Segregation along class and caste lines still plagues our schools today. Continuing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. requires us to fight against educational injustice that holds back some of our brightest children who are poor, and that holds back our nation as a whole.
In his speech at Grosse Point High School on March 14, 1968, Dr. King said: “There are two Americas. One America is beautiful for situation. In this America, millions of people have the milk of prosperity and the honey of equality flowing before them. This America is the habitat of millions of people who have food and material necessities for their bodies, culture and education for their minds, freedom and human dignity for their spirits. In this America children grow up in the sunlight of opportunity. But there is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair.”
This schizophrenia of two Indias is still the reality of our country today. While the children of the middle and upper classes visit fee-charging private schools to give them advantage in the labour market and to ensure that they get an education, our governmental schools are so heavily underfunded, so void of quality that they are not allowing our children to develop their talents and to enter the sunlight of opportunity. They are so neglected by the media, by the educated class and by the government that while a leakage of CBSE papers dominates the headlines for days, the lack of textbooks in the governmental schools of Bihar, the lackadaisical merger of the schemes for elementary and secondary education, the lack of political will and the denial of education to our children with disabilities get no attention in our society.
Today, India stands at the crossroads. There are people who want to create a market of education, who want to turn schools into institutions that generate profit, that impart literacy at best, but certainly not citizenship. People who want to make education a tradeable commodity, (just like burgers), instead of a public good that contributes to building a just and strong independent India.
These people are well organised. One of the leading organisations in the National Independent School Alliance. They suggest the following agenda:
- Every child shall get ₹2,500 per month as a voucher, so that everyone can send their children to private schools.
- Schools should be allowed to make profits.
- Schools should not have to fulfil the current binding minimum infrastructure norms.
Further, if someone wants a better school which costs more, people can add-up on the voucher and ‘purchase’ a better education. This will establish a system of segregation up to an extent that is far beyond our imagination.
Our vision is a different one. Our vision is that one day, in our great nation, children of all races, castes, genders and economic statuses will walk hand-in-hand into the same school gate where there will be teachers who do more than just imparting literacy, where they will be cared for and where critical and creative thinking will be nourished.
Our vision is that one day, in our great nation, all children will grow up in the sunlight of opportunity.
Such a just society is in the tradition of Dr. King, Gandhiji and Ambedkarji. Yet, we also have among us some people like our former foreign secretary Prof. Muchkund Dubey who has worked out the plan for a Common School System in our state Bihar, and who has always been a respected voice of national consciousness speaking up for a more just society. We have a concrete proposal.
We call upon those who are following their consciousness instead of the disease of greed to listen to Dr. King’s words: “And I’m sad to say to you tonight I’m absolutely convinced that the forces of ill will in our nation, the forces on the wrong side in our nation, the extreme righteous of our nation have often used time much more effectively than the forces of good will and it may well be that we may have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words of the bad people who will say bad things in a meeting like this or who will bomb a church in Birmingham, Alabama, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say wait on time.”
We have been silent for long enough. It is up to us to create a more just world for our children to live in. The starting point is a Common School System. We shall overcome!