As I look at our own work over the years (as well as that of many other admirable efforts), I feel increasingly that we (civil society, educators, funders) need to pay far more attention than we have done to build a community-level awareness of what good education ought to do for a human being.
As it is, communities have bought into the notion that the education being imparted in schools, being conceived, developed and mandated by government/government-sponsored bodies, must be the product of much wisdom, and be useful and adequate. This is in the face of daily evidence that most children don't learn what is mandated, and those that do find it irrelevant to their lives and well-being. This is an extraordinary testimony to the trust that people place in the government.
The government bodies that guide and deliver education in our country have a responsibility to deliver on that trust. But the other stakeholders (civil society, educators, funders) can create the conditions in which it becomes imperative for these institutions to act. We can bring greater attention of the communities to what is really useful for their children to learn at different stages.
This requires paying careful attention to, and bringing empathy for, the insecurities that breed the communities' dependence on government mandates and the relative absence of critical thinking about the education of our children. There are reasons why parents send their children to English-medium schools (and why even governments all over the country seem to be in a race to convert their schools to "English-medium"), even while education experts demonstrate in paper after paper that it results in impaired learning for those to whom it is a foreign language.
There are reasons why parents prioritise their children's rote learning of text over a felt understanding of the learning materials, the memorisation of algorithms over an understanding of process, and a recital of facts over thinking critically about them.
The patient work that is required for engaging with those reasons, exploring, listening, reflecting, handholding and waiting for shifts, has not been at the forefront of our efforts. Too much of our work has been hurried, through efforts to demonstrate "improvements in learning quality" over short time spans, accomplished by training hapless teachers to do better what should not be done in the first place.
The work of building the relationships that will cause reflection and shifts in deeply held beliefs of communities is an entire programme by itself, rather than just an adjunct to the efforts to improve learning in schools and pre-schools. It is worthy of attention, support and patience.
