It is almost impossible to imagine a life without conflict. Though conflict is a pejorative term entailing negativity—both of sentiments and actions—it need not necessarily have negative consequences for self and society. History is replete with examples where conflict has led to building of better societies, discarding of evil customs and end of oppression.
As an educationist, I am naturally inclined to study the impact of such conflict (communal tension/riots, caste conflict, external armed conflict) on children’s lives and schooling. Disheartening as it is, it is fairly easy to speculate, if not comprehend its implications. Like based on what is happening in Afghanistan, we can safely assume that children’s schooling has got severely impacted and this disruption has consequences for their learning. Added to this is the pain of losing someone in their family or friends and the need to fill up the emotional vacuum caused in their lives and the enormous anxiety they are going through, desperately seeking support to make sense of what’s going on around them. Psychologists have repeatedly pointed out the severe consequences of conflict on children’s health, especially mental health and reiterated the urgent need to address children’s concerns.
The focus of this article is a bit different though. It tries to comprehend whether and how the Indian school education system helps children to understand and deal with conflict.
Gap between Inside & Outside Classrooms
Schools are often described as temples of learning. Taken quite literally, it means that the boundaries between schools and the outside world are sharply defined. The world which the child lives in, their knowledge, experiences and perceptions are kept as far away from school as possible. What helps achieve this division is a clearly defined syllabus, textbooks, classroom processes, evaluation procedures. The children also are smart enough to realize that the general world is very different from the world of school, and since schools as formal institutions of learning grade and certify acquisition of knowledge, the students put all their energy in acquiring marks by prioritizing school knowledge over the knowledge that they acquire outside school.
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Interestingly, Indian society is divided in multiple layers based on caste, class, ethnicity, gender, etc., making conflict an everyday phenomenon in their lives. This differentiated positioning of the child impacts rather directly their identities and experiences. For example, a Dalit child, especially from a rural area, learns very early in life that they will be discriminated against in almost every walk of life—place where they live, their access to basic human rights such as land, water and basic facilities, and their interactions with others. Om Prakash Valmiki’s Joothan takes us through a very painful account of the humiliation and the oppression that he had to suffer on account of being a Dalit child. G. Wankhede’s book, My Life: The Journey of a Dalit Sociologist, also recounts the travails of being born a Dalit in the Indian society.
Similarly, a Muslim child will already perhaps be aware of the implications of their belonging to a minority community. Nazia Erum’s book, Mothering a Muslim, talks about multiple ways in which Muslim children across a variety of schools, even in metropolitan cities of India, are teased. The taunts range from being called a Paki to terrorist. Similarly, girls very early in their life realize that society treats them as being less important than boys. It must also be acknowledged that children not just experience these hierarchies in a benign manner, but also experience violence at some stage.
Turning a Blind Eye to Ugliness
The Indian education system, however, plays it safe and turns a blind eye to all the ugliness of the society. It neither acknowledges conflict, nor entertains any discussion or query around it. In fact, the world over, there were what were called safe textbooks in social sciences, which eschewed any mention of conflict. It was believed that children should be kept away from harsh realities of the world and made to believe that all was well in the society they lived in. It is a bit strange as to why school education would maintain safe distance from the very conflict that children experience in their day to day lives. Moreover, classrooms are also sites of conflict, where the ugliness of social division manifests itself in both subtle and obvious ways.
The focus of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in the late 1960s was to promote national integration among children through textbooks. So irrespective of the subject or discipline the textbook was about, they all talked about ideas around national integration such as “Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai, apaas main hain bhai bhai.” By not acknowledging conflict or simply paying lip service to such slogans, it’s difficult to comprehend how these books would promote national integration.
In 2005, the NCERT formulated national curriculum framework for school education. It reiterated that the gap between school education and children’s world needed to be reduced, textbooks should not be the only source of knowledge, memorization could not be equated to learning and assessments should support children’s learning rather than quizzing them on what they may not know. Conflict was openly acknowledged and problems such as marginalization of communities, be it due to caste, class, religion, ethnicity and gender, were discussed and not shunned. These books and the pedagogy advocated by them marked a significant leap from the past.
It has been 15 years since these textbooks were written and it’s important that they are reexamined. NCERT is in the process of revising its curricular framework and textbooks in consonance with the National Education Policy, 2020. When most people would think that this is a welcome change, the only concern is the NEP’s overwhelming focus on foundational skills of literacy and numeracy and learning outcomes as the central goal of all school education might demand a shift in its pedagogic approach from meaning-making to acquiring basic skills.
The author is Professor and Dean, School of Education, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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