Reflections on National Education Policy 2016
Higher education is ubiquitous throughout the world, but the goal of higher education varies wildly from country to country and even within a country, from state to state, as it reflects the cultures, traditions, history, and aspirations of the people of a region. Obviously, in secular and non-secular, as well as democratic and non-democratic countries, the goal will be contradistinctive. There are countries where the curriculum (what we teach) and pedagogy (how we teach)—the primary architecture of higher education–are mostly controlled by the government, while in others the architecture is built from the ground up through a process involving citizens, chiefly professors, scholars, and administrators. In an ideal world, higher education—in contrast to elementary, middle, and high school education that deals with knowledge, facts, and answers—should be unbound and liberal in the sense that it equips students with the ability to think critically, ask questions, debate issues intellectually, make informed decisions, use their moral and ethical compasses to navigate through complex social issues and become productive citizens.
There is sanctity to what we teach our young minds so it is critical to ask who sets the curriculum in a college or university and who decides how we teach. Who are the stakeholders involved in the development of curriculum? Broadly speaking, where should education belong in our vast land of India, a land as diverse as a continent? One common curriculum for the whole country will be a disservice to the states as each has its own history, traditions, language, culture, aspirations etc. So perhaps the simple answer is that education should belong to the states, not to the Centre. Indeed, education was a state subject until 1976 when, during the emergency period, the 42nd constitutional amendment changed the fundamental educational structure. It transferred education from the State List to the Concurrent List, thereby giving powers to the Centre to have (undue) influence on the curriculum. Coincidently, in the same year—1976—Jimmy Carter campaigned and won the USA presidential election, promising to make education a federal entity. Until then education in the USA was in the hands of the states. We don’t know who borrowed the idea from whom: Indira Gandhi or Jimmy Carter. One might argue that although education was transferred to the Concurrent List, it is still in the State List so the states have authority over education. In reality, states are subservient to the Centre, primarily for political reasons, and the imbalance in power might harm states’ independent approaches to their own educational goals. A case in point is the National Education Policy 2016 (NEP 2016). Take for example the simple no-fail or no-retention policy. That the Centre—despite objections from states–is promoting a uniform no-retention policy for millions and millions of students from Jammu Kashmir to Tamilnadu and Maharashtra to Bihar to Arunachal Pradesh covering all 29 states and seven union territories is just incomprehensible.
Admittedly, NEP 2016 is a bold document with big ideas, rich with a lot of data about the status of education in India. It lays bare the lack of progress we have made in education despite our good intentions and efforts. As of this writing, NEP 2016, a document that attempts to identify problems in our education system and suggest solutions, is still in draft form and the Centre is soliciting input. To its credit, the Centre is doing a great job of disseminating the information and continuously seeking feedback. The draft articulates an expansive vision for the future, envisioning an education system that is “capable of enduring inclusive quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all and producing students/graduates equipped with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that are required to lead a productive life, participate in the country’s development process, respond to the requirements of the fast-changing, ever-globalising, knowledge based societies, and developing responsible citizens who respect the Indian tradition of acceptance of diversity of India’s heritage, culture and history and promote social cohesion and religious amity.” The issue at hand is not how visionary, progressive or pragmatic the document is but rather, what the state government should be doing to impact and shape the draft policy so that students of Tamilnadu—a state with its own culture, tradition, history and ambition—will be well served. When the draft of NEP 2016 first became public, it was expected that the reaction from the public, especially from academicians—professors, scholars, and college and university administrators—would be swift and profound, but it was rather mute.
Tamilnadu does not have to wait for NEP 2016 guidelines or directives to address some of the problems higher education is facing in the state. For example, while the growth of self-financing institutions—thanks to entrepreneurs—has opened the door of opportunities for thousands of students by providing them with access to higher education, the quality of education in some of these institutions is suspect. Part of the reason is the institutions’ inability to attract and retain qualified professors. Relative to aided and government colleges, professors in self-financing institutions have no job security and their pay is not commensurate with the work they do, so the turnover of teaching staff is high, which, in turn, seriously affects the quality of education these institutions deliver. Of course, one could argue that the premise of self-financing colleges is based upon a free market concept. This may be true, but the problem is disparity in these professors’ compensation and work environment; it is disproportionately high. The state can support as well as regulate the self-financing colleges without smothering their entrepreneurial spirit.
According to the draft of NEP 2016, its mission is to ensure that all educational programmes inculcate students with an awareness “of India’s rich heritage, glorious past, great traditions and heterogeneous culture, and promote acquisition by the learners at all levels that promote responsible citizenship, peace, tolerance, secularism, national integration, social cohesion and mutual respect for all religions, as well as universal values that help develop global citizenship and sustainable development.” A very laudable mission indeed. But what follows in the document—A Policy Framework for Action—does not match the rhetoric of the mission. While it talks about curricular reforms, its overemphasis on an employability-driven, skill-based curriculum, that lacks liberal education will not accomplish its mission of providing students with values that promote secularism, social cohesion, and mutual respect for all religions as well as universal values that help develop global citizenship. As a policy initiative, the document is promoting a curricular reform that will create a common national curriculum for science, mathematics, engineering, English, and a part of social sciences. A common national curriculum is a troubling phenomenon, especially for a country like India. For Tamilnadu, in particular, with its own ambitions and natural talents, it may even be counterproductive. In this context, let us not forget the National Eligibility and Entrance Test (NEET), a one-size-fits-all medical entrance examination for all students of our vast and diverse land, yet another attempt to nationalise education. Another policy initiative that NEP 2016 is promoting is the infusion of pre-vocational oriented activities in the curriculum from early stages “to develop positive attitude towards dignity of labour and develop skills in children.” Absent any details, it is hoped that it is not a variation of Rajaji’s Modified Scheme of Elementary Education, also popularly known as kula kalvi thittam.
The NEP 2016 document is aggressive, rightfully so, in promoting the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as an important tool in education programmes. As part of this endeavor, it promotes MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), which originated in the USA. MOOCs are a double-edged sword and educators must be very, very deliberate in determining how best to use them, as they might do more harm than good. In another policy initiative, the NEP 2016 talks about the role of Sanskrit in schools, colleges, and universities. It reads: “Keeping in view [sic] special importance of Sanskrit to the growth and development of Indian languages and its unique contribution to the cultural unity of the country, facilities for teaching Sanskrit at the school and university stages will be offered on a more liberal scale.” To say that Sanskrit has been important to the growth and development of Indian languages and that it has contributed uniquely to the cultural unity of the country is egregious and offensive. One wonders then when the document talks about all students learning about India’s rich heritage, glorious past, great traditions, linguistic and cultural diversity etc., whether it is the Sanskrit India it is referring to!
There is a big push to internationalise education and perhaps, in the era of globalisation, the internationalisation of education is inevitable. While there is a lot of merit to some of the recommended policy initiatives, they also raise some red flags: the internationalisation of curriculum, the importation of other academic systems and cultures, the establishment of foreign universities to offer their own degrees, to list a few. If the NEP 2016 allows foreign universities to offer their own degrees, what will they teach our students? What value systems will be built into their curriculum—capitalism, communism, liberal theology, permissiveness, western values and civilization? Under the faculty development in higher education, one policy initiative talks about the creation of a Certificate Programme in Teaching, a programme that will be mandatory for newly recruited faculty and will include such teaching methodologies as flipped classrooms and collaborative learning. To begin with, a certificate for college-level teaching is yet another unwarranted layer of bureaucracy; it will take away creativity and produce college teachers as clones. Moreover, phrases like “flipped classrooms” and “collaborative learning,” borrowed from American educators, are dropped nonchalantly in the document, with little regard for the effects that these methods might have. One could argue that independent learning—not collaborative learning—has its own merit and it has been the mainstay of our learning process for hundreds, perhaps, thousands of years. The “flipped classroom” is a relatively new and unorthodox idea from a handful of American educators and it effectively turns the dynamics of how we teach upside down. It has not gained much traction among the educators in the USA, nor should it here.
The NEP 2016 is a huge document, loaded with lots of recommendations, and it requires close reading and serious feedback, especially from academicians. If implemented as it is written, it will have a deep, consequential impact on state education and by extension, the future of Tamilnadu. And yet, ironically, though it is an education document, very few, if any, input has come from colleges and universities, while there have been some sporadic reactions from other quarters. Interestingly, Tamilnadu Bishops’ Council has responded to NEP 2016 by releasing a book on alternative education policy. Dravidar Kazhagam has had a strong reaction to the document: “The BJP was keen to bring it’s [sic] ideologies into the country and tried to bring it under the label—new education policy. In a State like Tamilnadu, education will not be saffronised. It will never happen.” In addition, DMK has come strongly against the Sanskrit policy. Given the political climate in the state, perhaps it is an ideal time for the faculty and administrators of all colleges and universities of Tamilnadu to put the draft of the NEP 2016 in their agenda, to have serious conversations about it, and send their feedback to the Centre lest the NEP become our education policy by default.
Devadoss Pandian, Ph.D. and Doctor of Humane Letters (Honorary), is a former professor of mathematics at American College, Madurai, and professor of mathematics and Dean of Faculty Emeritus at North Central College, Naperville, IL, USA. Email: rdpandian@noctrl.edu