the learning process throughout a child’s life. Factors which hinder early childhood development include malnutrition, low parental support, distressed environment and material deprivation. Immediate action is required, targeting these socio-economic factors that give birth to these deprivations in the first place.
3. Context-specific curriculum: Tuning the curriculum in consonance with the socio-economic environment of the learner will enable greater efficiency in learning outcomes. Students will be able to comprehend easily and  apply what they learn to the context they are situated in. This would help develop cognitive and analytical skills and thus amplify learning outcomes.
4. Continuous teacher education: There needs to be concerted attempt to make teachers effective in order to make the learning process successful. Even where there exist multiple training programmes for teachers over the course of their career, there is seldom continuity in training modules. The potential power of teacher training programmes to translate into enhanced pedagogies and thus better learning can be harnessed by comprehensive and continuous teacher education.
5. Learner-centric education policies: If education is seen as a vehicle of social and economic transformation, as is the case in many government publications across the region, students have to be made capable drivers of development. They have to be made the epicentre of education policies. What they learn, how they learn, and from whom they learn must be well thought through, for this will define the state of education in the region.

Conclusion

Besides efforts by individual states, the learning crisis has scope to be dealt with collectively. Given various socio-economic similarities, countries in South Asia can create some common curricular and pedagogic framework in line with the needs of students in the region. This will help make learning locally relevant while also making learners more aware. Such an engagement within the region shall help produce knowledge sharing platforms that shall enhance learning outcomes.

It is imperative that this learning crisis be arrested. This undoubtedly would require political will, apart from efforts by educators, civil society organisations working in education, and citizens. Placing learning at the centre of education and students at the centre of learning would be a vital prerequisite if we are to combat this learning crisis.

This piece was co-authored with Mehrin Shah and was first published on the LSE South Asia Centre Blog on 7th September 2018.

(https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2018/09/07/combating-the-learning-crisis-in-south-asia/)

#MeToo: A gender curriculum

The #MeToo moment calls for a rethink of our education system

Over the past few weeks, many women have spoken about their experiences of sexual harassment. Some have named the accused. Many of these accounts have been of incidents at the workplace and by co-workers, and expose the prevalence of deep-seated sexism across professions. There have been various responses by the accused to these testimonies: unconditional apologies, resignations, stepping away from duties until further investigation — but also denial, intimidation and even further harassment. Some of these were immediate responses to mounting public pressure and questions; whether they reflected repentance or realisation on the part of the accused is debatable. Some other responses, such as intimidation through defamation cases, show the entitlement that many men in power enjoy. Both sexual harassment and the kinds of responses from the accused lay bare a critical failure of our education system. It will not be sufficient to say that it is society that allows, or even conditions, men to behave the way they do. Education, an important part of the socialisation process, is also to blame.

What our education lacks

The education that we are imparted needs to be held accountable at this juncture because of its failure on fundamental grounds. The purpose of education is not to only ensure that people secure employment or rise to coveted positions of power alone, it is also to ensure that they learn and practice equality and mutual respect. Many of the accused are qualified, educated men. Their actions compel us to ask whether those years spent in school, college and university have been unsuccessful in instilling basic values. It seems as though rising to top positions and enjoying power have emboldened men to behave in unacceptable ways, and the education system has done nothing to prevent this.

It is not uncommon to hear of incidents of sexual harassment being justified as “casual flirting” or being attributed to the offender’s “glad eye”. Using these terms to explain away or even justify these acts reflects the depth and expanse of the problem. I am reminded of an encounter that a friend’s mother had with a senior bureaucrat (now retired) a few years ago. During a meeting regarding a project on which her organisation and his department were collaborating, he told her that she was “smart and beautiful”. He then recited couplets in Hindi and Urdu. Such blatant display of inappropriate behaviour, which makes women uncomfortable, shows that men in power enjoy the impunity that accompanies attitudes and acts entrenched in patriarchy.

Today, many of us are not surprised at the volume of complaints of sexual harassment. This is because it has been normalised. Sexism is not casual, it is systemic. That our education system is failing to teach boys and men to recognise, challenge and refrain from sexist and even unlawful behaviour must be acknowledged and tackled.

The way forward

This is not to say that sexual misconduct or gender inequality is a by-product of a lack in education. The spotlight is not to be put on the educated alone, but on the system too. Among other things, education has the basic duty of ensuring that we become socially aware and sensitive beings who know how to interact and engage with people of different genders, castes, classes and communities. We must teach students that consent is an essential component of any interaction and that decisions, even of refusal, must be respected.

While there is considerable discussion on the need to change mindsets, efforts to actually bring about such long-term structural changes are rare. Gender equality must not be limited to newsroom debates, stand-up themes or films, although these are necessary. What the #MeToo movement demands is a continuous and systematic process of learning that leads to equality.

There must be efforts to incorporate a gender curriculum in all school and college classrooms, establish anti-sexual harassment cells, organise regular awareness programmes on consent across the country, and formulate measures to address incidents of sexual harassment. The police should initiate community engagement drives so that students know how to report sexual harassment. Campaigns like Operation Nirbheek, initiated to improve safety and security of girls in schools, have proven to be successful to a large extent. Interventions in educational institutions will be a much-needed start to strengthen voices against sexual harassment and make homes and workplaces safe. It is imperative that we begin early if we are to secure a closure to our #MeToo experiences.

This article was first published in The Hindu on 20th November 2018.
(https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/a-gender-curriculum/article25540532.ece)

Feminism in the classroom

With the judgments on triple talaq and right to privacy and the verdict in the Gurmeet Ram Rahim case, the past few days have reinvigorated the conversation on women’s safety and gender equality. These cases have shone the light on some of the social structures and practices that work to threaten constitutionally enshrined principles of equality and justice.

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In the midst of numerous such cases of discrimination and oppression on the basis of gender and the discourses that ensue, the question that we as a society need to ask ourselves is: Why and how do so many people think of one gender as inferior to another? The practice of one gender dominating over the other and, of one’s gender dominating one’s entire self, needs to be looked into. We are not born patriarchal; we are socialised into becoming so.

The process that imbues patriarchy into our minds and subsequently in our attitudes and behaviour begins early in life. It starts before we can even make sense of our existence. It starts when we are assigned blue and pink before we learn to recognise colours. It starts when we are barely able to speak and boys are asked not to “cry like girls”. It starts when little girls are handed kitchen sets and boys are mocked if they show interest in pots and pans. It starts when some enter school wearing skirts and some shorts and both are taught to act differently from each other. It goes on when girls and boys are made to take up subjects based not on their interest or aptitude, but their gender. Perhaps the deepening of such a gendering of subjects has led to one of India’s premier universities, the University of Delhi, having Psychology Honours offered in most women’s colleges while boys wanting to study the subject are left with little choice. This is why we need feminism in our schools. Places where we learn the basics of grammar and science should also be places where we learn the basics of co-existence. We need children to know that equality of all genders should be a reality. We repose our faith for a better tomorrow in the young. More importantly, they deserve to live their lives as naturally as they want to, and not by norms made to hierarchise their existence.

Schools are the first places where children are exposed to and interact with people with various identities. At these abodes of learning, enforcing gendered identities and roles is detrimental to not just children but also to society as a whole. Conveying to girls that their bodies serve as “distractions” tends to alienate their physicality from their being. They begin to question, undermine, and negate their own selves. Schools, thus, become agents of violating individuals’ sense of dignity rather than upholding it. The absence of such scornful comments for their male counterparts drives home the essence of patriarchy. On the other hand, it makes boys aware that they are in a privileged position, for their bodies are not meant for scrutiny or reprimand. The moment when children enter primary classes should be when a conversation on gender must start. Acknowledging this identity is the first step to doing away with false assumptions and generalisations based on it.

Moreover, the separation of girls and boys as two distinct groups as soon as they move out of the classroom (in some cases even in classroom sitting arrangements) needs to be reconsidered. Whether in the science lab or on the sports field, choices, opportunities, and affiliations cannot be pre-determined by gender. Students of all genders working or playing together as a team shouldn’t be an unusual spectacle. It must be seen as natural because it is natural for human beings of different identities to cooperate and coexist. I recollect being called to the school’s seminar room in Class V, along with all girls, and being spoken to about menstruation. On returning to the classroom and being asked by the boys about why we had been called, we found ourselves being secretive about the meeting. It was not because all of us instinctively thought of menstruation as something to be hidden; it was perhaps the result of the segregation that took place before a conversation on a normal bodily process. To keep boys out of the room that day probably led to keeping a lot of them away from understanding a gender other than their own.

The existence of stereotypes makes it very difficult for innovation and reason to find space. Feminism could be a powerful tool that lets children shed stereotypes that they may hold and question those of others. A world free of prejudice and generalisation would be amenable to progress in the truest sense.

The need of the hour is to introduce feminism in schools, both in terms of curriculum and practice. Sessions on principles of mutual respect and equality must be made a regular affair in schools. Inculcating gender equality in children could go a long way towards ridding society of regressive mindsets, attitudes, and behaviours. Needless to say, this shall prepare the ground for children to not just be better students but also better citizens and eventually better human beings. That is the least we can do to be able to call ourselves citizens of a “free and equal” nation.

This article was first published in The Indian Express on 4th September 2017. (https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/feminism-in-the-classroom-feminism-in-india-gender-equality-gender-balance-equal-opportunity-women-in-india-4827131/)

Because we let it happen

An 8-year-old was raped, tortured, killed

Because we let this happen

Because we have reduced cases of sexual violence to breaking news and primetime debates

Because we have normalised sexism and misogyny and harboured an ethos of victim-shaming

Because we have equated domination and violence with being male

Because we have let our ‘representatives’ subvert the voice of our collective conscience

Because we have silenced our souls to allow falsities of ‘honour’ and ‘pride’ to reverberate

Because we continue to bring up boys teaching them fake notions of masculinity

Because we continue to allow humanity to be violated and shamed

Because we continue to protect the perpetrators, alienate the parents, communalise the crime, and destroy humanity

And we continue to let all of this happen.

(Also posted on http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/internationaldevelopment/2018/04/30/because-we-let-it-happen/ )

Consent: Too hard to fathom?

The other day in London, my friend met someone who left her furious with his refusal to understand the concept of consent. “How do I know if it is a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’?” was his question. “Ask.” was what my friend said, before he went ahead and shared his views on women and their habit of taking undue advantage of men. The hour-long interaction ended with my friend calling him out for his blatant sexism and him walking away.
Their interaction got me thinking about how, a couple of years back in India (where I happen to come from), a film got the nation talking openly about sexual consent for arguably the first time in history. The film, which was based on a basic idea of “No means No” appealed to hundreds of thousands of women and girls who had been in situations where their No was not taken as No, and to many men who had been socialised into believing that a woman’s No had a latent Yes that just needed persuasion and probably force to give in.
My friend’s interaction with a person from a ‘developed’ country with reasonable educational qualification, and the mindset of a lot of men in my country that is part of the ‘developing, third world’ were so similar that it made me shed whatever little faith I had in development as a means to achieve gender awareness (also gender equality, but that seems too far-fetched a dream). Thoughts like patriarchy and sexism uniting men all across the world began to crop up in my mind. The part that hit me the most is that I failed to find any evidence of what people in the development field like to call ‘best practices’. In no region of the world does gender equality seem to be a reality, or even a work in progress.
What is astonishing is that a concept as basic as consent is not only negated by social norms, but legal regulations for it are also blurry. Last year in North Carolina, a case brought to light a 1979 state supreme court ruling that said that continuing to have sex with someone who withdraws consent in the process of intercourse is not considered as rape. In September last year in India, a high court judgement pronounced that a feeble no may mean yes, overturning rape conviction in a high-profile case. Both cases met with public outrage as people came out to question why no should not mean no under any circumstance.
Cases like these provide evidence to show that the issue of consent does not have any correlation with levels of literacy or development. People all across the globe experience situations where their ‘no’ is not taken as ‘no’. The way out of this perhaps also lies in a united approach to make sexual consent the norm. It is time we (those of us who understand the difference between ‘yes’ and ‘no’) come together to spread the message of consent loud and clear until it reaches all those who are deafened by inhumane values of force and violence.

Happy Mother's Day

A golden heart that always sees the silver lining
A selfless being that recognises others' self-worth
A beautiful mind that finds the beauty of every soul

You are the presence that every life yearns for
I am blessed to live that life.

The day you went away..

The day you went away, you took a part of me with you

The moment you closed your eyes, I could see nothing but dew

The day you traversed that bridge, you left me longing to leap

The moment you ceased to breathe, I could do nothing but weep

The day you tread that path, you took away light from my day

The moment you lost your beat, I could not sway my way

And,

The day you crossed that shore, you left with me your skill to swim

The moment you found your liberation, you filled my purpose to the brim

The day you walked to your destination, you gave me radiance to find mine

The moment you called it a day, you gifted me your endurance so that I could always shine

The day you opened those doors, you gave me your art to forgive all wrongs that may be

The moment you went away, you left a part of you with me.