Making Education a Fundamental Right

Wonder why it took so long? I recall during a Jan Sunwayi on education a Supreme Court lawyer on a question as to why education is not a fundamental right mentioned that it already is by the interpretation of ruling by the Supreme Court and went on to quote the ruling. But that really doesn’t answer the question, I thought, it need be done by the legislature and should be enshrined in the Constitution. Denying education is denying basic human right therefore formally declaring it as a fundamental right puts onus on all the citizens (doesn’t necessarily mean state is abdicating, it indeed is consolidation of intent). The blogger is quite excited about enforcing inclusive education (or community education as Kothari commission put it), this is something long overdue, and it was mischievous and serious irresponsibility on the part of successive governments not to implement these.

Learn it from Kendriya Vidyalayas: This blogger is proud to be alumni of Kendriya Vidyalaya (or central schools), except the first few years I have done all my schooling in KVs across the country. It was an amazing experience. The best part was the class consisted children from all strata of society so you have a boy whose father is a lance naik to a girl whose father is a brigadier and the class teacher could be wife of a General!! (incidentally I always found myself in the middle of things!). Not only that you have people from different region of the country right from Tamilians to Assamese to Himachalis!. So lunch time it was not rare to taste food that you haven’t tasted before. Though the socio-regional milieu was incredible the teaching was patchy (but overwhelmingly better compared to other schools), I even recall an English teacher who taught my class for almost three years without actually speaking any English, she taught English in Hindi!!. There were schools where teachers who gave children ‘games period’ or prefer dozing in class wherein they were supposed to teach (but nobody was complaining and we really had some great fun).

There were some incredible teachers too, I distinctly remember the physics teacher when I was in 8^th or 9^th standard whose husband was part of Antarctica mission, she really taught well with lots illustrations and pictures. Then there were teachers who preferred taking class under the tree than inside the classroom or under sun during winters (the best part of cantonments are there is always lots of open space, big playground and trees -must say Bangalore is being saved by cantonments) which really was great. In one school we even had personal garden for each class and we were supposed to maintain it (as part of SUPW classes), isn’t that incredible. Infact I came to know about the tools used for gardening (extend that to agriculture) like kurfi, fawda…names of plants in hindi as also words like kyari and so on. KVs are also known for instilling sense of discipline and they really took these very seriously, even checking whether the shoes are polished and asking to show the socks!!. Studying in KVs was incredible. There was this song we were taught about the greatness of KVs: bharat ka swarnim gaurav kendriya vidyalaya layega. takshashila nalanda ka itihaas lot kar ayega (KVs will bring back the golden age of India it will bring in the history of takshashila and nalanda)

Post script: in the last blog I wrote about the Bengali editor who lived in my neighborhood, there were many interesting characters. I recall an elderly man who lived below my floor in another part of Karol bagh, now this man was staying alone and had some property dispute with his family or something like that, he was also cheated by the bank he had worked and so every time I visited him he kept repeating the same case with file number and so on. He was amazingly sharp man. Incidentally he was a malayali and so would treat me with tea and some south Indian savories. Why am I writing about him here is that he wrote a book in Sanskrit shlokas that was on Narasimha Rao’s corruption. A copy of this book of shlokas on corruption can be found in Sahitya Akademi library (Delhi)under the name Mukundan. It is an unique piece of work!