One must agree with certain aspects of Prof. Krishna Kumar’s centrepiece in The Hindu on June 30, 2012 (“A messy corner of India’s modernity”),
on the dilemma of the schoolteacher in denying admission to child
brides but at the same time examine some of his propositions from the
perspective of girls who are exercising agency to continue in the
education system.
As he has stated, schools are not to be seen in isolation of existing
social norms and structures whether it is a question of gender
discrimination, girls and child marriage or child labour. Thus, in this
instance of girls in India, social norms entrenched through daily
practices, culture and tradition confine the body and mind of a girl at
every stage of her life contrary to the objectives of child-centred
education. Therefore there is a conflict between the aims of a girl’s
socialisation at home and the principles of education that revolve
around a child’s agency and freedom This has to be resolved. But the
question is: whose responsibility is it to resolve this conflict? Do
schools have a role to play in this regard? Do teachers have a role? And
what is the role of State in this regard?
In answering this, Prof. Krishna Kumar contends that it is necessary to
look more sympathetically at the predicament of schoolteachers. He
states that they have not been respected as professionals and in fact
face innumerable odds in carrying out their daily lives as teachers. In
this context, the school principal who denied admission to the married
girls in class 11 at Melur in Tamil Nadu cannot be blamed. She cannot be
expected to play the role of social reformer transforming society and
carry out tasks of national development. Indeed he goes further and
states that the school principal “is right in indicating that she is not
equipped to run a school for married women. If the government is
concerned about the education of child brides, it should develop a
curriculum for them and start institutions where it can be taught.”
It is in the solution that Prof. Krishna Kumar offers that one has a
problem. If teachers are treated as mere cogs in the wheel, there is a
need to pay attention to enhance their status in society rather than
decide that they are ill-equipped to handle the enormous challenges they
confront in their daily lives as professionals. Whether a teacher is
conscious about his or her role or not, he or she is a part of the
politics of education and must take a politically correct stand.
Teachers must be sensitised and even become activists if they are to
address the concerns raised by Leela Dube in her article. In this sense,
they need to understand their pivotal role in democratising schools and
reach out to Dalits, girls, the minorities, the disabled and all other
children for whose education social norms are still in conflict with the
values and objectives of education. There is a role for teacher
training in informing schoolteachers about the challenges of addressing
stubborn issues that come in the way of disadvantaged children and their
responsibility towards them. Thus having a separate curriculum or an
institution in addressing education of child brides, as suggested by
Prof. Krishna Kumar, serves the purpose of reinforcing the existing
attitudes that such children are to be regarded as “married women.”
Children, even if they are married, do not become married women. It is
so important to see them as adolescents, even if they are married and
not to treat them as adults. In the Melur instance, it is the girls who
exercised agency and courage to seek admission in class 11 and pursue
further education. It is not known how they got this strength — whether
from the larger atmosphere of contemporary India where adolescents are
claiming their entitlements to education beyond class 10 quite unlike
the situation two decades ago; or from the persuasion of activists and
any other supporting agencies, family members that have encouraged them
to study even if married and dare to dream about life outside the
stereotypical role of the girl child; or their own inner strength and
aspiration to study further seeing the intrinsic value of education.
Their education up to class 10 may have empowered the girls to continue
to study even if married. It could be a combination of all these factors
and more. They combated social norms to join school on a par with their
peers. They sought to be regarded not as “married women” but as girls
wanting to pursue education and have the same curriculum.
Every disadvantaged child’s survival in the school system is precarious.
Glib presentations showing gender parity, if based on actual facts may
tell the stories of millions of battles that our girls are winning to
stay in schools and complete education. These children have showed faith
and trust in the education system, and perhaps more faith than the
system has in itself. As in the case of the Melur girls, they have paved
the way for hundreds and thousands of children whose options have been
closed because they are married. In fact it is the children who showed
courage and exercised agency to defy norms and the schoolteacher was not
burdened in any way with either taking on the role of an activist or
that of a social reformer. All she had to do was to support their
admission into school as she would have done for any other child.
(Shantha Sinha is Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.)
Source : The Hindu
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