The Miseducation of Jharkhand’s Children

Imparted in a language they scarcely understand, the education seems designed to leave them unread

The teacher drones out a Hindi poem, while most children—it is difficult to guess their ages—stare impassively at books on their laps or at charts hanging on the newly whitewashed wall. Even before the reading is done, there is clamour among the students. As if in a clandestine pact, neither the teacher nor children seem concerned about the indifference.

The fading navy blue board outside announces the two-roomed structure as Dayanmali’s primary school. Hidden behind dense jungles in the 13-year-old state of Jharkhand, Dayanmali is accessible only on foot several kilometres down a cattle trail from the concrete roads of Ghatsila town.

It is barely past dawn, and remnants of June’s morning fog still hang in the air outside. From May to July, government schools in Jharkhand start at 6 am and end classes at noon. Outside the school a boy briskly washes clothes at a handpump. Inside, barely ten children, all of Classes 1 to 5, sit on the cemented floor while their mid-day meal is cooked in the other room.

Squatting on the floor, Dakla stares at a crumpled school bag. He ignores attempts to lure him into a conversation and instead looks uneasily at the floor. An older boy giggles at the failing attempts. “He does not understand what you are saying.”

Introducing himself as Essar Gop, a Class 5 student, he mumbles to Dakla in their tribal language, and Dakla meekly responds: “Dakla Bando”. The conversation thereafter is mediated through Essar, who can speak in Hindi. Dakla is in Class 2, speaks Ho, lives nearby and has regular attendance at school. He replies with the palpable nervousness of a seven-year-old who has seen nothing beyond the wilderness that surrounds his tribal hamlet. He is among the majority of his class who do not understand Hindi. Only three of them, including Essar, from Classes 4 and 5, have picked up some of this language. However, even Essar struggles with Dakla’s Hindi textbooks, painstakingly putting letters together, and can’t manage a fluent sentence.

In Dayanmali, most speak either in Bengali, Santhali or Ho. Hindi is rarely used outside the school premises; not even in the shopping areas. However, Dakla’s classes are almost always in this ‘foreign’ language.

Even the Bengali teacher conducts classes in fractured Hindi. “Children come to school only for the mid-day meal. They are not interested in class as they don’t understand Hindi. Even their parents want them to work on farms instead,” says Lakshmi, the only teacher in the school.

The situation is no different elsewhere in the state, even in areas that surround the capital, Ranchi. Over 80 per cent of Jharkhand lives in rural areas, and 12,000 of the 32,630 villages are Tribal-dominated. Devoid of roads or any means of transport, several villages remain completely cut off, preserving local languages as the only means of communication.

According to a socio-linguistic survey of Jharkhand, 96 per cent speak in 32 tribal and regional languages—with 12 of them being official languages. Though a mere 4 per cent speak Hindi as their mother tongue, it remains the medium of instruction in government schools and Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) across the state.

With an alien language imposed on children from the very first day of school, most comprehend nothing of the lessons. They are promoted year after year as teachers are concerned more with rates of detention than knowledge imbibed. The deplorable status of elementary education sees the recently-conducted Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) ranking Jharkhand 34th among 35 states and Union Territories in the country. Nearly 80 per cent of Class 8 students cannot perform simple arithmetic calculations like addition and subtraction.

This has a cascading effecting on higher education. “In a medical entrance examination recently, only 20 of the 34 seats reserved for ST students were filled. Most applicants had not gotten the minimum 40 per cent needed to appear for the examination,” says L Khyangte, principal secretary, Department of Social Welfare, Jharkhand, who blamed it on lack of conceptual clarity at the school level.

Schoolgoing children are forced to bear the weight of an education system that works against them at every level. The teachers, the Panchayat and the Secretariat are all caught in webs of corruption, apathy and mismanagement.

The State Council for Education Research and Training (SCERT), which sets the curriculum and textbooks for children here, exists only on paper. Textbooks are mere photocopies of Hindi-medium NCERT books: devoid of any local context for children who are far removed from urban India.

“Students here cannot understand even ‘A for Apple’. Children in most villages have never seen an apple. They struggle to grasp what is being taught, until they pick up Hindi a few years later,” says Professor Hari Oraon of Ranchi University’s Tribal and Regional Languages (TRL) Department.

The outcome of the existing system is not a surprise. With their mother tongue shunned as a medium of instruction, most children display learning disabilities. “Rather than treating children as empty vessels, there should be an effort to use the knowledge they have in their mother tongue. This will create strong foundations by bridging the gap with what they’re taught in Hindi,” according to Prakash Oraon, Advisor to the Governor on Tribal Affairs, Government of Jharkhand, “However, there are several problems with implementation of programmes at the district level.”

Until 2011, AWCs, which provide health and pre-school support to children, were just ‘khichdi kendras’ that strived only to meet the basic nutritional needs of children. Although pre-school education was introduced recently as part of their mandate, educational material for 3- to 5-year-olds is available only in Hindi. In a training camp for Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) in Ranchi district, the sevikas unanimously say the centres hardly serve this purpose, and many children are discouraged from enrolling in schools. “How can a boy attending pre-school understand material that is in Hindi and English?” asks Srimati Mahato, an Anganwadi sevika. Most AWWs themselves do not know English and teach in the local language.

In several primary schools, mere communication, let alone education, is made impossible. The sarkari or permanent teachers most often do not know the local language as they are recruited from outside the community. Learning is stalled in the chasm between the teacher’s language and the students’ comprehension.

In a school in Mosabani, a block in East Singhbum district, the headmaster of 12 years, Rajesh Kumar Sinha, has been trying to learn Santhali from his students. “I teach only middle and high school students because I cannot speak Santhali fluently,” he says. Primary classes are instead handled by Santhali-speaking Pithunath Murmu, a para (contract) teacher. On the days he cannot come to school, no one teaches the children. Incidentally, though Santhali has the most number of speakers in the state—over 33 per cent—there is a significant dearth of teachers from the community.

Over 44,000 teaching positions across Jharkhand lie vacant and over 5,100 schools are run by only one teacher. For the past decade, the government has been hiring only para teachers who are recruited from within the community and are proficient in the local language. “The government has now made it mandatory for teachers to know at least one local language. This ensures child-friendly methods of learning,” in the words of CP Singh, Speaker of Jharkhand’s Legislative Assembly.

However, applicants from outside the community who are fluent in Hindi and possess a Bachelor’s degree take crash courses to pass the test. These teachers cannot communicate in the language, but still end up getting jobs intended for members of the local community. “Several permanent teachers who are unwilling to teach in rural areas pay a fourth of their salaries as a bribe to block heads who commission quacks to teach children instead,” according to an official of the TRL Department. Monitoring mechanisms to avoid malpractices are ineffective, as nearly 50 per cent of all supervisory positions in the state are unoccupied.

The higher education scenario in tribal and regional languages in the state is just as bad. Even though there are only three professors for the nine language courses at the TRL Department, the government has not hired lecturers for them in nearly three decades. In any case, with such weak primary education, imparted in a language that children barely understand, very few students make it to the reaches of higher education. The dropout rate at the primary school level is high, and hundreds of thousands of people migrate annually to other states, primarily Assam, in search of employment. “The government’s policy framework ensures that rural children do not cross a certain threshold and remain uneducated,” says Girdhari Ram Gaunju, former head of the TRL Department. “Educational policies are designed such that children born in working class households only learn how to labour.”

About The Author

Pavithra S Rangan