To bigin with looking critically the role of Indian government working to alleviate the poverty from India. The center has enacted job guarantees schemes, has sponsored various Rojgar Yojnas, has implemented irrigation development project, legislated minimum wages act, banished casteism/gender bias in the books of law etc. I remember and agree that the Right of Children to free and compulsory education Bill, 2008 passed and became a watershed in the history of India. The Bill aims to strengthen our democracy through the provision of universal elementary education, in keeping with the constitution (86th amendment) act, 2002, which makes elementary education a Fundamental Right for all children age group of 6-14 years. Children in schools in India are already not learning very much because of loose teaching and teaching system. ‘’The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2008 reports that nearly 96% children in the 6-14 years age group are enrolled in school. But learning levels appear to be declining, for example, 41% across grades 1to8 being able to read simple stories in 2008 as opposed to 43.6% in 2005. The right to education seems to suggest me that it will not eliminate poverty rather to be dis empowering .The question that creates is whether we want our children to have a right to schooling or a right to education?
But it is sad, the fact that why disadvantaged groups are being targeted? The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill, 2008, passed by the Rajya Sabha in December 2008, restricts, cripples and wipes out, to a significant extent, the provision of reservation for the SCs and the STs that has been an instrument of social change and amelioration of the plight of Dalits and Adivasis. Even more objectionable is the provision to exclude posts "qualified as scientific or technical." The definition says all those posts for which the qualifications are from natural sciences, exact sciences, applied sciences and technology and for which their ‘knowledge is essential for the performance’ of duties are "scientific and technical posts." This means there will be no entry for the SCs and the STs in specified public sector undertakings or the 54 mini-ratnas or those PSUs where the minimum qualification for a job is a B.Sc. or M.Sc. in a science subject, or in an applied science such as Microbiology, or MBBS or B.Tech. or M.Tech. or, say, any degree in science. After thus blocking the entry of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes into specified PSUs and 47 educational institutions, the Bill makes it easy to declare the SCs and the STs "unfit" for any job At one stroke the new Bill has created a situation where all of these are reversed and the historic efforts of
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar ,founding father of the Constitution is set aside. Will the Lok Sabha now discuss the Bill and ensure that it is recast without the adverse provisions such as Clause 4(1), Clause 9 and 18, and that it reflects the constitutional mandate and vision?
In the light of education ,R.W. Connell addresses in his article two important issue that had been overlooked by policy maker in the past; the accumulated practical experience of teachers and parents. He speaks about compensatory programs that it may even reinforce the pattern that produce inequality. Through this article his concentration is on the education system of industrialized, predominantly English-speaking, liberal capitalist state ( Australia, Britain, Canada and US). Connell proposes to show this article is to question the social and educational assumption behind the general design of compensatory programs. He gives an alternative way of thinking regarding the education of children in poverty, drawn from current practice and social research. He is of view that hegemonic curriculum and control over teacher’s work. He talks detail in his book School and Social Justice with a question. What are our design principles for a school curriculum that will lead towards social justice? His answer is to employ a strategy of 'inverting hegemony’ that seeks a way of organizing (educational) content and method which will build on the experience of the disadvantaged. This strategy enables to teachers to develop counter- hegemonic curricula that embody the interest and perspective of the social subordinate groups( ordinary people and women). He tells that traditional mainstream curriculum excludes the knowledge of the socially subordinate groups, whereas a counter-hegemonic curriculum inverting hegemony brings out that knowledge. He put argument using standpoint theory of socially subordinate as a guiding principle for hegemonic curriculum. This hegemonic curriculum focuses only on deeds of famous men and excludes works of subordinates groups such as Mahatma Jotiba Phule, Dr.Bhim Rao Ambedakar and Savitribai Phule.
Further Connell speaks about industrial capitalist countries were high average incomes paid and result of it poverty is effect of unequal distribution , rather than the effect of resources. He sees two types of poverty. First, low incomes but it vary in character and amount; some are regular and some are irregular paid. Second, a type of poverty is economic deprivation.
Compensatory education was seen as a means to break into this cycle and derail the inheritance of poverty. Cycle of poverty emerged over there, where low aspiration and poor support for children led to low educational achievement. It also led them toward labor market failure and poverty is the next generation. On the contrary, I see in India poverty is seen as lack of professional education and marketable skills, high growth rate of population, lack of entrepreneurship, low rate of capital formation, casteism / racism, lack of infrastructure, inadequate foreign investment, so and so. It may also be pointed out that the choice to people? Police makers to root out poverty and say casteism, education or health, a lot of people would like to give much more priority to eliminate poverty. The fact is that most of them are unable to structure and focus attention on poverty alone and result of that poverty gets lesser attention. The basic requirement is the need to understand the principle of poverty before such a discussion can be conducted and led to its normal conclusion.
Connell talks that compensatory education publically funded programs were set up in the 1960s and 1970s in those countries. This program was meant to compensate for disadvantaged groups. In those programs disadvantaged minority groups children were targeted. They selected the children in their school by formulating (cut-off point) involving a poverty line calculation. But the fundamental point is that class inequality is a problem regarding school system as whole. In compensatory program, determining the cut –off point leads to unending dispute over which school should be on the list for funds. Poor children are not facing separate problem .They face the worst effect of a larger pattern.
It seems sometime surprise that what is happening in India,(a democratic country) those who advocate their children excellent performance and education obviously believe in genes. For years a heredity-versus-environment debate has been raging throughout the world. More and more people now believe that genes and heredity are meaningless concepts (it is thought of by those determined to perpetuate their hegemony in every field). But the right environment and proper resources can bring out many hidden talents of even if it seems ordinary individuals. So the failure of equal access is seen from the institutions to the families they served. Families and children become the bearers of a deficit for which the institutions should compensate.
Again, Connell further discusses that schools are literally power-full institutions which control the exercises over the didactic situation processes in context of school , it would not be untrue to say that school seeks to explain and justify its own existence as a way of life whether may be school ,family, religion. Marxist theorist Louis Althusser talks about the network of institutions that monitor the values and rules of the Ideology State Apparatus [ISA]. In fact, school, religion, the mass-media, trade union and sport serve social function. They contribute maintaining the social order. And it encourages loyalty to the state and obedience to its authority.
Connell speaks about teachers’ work and relationships to state power and the importance of teacher professionalism as a system of indirect control. Professionalism is an factor attaching teachers to the hegemonic curriculum. I agree with classroom control. It may not appear on the school curriculum but people learn about it at school. In practice, they can hardly avoid getting wise to the ins and out of classroom control because it is one of the fundamental features of school life. Teachers know it , pupils know it ,and the public knows it. There are three key factors which are important to teachers’ understanding about classroom control. First there is a basic knowledge that pupils are not always willing partners to the learning process and that the work of the teacher involves a custodian element. It becomes necessary an ability to control the behavior of pupils. Apart from other important teacher skills, teacher recognizes that success at their job necessary involves a capacity to establish and maintain classroom control.
The second factor is that in attaining classroom control, teachers are expected to operate as individuals. The closed classroom resembles the teaching about the teachers’ responsibilities and they establish and reinforce the autonomy of the classroom teacher. The third key factor is that teachers have to rely on man-management techniques to achieve the necessary control. It is because they operate with large groups of pupils’ .They have few technical resources available and teachers’ method for gaining the control.
School teachers operate instead of parents. Their rights and duties are taken to be the same as that of a parent to his/her child. As Martyn talks about ‘‘the teachers are sent into the classroom with a legitimate power and authority, vested in him by society through legislation and through custom. This authority carries with it a responsibility to exercise some control over the life of the class.’’
Lisa D. Delpit’s essay ‘The Silenced Dialogue’ talks about Black teachers and students experiences in a predominantly White university classes. He believes that debate over ‘skill’ versus ‘process’ approaches can lead to an understanding of the alienation and miscommunication and thereby to an understanding of the ‘silenced dialogue’. According to her there are five aspects of culture of power.
i-Issues of power are enacted in classrooms
ii-There are rules for participating in power ;that is, there is a ‘culture of power’.
iii-The rules of the culture of power are a reflection of the rules of the culture of those who have power.
iv- If you are not already a participant in the culture of power , being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power easier.
v- Those with power are frequently least aware of –or least willing to acknowledge –its existence. Those with less power are often most aware of this existence.
He talks about the teacher’s role is to maintain the full attention of the group by continuous questioning , eye contact , figure snaps, hand claps, and other gestures and initiating sort of award system. He strongly advocates that school’s job is to attempt to transmit another culture that children must learn at home in order to survive in their communities.
Beatrice Avalos put emphasis in her essay ‘Education for the Poor’ improving the education of poor. She first talks about lip-service is offered everywhere to the concept of education as human right and to a consideration of the poverty. According to her poor in a positive sense it means who are free from excess riches and despotic use of power. She perceives poverty as material deprivation, lack of instrument, lack of effective power. Value of education has different implication for individuals and groups. For some people education means the repetition of many meaningless words.
She opines that ‘’education means both the potential to assist in the development of the capacities and skills that facilitate the person’s immediate world of tools, custom and language. Education means also to help in the self-transcendence towards higher orders of practical and intellectual activity affected through self-conscious, autonomous and responsible choices. Education must help develop understandings through facilitating access to instrument that make this possible, and equally must develop the skills, attitudes, and feelings that enable communication and social living.’’ Her aim of education is quite similar what Paule feire speaks non-banking education and education oriented towards critical awareness of self and environment.
It apears that when we say quality education, we should define the meaning of quality. Quality has had many interpretations over the years. It is everybody’s concern. If it is not so realized, it is a kind of policing. Quality has different meanings. In general quality is understood as gratification that the purchased product is of good quality. The modern view not includes performance but also timely delivery. Belated delivered good products also will be called lacking in quality. In the same way educational institution should have facilities which will help students complete their course within the prescribed period of study. To achieve this quality education, the infrastructure, facilities and other equipments at optimum level of efficiency is therefore, is crucial.
Finally, one can conclude by stating that compensatory programs were meant to level disadvantaged children back into mainstream schooling and the success of these programs could be measured by student’s progress in the established curriculum. The Poverty is a key element in the prevention of getting education from school. At the same time, it is also one of the main obstacles to provide quality education for all children. So evidence indicates that both the quality education and access can play a key role in parents’ decisions regarding whether children study or work?
REFERENCES
1- Martyn Denscombe ; Classroom Control , pub.1985 , British Library Cataloguing in Publication data.
2- R.W. Connell: Teachers’ Work, Pub. In 1985 , George Allen and Unwin Australia Pty Ltd
3- William Glasser , M.D. ; Control Theory in the Classroom, Harper and row , Publishers, New York.
4-Hellen Klusek Hamilton; Teacher’s Strategies, Library of congress Cataloguing –in-Publication data.
5-Robertson ,J (1981) Effective Classroom Control, Hodder and Stoughton, Sevenoaks, Kent.
6-Louis Althusser; Lenin and Philosophy and others Essays, Monthly Review Press 1971
7- Connell, R.W. (1994) “Poverty and Education” Harvard Educational Review 64(2) 125-49.
8-Delpit, Lisa, D. “The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children” Harvard Educational Review 58(3)
9-Avalos, B. 'Quality or Relevance', British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.13, No.4,1992
10- D. Raja is National Secretary, Communist Party of India, and a Member of the Rajya Sabha , article pub. in The Hindu, dated 14th Feb.
