Dr. M. C. Jain
M.A. Ph.D. (Psychology)
Ex-Associate Professor, NCERT
All the developing
countries are facing crises in their educational system with problem of school
dropouts at the school level in general and primary level in particular. To
combat this problem which is common in almost all such countries steps have
been initiated by these countries with varying degrees of success.
The principle that liberal education is the right
of every individual is comparatively of recent origin. Even elementary liberal
education was confined to a small class of upper social strata (about 1 to 5%
of the children in the age group 5-15), mostly boys. For the remaining
children, vocational education learnt in a non-formal manner through
apprenticeship or active participation was considered adequate. At the
beginning of the 20th Century therefore, there were innumerable small
elementary schools in almost all towns and villages, but they enrolled only
between 1 to 5% of the children of school going and the percentage of literacy
among the adults was only about 3% and that too confined to men alone. The
enlightened educated Indians like Dada Bhai Nauroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale saw
the provision of universal liberal education in the advanced countries of the
West and demanded compulsory education of four years for all children. The
compulsory education act was passed providing 4 to 5 years of liberal education
to all children in different states during 1918-1931.
When the country became free , the framers of our
Constitution knew that society based on freedom, equality , justice and dignity
of the individual cannot be created without literate and educated citizens.
Accordingly in Article 45 they directed that the state should strive to provide
free and compulsory education to all children till they attain the age of 14
years. Since independence, there has been an impressive expansion of education
at Primary, Secondary and Higher levels in India. This stands in sharp contrast
to the chronic problems of (a) quality and equality of opportunity both at
school and college levels (b) wastage and stagnation at all levels,
particularly at the primary level and (c) unemployment of the educated.
In fact, the problem of school dropouts in our
educational system has received much attention during the last forty years. It
has been discussed thoroughly at national level and yet there have not been any
action programme for the reduction of this evil. This problem has three aspects-
1. The first is that school dropout is the result
of weak and defective educational system.
2. The second aspect is to bring about changes in
the educational system to suit the life and needs of pupil who are entering the
school for the first time.
3. The third is that in every given situation in an
educational institution and even at the existing level of facilities.
There are four essential requirement of every child
i.e. food, shelter, clothing and education. The Indian Constitution provides for
free, compulsory and universal primary education for every child till the age
of 14 years. Since India became independent, great efforts have been made in
this direction. However, due to the magnitude of the work and great resources
involved the constitutional obligation has not been fulfilled so far. There may
be a large number of reasons for our failures. Some of the well known and
commonly talked about are sudden and large increase in population , lack of
resources, our single point of entry in elementary education , non-involvement
of the pupil, slackening of efforts on the part of the Government and giving
low priority to education in their plans. Some of the basic reasons which are
directly connected and responsible for these burning problems are poverty,
taking up odd jobs to supplement income, involvement of children in domestic
work, educational background, caste, occupation , indifference of parents,
continued presence in one class for more than one year, poor quality of
teaching, lack of proper environment at home, education system not according to
the needs of society, faulty admission policy, proper school environment, death
of parents, irregular attendance, undernourishment of the pupils, heterogeneity
in age in the composition students in a classroom situation, emotional problems
of the pupils, social maladjustment of pupils, mental retardation and so on.
Apart from this some other causes like physical defects, parent’s attitude
towards school, teacher’s education, family atmosphere, institutional factors
like heavy syllabus, lack of co-curricular activities etc. are directly
responsible for this burning problem.
In short, the element of compulsory and free
education cannot be a source of satisfaction unless the compulsory system leads
to a higher percentage of enrolment and attendance and better flow of promotion
from class to class so that literary is reached by much larger number of
scholars.
