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Rohit Dhankar
But God confounded their tongue, so that they did not understand one another's speech, and thus scattered them from that place into all lands, and they ceased to build the city. Maas, A. (1912). Tower of Babel. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved June 27, 2012 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15005b.htm
Preliminaries
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RtE for short in this article) is certainly a landmark development in Indian attempts to universalise elementary education. Its intentions and many of the provisions are beyond doubt capable of moving the nation towards its stated goals, i.e. universalisation of elementary education. I need to state that up front because the Act has serious confusion in its pedagogical and curricular vision and that confusion, if not cleared in time, is almost certain to mar its potential for achieving the stated aims. The assumption (common place and generally known, still needs to be stated in this context) in writing this article is that to achieve something as stupendous as universalisation of elementary education in India the system as such has to fulfil at the least three conditions: 1. A clear understanding of the vision of what is to be achieved and of procedures and methods to achieve that, 2. An ability for appropriate action, collectively, as a system, and, 3. A commitment to act in the appropriate manner in the face of difficulties. Conditions numbered 2 and 3 above are impossible to meet without meeting the condition number 1. Curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, achievement of desired learning levels and school organisation are central to elementary education processes; all else if only to facilitate these. A serious confusion in this core of educational vision is bound to affect all efforts adversely. And the Act is seriously confused and confusing in this area. In this article that is what I will try to show and may be arrive at a hint to overcome this problem.
Introduction
To understand the point I am trying to make lets begin with what RtE says on some crucial issues regarding organisation of learning, pedagogy, assessment and completion of elementary education. Since the focus of this seminar is age and grade appropriate training necessitated by
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We can go into some details of age-class movement of the 10 year child. When she comes to school (assuming she comes in the beginning of the session) she should be admitted to class 5. But she can not read, write and has no formal arithmetic, which are tools for further learning in formal education. She obviously is far behind in knowledge, understanding and skills in other curricular areas as well. It is unlikely to take less then one year for her to reach the level where she can come up to the level comfortable to be at par with curricular expectations of class 5; that is somewhat abridged capabilities equivalent to class 4 may perhaps be acquired in one year. During this year she is supposed to be under special training where her curriculum is different, her age group is not the same as class 5 children, she does not sit in the same class as class five children, and uses different learning material. In what sense is this child admitted in class five? Her admission in class 5 is purely notional at best and pretension for token adherence to legalities at worst. She derives none of the benefits of learning in the same age group as listed above. This is nothing more than formal and legal acceptance of pretention in the education system. By the time she is capable of learning at the level of class 5, she is of 11 years of age and should be learning at class 6! So either she goes to class 6 and learns curriculum of class 5 or she remains longer in the special training. Second case we have already considered and found her admission to age appropriate class nothing more than legal pretention. In the first case what happens of completing the curriculum in the specified period? She is in no position to really complete the curriculum in a manner that can be described as good quality education. If she does not and is not held back (holding back is illegal) she goes to class 7 and may be working on the curriculum of class 6 there. If there be a few children like her in these classes, say even 15%, what happens to the notion of class? If one says, that a class need not have all children learning the same curricular content, then why specify curriculum in a graded ladder fashion? Why organise the school in a class-structure? If one does not do that (specify curriculum in graded ladder structure and organise school in class-structure fashion) how does one adhere to norms regarding number of teachers and rooms in the schools? How does one gets recognition form the appropriate government authority, if one is unlucky enough to be running a non-government school? How does one decide on the completion of the elementary education? If no child is held back, every child is admitted at the class appropriate to her age, and completion of elementary education is completion of class 8; then every child who is admitted in the school completes elementary education automatically whether she learns anything or not; including the child who was