Philosophy of Education 

“life 'has a wider and deeper significance.It is the concern of education to come upon it” J Krishnamurthy who stresses that an environment free of fear is essential for creating an atmosphere in which real education can take place.  If we are being educated merely to achieve distinction, to get a better job, to be more efficient, to have wider domination over others, then our lives will be shallow and empty. If we are being educated only to be scientists, to be scholars wedded to books, or specialists addicted to knowledge, then we shall be contributing to the destruction and misery of the world. [Education and the Significance of Life, J Krishnamurthy, Krishnamurti Foundation India, 2004. [B.N00.K11] Website: http://www.kfionline.org

IN SEPTEMBER 1862, in the ninth edition of his educational magazine, Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy published an article entitled, Should we teach the peasant children to write or should they teach us? According to Michael Armstrong, writing on The Role of the Teacher in the book, Education Without Schools, Tolstoy's article is one of the most astonishing essays ever written about education. In it, the literary titan describes in passionate detail how he " inadvertently hit upon the right method" of teaching children to write, after suggesting that his students might write a story about the proverb, "He feeds you with a spoon and pokes you in the eye with the handle.'' One of them responded by saying, "Write it yourself." And so he did. As he wrote, the children began to come up, look over his shoulder and criticise his writing.

Before long, he was no longer writing his own story, but acting as the scribe for the story they told him to write. Two boys, in particular, took over the work and, in the end, it really became their story. Tolstoy was overwhelmed: "The next day, I could still not believe what I had experienced the day before. It seemed to me so strange that a semi-literate peasant boy should suddenly evince such a conscious artistic power as Goethe, on his sublime summit of development, could not attain. "It seemed so strange and insulting that I, the author of Childhood, which had earned a certain success and recognition for artistic talent from the educated Russian public; that I, in a matter of art, not only could not instruct or help the 11-year-old Syomka and Fyedka, but only just — and then only in a happy moment of inspiration was I able to follow and understand them." According to Armstrong, every teacher who wishes to respect the autonomy of his or her students must, perforce, take Tolstoy's question, and his confession, seriously. At the same time, he admits: "To contemplate, rigorously and without sentimentality, the proposition that, in the pursuit of knowledge and truth, the roles of teacher and pupil are often reversible, requires a degree of radicalism that even the most committed amongst them find hard to practise.- Curricula for the Classroom, Ammu Joseph, Deccan Herald, 5/09/93, [C.ELDOC1.N20.05sep93dch1.pdf]

Education as socialization: & Assessment system as the test of effectiveness of socialization

Education is a major instrument of socialization.

In simple societies it may be almost exclusively what we may call 'primary' socialization- the training of children in the appropriate forms of behaviour and skills required by all members of that society.  

Secondary socialization — the preparation of children for particular roles in society  to undertake a great variety of occupations to maintain the division of labour which characterizes them.  (The most simple example of the relationship between educational assessment and society are the rites de passage of in traditional societies). In modern society the educational  assessment , which is  highly complex and problematic, differentiated and continually changing, is a direct reflection of the similar nature of the mechanisms of secondary socialization which provide for the division of labour characterizing our society.  ( education as socialization: ??,  [Assessment, Schools and Society, Broadfoot, Patricia, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1979, [B.N00.B12]

Thus the clamour for different types of entrance examinations, CETs, GMATs, along with so called merit basedmust be seen essentially as secondart soicaliasation, aimed at maintaining the division of labour, albeit white collar, professional or services!

The educational process that a child passes through is devoid of an active values inculcation and integration component in the regular curriculum. This, coupled with the plethora of wrong patterns of behaviour, life styles and role models (also sec Desrochers, 1987) which are available to the young mind today, makes them aspire or simply follow (in the absence of any other) to those life styles and patterns of behaviour. The cycle goes on reproducing itself in society. S/he looks at tile utility of a bit of information / knowledge from the perspective of Board / University performance only.  

The output of this kind of an educational process is a product which is utilitarian and status quoist. Utilitarian, because s/he would only value the degree in terms of a job and the salary-perks-position package which it brings. The creativity which s/he can bring to the job and the contribution to the organisation and society at large are of secondary importance. This kind of education produces disparities, and tragically for the country, we must admit, the system thrives on these disparities. Thc citizens that such a system produces are numbed to the gruelling realities of the times and in that sense, status quoist, because it would never occur to such a product that the reality needs questioning.

- Education: An Option for Social Change, Persis Ginwalla and Jimmy Dabhi, Vikalp, 01/12/2003 [J.ELDOC.N00.01dec03vkp7.html] 

As social institutions, schools are therefore vulnerable to instability within the environment in which they function. They also face diverse student learning needs, abilities and home environments, and internalised views on the part of teachers, learners and parents, about social inequalities and differences.

Learners also bring social ‘baggage’ with them into the school. In Jamaica, as Sewell argues, processes of gender identity that are built into the socialisation process at home and in wider society, have led to a culture of under-achievement for boys. Girls are socialised to be more domesticated and docile, while boys are encouraged to play and have more independence. This ironically has led to a reversal in relation to performance within the schools. Girls work harder and perform better, while boys are seen to be ill-disciplined and unmotivated. These attitudes, which lead to boys and girls being treated differently, are reproduced, rather than challenged, by teachers in the classroom.

Schools themselves are not immune from these wider social structures of inequality. They do not operate as neutral actors in an environment which they can easily change, but reflect the dominant cultures in which they operate. Soudien writes about the ways in which inequalities of race and class are reproduced within school management structures in post-apartheid South Africa, where black parents’ voices often continue to be drowned out by prevailing hierarchies of authority and knowledge within the school. These hierarchies of authority are based on generations of knowledge accumulation being concentrated in the hands of ethnic and class elites, with the result that newer generations of school populations are deemed to lack the knowledge to manage educational processes.

The way in which these hierarchies of knowledge play out within the school is also captured by Sarangapani’s ethnographic research in a village school in India, where the teaching process proceeds with the implicit objective of erasing the knowledge learners bring to the classroom and imposing the teachers’ ‘authoritative knowledge’ on the learning process. Sarangapani observes that children’s ‘talk’ in classrooms is crucial, particularly for rural children and children from underprivileged backgrounds, as the worlds they inhabit and their realities are under-represented in official curricula. The teacher therefore plays an important role in mediating the official world of the textbook and the ‘real worlds’ of learners.

- Class struggles: the challenges of achieving schooling for all, Ramya Subrahmanian, [C.ELDOC.N00.class-struggle.html]

Common curriculum for a democracy?, ARUNA RATHNAM, Seminar, 01/09/2000, [J.ELDOC.N21.common_curriculum.html]

 Colonising the Child: Education as an Instrument of Prejudice, Chitra Padmanabhan, Times of India, 11/03/2005, [ C.ELDOC.N20.11mar05toi1.pdf] 

History, Ideology and Curriculum, MUBARAK ALI, Economic & Political Weekly, 02/11/2002.[J.ELDOC.N00.02nov02EPW.pdf]

Deconstructing Literacy Primers, Anita Dighe, Economic & Political Weekly, 01/07/1995.[J.ELDOC.N00..01jul95EPW.pdf]