Education as a For-Profit Enterprise

An article about the for-profit sector in K-12 education posted on Twitter got me all worked up and the 140 character twitter rant limit means that it is now a (long overdue) blog post.

While it is an open secret that most schools are run as for-profit enterprises, making money in the name of building funds, donations, non-refundable deposits (what in the world is that?) and even each pair of school socks that they sell, this article removed even the emperor's garment from the greed of the sector.

It is scary when educating the future of a nation gets measured against profit. To me the article seems to show that the *entire* focus is on profit, with the quality of education being an unintended by-product, if at all.

Good teachers, like good professionals in any field, are few and far between. They are far more valuable than a "curriculum", no matter how great it is. A great teacher doesn't need a curriculum while the best of curricula are rendered useless by bad or even mediocre teachers.

These for-profit enterprises would do well to reflect on the fact that they are playing with the future of the nation by setting up schools without a thought to the quality of teachers and thereby education they serve up.

My views on the RTE

The Right To Education (RTE) Act that got passed in India has been in the news lately. Most recently, I watched an "interview" of Kapil Sibal, the Union HRD Minister on Barkha Dutt's "We the People".

Based on the information I have, here are some of the issues I see.

Cost
The 25% reservation that government mandates in private schools is going to be funded "by the money spent by government on each child". That is Rs 13,000 according to Mr Sibal. I will pay close to Rs 80,000 this academic year for my son, excluding bus, cafetaria, and uniform costs. Who will bridge the gap?

According to Mr Sibal, school fee is a state subject and 90% of the states do not regulate it in any way. So what does this mean? The remaining 75% of parents will have to bear the difference for the 25% reserved seats. This is *completely* unfair -- a triple whammy. I pay taxes, I pay education cess on taxes and THEN I pay to subsidize 25% of the reserved seats in school!

Overturning Capitalism?
Mr Sibal did mention that private schools are for-profit enterprises (they are -- they make money on everything including a pair of school socks), and they should "use that profit" fund the 25% reserved seats.

My first response to that is "yeah right". A more considered response is this: why single the for-profit education sector? Why not mandate that ALL for-profit enterprises should put aside "x"% of their profits for education? But hey, isn't this ALREADY happening when we pay taxes and education cess?

Impact on the child
This one applies to private schools where the medium of instruction is English. By class 1, children are expected to be able to read and write English fairly fluently. I don't see any plan of pre-tutoring the children coming into the reserved seats, so they can cope with the medium of instruction. Or is this simply going to be fodder for the local governments to convert the medium of instruction of ALL schools to the local language? (I live in Bangalore where there was a huge ruckus over this issue a few years ago.)

Private School Infrastructure
Are the reserved seats going to come at the expense of "regular" seats or will they be additional seats? The former will impact "non-economically weak" parent; the latter raises the question: who will bear the infrastructure costs of additional classrooms, labs and so on?

To quote Mr Sibal again, 7% of schools in India are private and the rest of the "expenditure" on education is done by the government. These 7% schools cater to ~20% of school going children. This is already disproportionate. and additional seats will mean that 7% of schools will now cater to over 25% of school going children.

Yeh Hai India Meri Jaan
Let's face it -- we live in a country where bribes, sifaarish based on money changing hands, favors and the like rule the roost. I don't see safeguards in place to prevent the 25% reservation from becoming a hotbed of corruption. Mr Sibal did mention "neighbourhood committees" in "catchment areas" but they don't seem adequate to me.


Passing the Buck
It seems to me that reservation of seats in private schools is a fantastic way for the government to pass the buck on building a really solid public school infrastructure -- which is what we really need. My fear is that as with most government schemes, a couple of schools will be built, a few ribbons cut and then the rest of the money will either get squandered or siphoned off.

Conclusion
IMO, RTE is next-gen Garibi Hatao for the Congress and its allies. It will surely win elections. Provide education for all? Remains to be seen.

Summer breaks are far too long

It's that dreaded time of the year again when school will be out for *two* months. Summer.

Most parents scramble around at this time of the year to find summer "camps" for children. Places that will keep children out of the house for atleast 3 hours, if not more, preferably with transport provided.


Why? A number of reasons. First, a lot of moms work, and no corporate job gives you two months off in summer. Even school teacher moms in private schools get just one month off, and have to plan for the second month for their own children. Second, even if mom stays home, people now mostly live in nuclear families in apartments. It's hard to keep a child busy at home without him gravitating to the television or PC. Invariably mom and child will spend some time EACH day negotiating time for one or both. Third, most families have fewer children (or just one), and it's hard to keep planning playdates (particularly if mom works). Children need the company of their own age group and summer camps are seen as a way of achieving that.

Summer camps exist by the dozen, so it should just be a matter of choosing the one with activities that appeal to your child, right? In practice, however, it rarely works out that way. Summer camps are rarely run by people who do it for the love of children or their trade/craft. More often than not, organizers see camps as a way to make a quick buck from working parents who really have little choice. Rates per week can be as high as Rs 1500 for a child for a few hours away from home. Most often, at best they are summer nannies, at worst, they could even turn out to hurt your child (physically or otherwise).

Summer camps exist to solve a problem. The problem is that of a two month school vacation. Why, in today's day and age, do schools need to break for two months in summer? Do children really need two months of "unwinding"? From what? Their air conditioned classrooms?

My experience with summer break has been that it totally kills routines, apart from making the child "forget" what he has worked so hard to learn the entire school year. So there is the usual mom-child tug of war of doing *some* "holiday homework" just to reinforce lessons learnt. Some educators also feel that long summer breaks hamper learning.

There is another (weird) fall-out of such long vacations. Schools these days have a packed curriculum in order to appeal to today's "go-getter" parents. Now, the curriculum is *so* packed, and given that summer break is *so* sacrosanct, children end up going to school on Saturdays in order to "complete". Even in grade 1.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe that children *need* unstructured time to potter around, get bored, find ways to amuse themselves. But *two* months is totally excessive.


Isn't this a completely solvable problem?

Here's my solution. Shorten summer break to three weeks. Add two of those five weeks left over to the school year to ensure that there is no school on Saturday. That leaves us with three weeks. Use those three weeks for activities that parents normally look for in summer camps. Puppetry, woodwork, speech, drama, skating, swimming, basketball, cricket, ... the list is endless.

This, IMO, would make for a truly well-rounded school curriculum and also make a world of difference to working parents.

Views?

Blogging reminds me of school

I remember a dreaded task in school language examinations -- reading a "comprehension" passage and then being asked to write a "title" that appropriately summed it up.

Well, each time a write a blog post, I am *very* verbose, right till the point I need to hit "Publish". I don't like publishing untitled work and finding the right title is sometimes hard. Each time I struggle to title my work, I am taken back to the examination hall and I still remember my thought process -- why should *I* have to write a title, why couldn't the author title his own work?

*I* am the author now ... :-)

Green is the new Red

When I was growing up and in  school -- the teacher's red pen was a weapon to be feared. The ticks, the crosses and even worse, the angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes struck fear in the bravest of hearts!

Then ... came the revolution. People decided -- no point scaring little children with red lines. Instead, let's hand over a benign green pen to teachers.

My sons work is corrected with a green pen. The same way. There are green ticks, green crosses, and green angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes.

What does he think about it? "Ma, it's wrong, no? It's a mistake, right?" He doesn't like the green crosses and angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes any more than I liked the red ones!

No I don't want to study!

Even as the world talks about the importance of educating children and organizations are dedicated to ensuring there are schools for them to attend, I encountered a girl in class 10 who told me she was done with education.

She is the daughter of my domestic help. She has declared that she does not want to study anymore, and is in fact even completing class 10 because she is being forced to! I spoke to her mother, who was resigned to the fact that the girl has a mind of her own because no amount of persuasion from family or friends was making her stay in school.

Why does the girl feel that it is enough to be semi-educated (that's what a class 10 education means in practical terms -- she can read and write the local language, knows some local history and can do some amount of math)?

Has her education been too full of rote learning that she can't bear any more? Has her education not shown her that studying further could mean a better future? What does a "better future" look like for her?

Education for the "under-served"

What caught my eye about the Parikrma Foundation campaign all over the city is their tag-line. They talk about education for the "under-served". Usually, social workers deal with people who are "under-privileged", which makes the work done with them seem like philanthropy or charity, and there is a huge feel good factor for the people who "help out" in any way.

Parikrma, by calling it education for the "under-served", has turned the paradigm around. The image created by the campaign is that of a certain section of society being *denied* their rights.The ones who do have access to such "rights" are then obliged to ensure that we do not avail our rights at the cost of others, and to make sure that the "rights" are available to all.

This seems to me like the right approach -- all of us, irrespective of our background have a *right* to decent education. Just because some parents are poor, should children be denied quality education, or even education at all?

More about Parikrma.

Don't catch 'em young

As part of learning about weather, season and climate, my son was taken for a field trip to the Met Dept. (Of course, *he* had a blast walking around the place instead of sitting is school doing "work".)

When I spoke to the teacher, she had a different story to tell. She was disappointed by the level of interest showed by the folks at the Dept. Apparently they first asked which class the children belonged to, and then on learning that they were surrounded by first graders, zoned out and were not too interested in talking to them or showing them around.

This is a trend I see all around me. My son learns karate, music and yoga, and the impression I get at ALL these classes is that they are waiting for him to "grow up" before they can really teach him stuff.

Which is so sad. Children are supposed to be learning sponges when they are small -- that ability diminishes as they grow older. And yet, irrespective of discipline (atleast where I live), we are waiting for them to "grow up".

Is this why when people really do "grow up" and get into the job market they are mostly such blinkered, unable-to-think-for-themselves souls?

I wish I was 6!

How education has changed over the years.

My six and a half year old gets to answer "comprehension" questions based on "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss, a "composition" about himself (with questions that he needs to answer), and best of all, a book review where HE gets to choose the book.

The chosen book this time is "Great Snakes", whose "characters" are "snakes, lizards, and eggs". The "setting" is "deserts, seas, mountains, and trees".

The teacher is going to get some creepy submissions this week!

The Cat Report

Here's some interesting homework that came home last week.

A list of cats (siamese, lion, etc.), from which my son had to select one. The next step was to find a book about the chosen cat, read it and then come up with a "Cat Report".

He selected "Slinky Malinki" by Lynley Dodd, and so his report was about a "thieving Siamese cat", complete with a hand-drawn picture!

What nice homework

My 6 year old gets a pile of homework each weekend, but once he starts, he actually enjoys doing it. Given that his Literature textbook is Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, it is no surprise.

Inspired by Cat in the Hat, this weekend, he had to write some of the rules of his house. This is what he came up with:

1> Do not go out alone.
2> When you come from any place wash your hands with soap.
3> In a shop dont get lost.
4> Do not eat much junk food.
5> Do not break toys.
6> Do not tear books.
7> Do not throw things.