In a speech by Mark Twain on September 23, 1900, opposing a move in certain quarters of the American government to close down some public schools which the government thought were getting too expensive to maintain, is fascinating for both its passion as well as sound rationale. `Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you gain at one end you lose at the other. It`s like feeding a dog on his own tail. It won`t fatten the dog. Twain made the message clear. Whatever fund the government stood to gain by shutting down these schools, would in the long run not result in any saving, for they would have ended up spent in dealing with other adverse social side effects of precisely the closure of these schools. This is a worthwhile lesson for those who handle education policies in Manipur. For education, apart from the well known role of imparting skills and knowledge to the younger generation is also equally about social engineering. Hence, public money well spent on bettering the education agenda is never a waste, and that any obstacle put up before quality education, would amount to a deep stab wound inflicted to the social mechanism, the scars for which will not be easy to remove for generations.
In Manipur, the situation is a little different from the picture Mark Twain sketched. A number of government schools have been wound up here too, but not because the government wants to save money. These schools on the other hand have become defunct on account of decades of dereliction of duty by staff, and criminal official corruption at the time of staff recruitments. The outcomes however are similar to what Mark Twain feared. The death of government schools in Manipur it can safely be presumed, would have contributed liberally to the social turmoil the state is witness to today. In this light, the new initiative the present government is taking to rejuvenate government schools, is not just laudable but also must be considered a very important mission. We wish it all success, not the government`™s sake alone, but our own as well. There are sterling private schools doing yeoman`™s work in uplifting the quality of school education in the state, but not everybody can afford them as they run on the money they earn, and have to put a cost on their services. Government schools, which are run on public tax money, therefore available free to the public, are therefore vital the important social project of building an egalitarian society. We also wish the government can think of similar initiatives in the college sector which too is in a very advanced state of decay.
It is of course another matter as to what quality education should be. Should it be skill oriented, or should be about imparting a liberal understanding of life and the world in general? Should education produce technocrats or philosophers? Must appreciation of art, music, nature etc be a necessary part of a wholesome education? Even as these issues of quality are coming to occupy centre stage elsewhere, it is a tragedy that Manipur still has to be grappling with problems such as teachers`™ absenteeism. Hence in Manipur, the definition of quality education will have to be confined to basic issues like streamlining the administration of government schools and colleges, rationalizing the transfer policy of teachers, handling the pressures to absorb part-time lecturers without screening, resolving the issue of college teachers with fake Ph.Ds etc. Only when these problems have been settled, can the state begin thinking of keeping pace with the more nuanced debates on what constitutes quality education.
But if we must begin all over from the beginning, the sooner this is done, the better it will be. Since the foundation on which the edifice of quality education can stand on is virtually absent, it must have to be built now, or else the present generation will have to live with the terrible guilt of having condemned our society to another `hundred years of solitude`. There can be no single factor to any social issue. Nothing about life is in black and white. But while the basics are being rebuilt, let us also not lose sight of the belief that every school revitalized, every college propped up back on its own leg, would deplete the ranks of mayhem makers on our streets who have made life in the state descend progressively into misery year after year?
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam