Muslims Must Focus on School Education

Muslims Must Focus on School EducationBy M. Hanif Lakdawala
If Muslims wait another five or 10 years, they are going to lose millions of children.
Sixty years after independence, with 40 per cent of its population under 18, the community is now confronting the perils of its failure to educate Muslims, notably the poor.

If Muslims continue their apathy for another five or 10 years, they are going to lose millions of children to illiteracy. No doubt more Muslim children are in school than ever before, but the quality of Muslim managed schools has sunk to extremely low levels, as government schools have become reserves of children at the very bottom of the social ladder.

The children in Muslim managed schools come from the poorest of families, who can’t afford to send them their young ones to other schools.

Indian Muslim community is now confronting the perils of its failure to educate Muslims, notably the poor. Muslims in India have a long legacy of weak schooling, even as they have promoted higher education.

A cursory look at the Muslim managed schools reveals that while more children were sitting in class, vast numbers of them could not read, write or perform basic arithmetic, to say nothing of those who were not in school at all.

Education experts debate the reasons for failure. Some point out that children of illiterate parents are less likely to get help at home; the Trends Research and Analysis Centre (TRAC) survey shows that the child of a literate woman performs better at school. Others blame longstanding neglect, insufficient public financing and accountability, and a lack of motivation among some teachers, to pay special attention to poor children from lower castes.
Education is a long-term investment. Muslim community has neglected it, quite criminally, for an enormously long period of time.

Education in modern India has become a crucial marker of inequality. Among the poorest 20 per cent of the Muslim population, half are illiterate, and less than 2 per cent graduate from high school, according to Census data. By contrast, among the richest 20 per cent of the Muslim population, nearly half are high school graduates and only 2 per cent are illiterate. Just as important, at a time when only one in 10 college-age Indians actually go to college, higher education has become the most effective way to scale the golden ladder of the new economy.
What are the remedies? we at the mohalla level of our Muslim community should:
1. Increase Enrolment: Recruit unemployed Muslims and pay them to recruit children who have never been to school.
2. Mohalla education committee: Identify Muslim majority localities and form Mohalla education committee with a brief to keep the school and its principal accountable to the community.
3. Raise finance locally and spend it on local schools. TRAC survey reveals that the participation of parents and local Muslims in enhancing the facilities in local schools is very dismal. Unless and until local Muslims get involved in providing the basic infrastructure and monitor the quality of education imparted to children in schools, the level of education cannot be ensured.
4. Making school committees accountable using RTI: School committee is a statutory body. TRAC survey reveals that with few exceptions, school committees are not justifying their role. Using Right to Information, local Muslims must build pressure on school committees so that they are more proactive and take care of infrastructure and quality of education issues.
5. Feedback on teachers’ performance through strengthening parents’ teachers association: One of the major issues is the laidback attitude of the teachers since they are permanent employees they take everything for granted. Only local Muslims, by strengthening the parents’ teacher association and making it proactive, can apply pressure on teachers to perform on quality education parameters.

More serious issues like absent or corrupt teachers, low quality of instruction, building repairs and new construction required, cannot be handled directly by children. So parents’ teachers association should interact with children directly and launch their school-improving activities.
6. Removing the apathy of Muslim parents: The reason for parents’ apathy is not only the intense pressure of poverty, which is serious enough, but people’s firm belief that schools and education is the business of the government. If a child failed in a class, the parents would simply assume that the child ‘did not have brains’, cuff him over the head and send him to work. Local Muslims should conduct parent workshop to keep them informed on various issues and also educate them.
7. Organizing children forums fortnightly: It’s always better to hear from children to know more about their problems both at home and schools. Children forums can be used for mobilising parents, obtain information about what was going on in school and homes and so on.
8. Making school worth going to: TRAC survey reveals that the most important reason why dropouts happen - more important than even poverty - that school is simply not worth the trouble.

Parents today are aware of the importance of education as never before. Even the poorest parents send their children to school if the state provides free education. Often in the process, the family has to lose vital income. But if this parent finds that after four years of schooling, the child can’t even write his name, then he has every reason to withdraw the child from school and put him to more remunerative work. On their part, children too are not keen to go to school if the school is shoddy or is not run efficiently.
9. Ensuring the participation of children in making their classroom and school worth going daily: To improve the condition of classrooms, the school and the quality of education, the children need to be first motivated to do voluntary work. The duty of cleaning the school compound should be assigned to students. Children should be motivated to plant saplings around the schools and also start kitchen gardens. The funds generated should be reserved for school improvement. Working with limited funds, children should be coached to make simple educational aids and decorate each classroom so that the atmosphere changes from dreary to colorful and inspiring.
(The writer can be reached at mhl@rediffmail.com)