Working as a teacher surely provided me with valuable lessons about education in India, a crucial entity affecting the country’s progress. There was more to teaching an elementary classroom (even if that itself may pose a challenge for you) than filing the registers and grading papers.
On World Youth Day, I wish to present a few reflections I stepped on to while getting my hands dirty in the system and what it potentially looks like to be part of it.
1. Gap To Grade Levels
2. The Ecosystem
As I talk about the factors affecting the education of a child, I wish to throw more light on the ecosystem a child is surrounded by. A family’s financial status and level of investment in their ward turned out to be very important in deciding what kind of education they should get. It came across as a chain reaction to me. The socio-economic position dictated the type of school they should get their education from. The quality of education in a school is largely dependent on its fee structure and is usually directly proportional to it. The fee structure also dictates the infrastructure and teacher investment in the classroom. Moreover, a lot of the child’s learning level depends on their parents’ involvement in the process.
3. Behavioural Patterns
I faced a few challenges within my classroom space, which soon turned out to have been largely affected by factors present outside the school ecosystem. What I gradually began to understand is that many behavioural patterns—positive, negative, or disruptive—are an outcome of the overall experiences of a child within their ecosystem. As teachers, we tend to create many systems to tackle behavioural issues in the classrooms (like reward systems, trackers, incentives), but soon, I realised that the root cause could be solved only when an educator understands a child’s overall life experiences. It is only when I immersed in their lives and focused on the external aspects intersecting with my children’s education; I came to a sustainable solution to overcome it.
4. Discrimination
My realization was an outcome of the very belief that many times, discrimination is internalized. Sometimes we are conditioned to discriminate even in the most casual ways without realizing it, and that, too, has a profound impact on education. Financial positions, social statuses, caste, religion, and most importantly, gender will always be at the core of understanding the quality of education. Not only does the quality of education depends on these factors, but many times, discrimination among these very factors also leads to curbing the potential of learning within as well as outside classrooms. As a teacher, I reflected that addressing these issues is as important as preparing practice worksheets for your teachers to provide inclusive and fair education.
5. Hope
My biggest realization as a teacher is that the system repeatedly shows loopholes. However, when it does, it’s the people involved in the system who must create a bend. There is truth in these extremely complex barriers, but there is hope as well that goes simultaneously with it. Transformation may not happen overnight, and definitely, it won’t be a smooth journey if one decides to be part of it. But it’s only this challenging route that will present rewarding outcomes in the landscape of education in India.