It doesn't add up

It doesn't add up


The lead article 'It does not add up' by Rukmini Banerji (TOI Jan 13) conforms to education status in the villages. A good number of village children go to shool, but the classic question is whether they really learn. Sending children to school has become a routine and a fashion in the recent past, but the process of evaluation seems elusive. The family may not have an environment to support learning mostly because the parents and the elders are illiterate. The teachers do not take pains to make each child learn and the approach is casual. In effect, the planned effort of education goes well on record with poor compliance on results. The parents and the village authorities have neither idea or inclination to get results on a crucial national effort. Huge sums of plan funds are spent without getting results and the children remain ignorant of the loss in the whole exercise. To a certain extent, the situation is more or less the same in municipal schools in cities. Lack of proper implementation is a curse in India's national effort and we need to open our eyes to this stark reality.


A.R.K.Pillai