Opinion
Education and Politics are conjoined twins
Historically, politics has always influenced education. Even today what our children learn in subjects as varied as economics, geography, history etc is all coloured with politics. It is the need of the hour to help children develop independent views if we don’t want them to be individuals who blind
What will you say if I tell you that the content in your child’s textbook is a direct result of political intervention. In other words, what your child learns at school maybe be influenced by politics. Doesn’t this very notion shake the foundation of what education should ideally be? You would be surprised to know that political intervention has always been present in the sphere of education.
Galileo was pronounced “vehemently suspect of heresy” by the Church in 1632 and lived the last 9 years of his life under house arrest, for his espousal of heliocentrism – that the Sun is the center of the solar system and the earth revolves around the sun. Curiously, Copernican heliocentrism had been used by Pope Gregory himself in 1582 to alter his eponymous calendar. This schizophrenic behaviour of the Church can be substantially explained by its assessment that Galileo’s support to the theory questioned the authority of the Church. This blow at the basis of the then political order had to be crushed and hence the harsh treatment to Galileo while Copernican calculations as a tool to change the calendar were perfectly acceptable.
If you think we can brush aside this incident as memories of an “unscientific” past. Let me share another example with you, one that is widely used today, all world maps that schools use (and Google uses) are wrong and they feed Eurocentrism. It is indicated by placing Europe at the centre of the world, but what is absurdly wrong is the relative proportions of the countries and continents. The geographies of “the North”—Europe and North America—are represented ludicrously bigger than they are; the 48 million sq km of “the North” is shown to be bigger than the 94 million square kilometer of “the South”. Open a map and look at these remarkable distortions: in reality, South America is about twice the size of Europe but shown to be equal, Greenland looks bigger than China but is actually one-fourth, and the Nordic countries look bigger than India but are actually one-third.
Even matters of the physical world that are learnt and taught in schools are often on the basis of political values and choices. Let’s take another example from economics. Textbooks in economics from the 1960s and ’70s in India would be full of the virtues of central planning and arcane details of the Mahalanobis model, which seems very strange today. Equally strange are today’s economics text books, which are influenced by market fundamentalism and dominated by the idealized rationality-individualism-equilibrium nexus, which exists only in these books; this stuff is as disconnected from reality as was the planning model.
It is pretty apparent that the content of education in any society is politically influenced. This political influence operates at both levels: to accept what is “true knowledge” (for instance, the planning model versus market theory) and to choose “worthwhile knowledge” that finds place in the curriculum from the universal set of “knowledge”. I have deliberately shared examples from areas which are not usually referred to when discussing how politics determines the content of education.
The processes and practices of education are as political as the content. What is the language of the medium of instruction? Who all do we include in education? If we want universal equitable education, how do we make it happen? Do we think “merit” takes precedence over affirmative action? Do the pedagogical approaches adequately factor for the diversity in the class? Every one of these questions, and many more which determine education is political in nature.
Even more political than the content and processes of education are the aims of education. Education that aims to develop autonomous, critical thinking individuals and to help develop a just and democratic society is sharply political. And as sharply political would be education that aims to develop individuals who are not questioning but conforming to some existing order.
Views from both, the left and the right, regarding the recent happenings in some university campuses, have been unsurprising. Ugly, unethical politics anywhere must be condemned. But what has been truly surprising is a view stated by some which says “there must be no politics in educational institutions”. This view reflects either a very naïve understanding of education or a dangerously political (even if unconscious) choice. And that choice is for education to aim to develop people who do not engage with the most important issues around them, do not question and do not think for themselves.
We need education that energizes our democracy and builds an India as envisioned in the Constitution by developing the abilities of students to think and contribute as autonomous individuals; even this education is certainly political. One way or the other, all education is political.
In parting, all education is political whether it has left leanings or right or even if dead center. So the need of the hour is to be acutely aware of the education imparted to our children and to encourage them to be form independent views on issues learnt in the books.
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