The Manipur government novel scheme of converting some government schools into “Model Schools”, to match the quality of education imparted in the best of private schools in the State is commendable, except that there are too few of them to cater to the needs of the place. We have no doubt these schools, probably inspired by the Union government subsidised schools for gifted students, the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, would ultimately do yeoman service to school education in the State. We however wish all government schools in the State were transformed to their standard. But this is not to be, and right before our very eyes, many government schools have withered away, and many have actually physically disappeared. The factors are many. The first and foremost of these is the inevitable drastic drop in the standard of government schools, largely as a fallout of prolonged institutional corruption which ensured for a long time that appointment of teachers had reduced to a matter of those in position of power doling out teaching jobs to favourites, and not recruiting capable and qualified professionals gifted with the imagination and commitment to light up the fire of creativity and knowledge in the younger generations as only education can do. To fill up the vacuum left by these non-performing government schools, private schools began sprouting and in time blossoming in brilliance. Even then, government schools still continued to refuse to reform and thereby wrote their own epitaphs leaving the field open to private entrepreneurs to completely dominate this important agenda. At one point, as anybody older than 10 years would remember, the State became full of schools with plenty of teachers on payroll but no students.
This being the case, the government’s current move to rationalise schools is understandable, but we would still add, not enough. The schools while they were around were virtually dead, therefore it was not the government’s new rationalisation move of physically removing the moribund among them, which killed them. However, whatever the wrongs were in the past, we feel it is still wrong to allow government schools to disappear altogether, as it seems to be happening at the moment. In this context, it would be pertinent to remember what a great writer and statesman, Mark Twain, said in a speech on September 23, 1900, opposing a move in America to abolish loss making government schools: “Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other.” Manipur government should take serious heed of this piece of advice. The challenge should not be about removing, but of reviving the dead government schools. School education is too vital to be left solely in private hands. Moreover, only the affluent can afford to send their children to private schools, so removing government schools would condemn the larger, impoverished sections of the society to darkness. This, as Twain noted, is inviting acute future troubles.
This is not about scorning private schools either. They are delivering a vital service, and since they survive by the logic of the market, have to ensure their enterprises are profitable. The approach instead should be to bring up government schools to the standards of the best run private schools. Given the commitment, this should not be difficult. Government teachers not only are paid better but their services are much more secure, therefore would attract the best professionals in the field. But as we have all seen, talent and qualification are adequate conditions. The more important attribute is commitment to profession. If the government does think of reviving its schools, its first task should be to literally extract this commitment. One way of doing this, as many have suggested, is to ensure those in the education department, including very importantly teachers, have a stake in government schools (and colleges too ultimately), for instance by making it mandatory for them to have their own children study in these schools. It should also think of making teaching jobs accountable by introducing service norms of penalising non-performing teachers and rewarding those who excel, not as token gestures but in substantial ways.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam