A Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, MARCH 18
Fifty years (and still running) of following a structure that employs education as a tool of information, and not of reformation – conditioned by market diktats – has been manifested in the corrupt political and administrative system that straddles the state of Nagaland today.
This was stated by Al Ngullie, a senior journalist at Eastern Mirror, during an interactive session on the second day of the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE) national seminar on the impact of commercialization and communalization of education, at Patkai Christian College, Chumukedima. He was presenting on the topic “Fifty years in retrospection” of the state’s education system.
The political leaders and administrative officials of today, at the helm of a corrupted system of governance, were once students and thus a product of our own education system, he said. All of them, Ngullie suggested, must have got told at least once by their teachers that they are “the leaders of tomorrow”, when in school.
He used this example to illustrate the point that all through the years we have followed, and are still following, a system of education that produce students “who see goals in life as economic goals and whose ultimate aim is a big fat bank balance.”
“Our education system is creating sellers – those who sell their skills for economic gains – and not citizens. In that context, that is commercialized education. Because it does not teach students about citizenry or public welfare,” he said.
Our curriculum, according to Ngullie, is not coherent to that of a welfare society. “The activities of our education system are academic but its goals are economic,” he said and pointed out that, by that virtue, the students are conditioned by the market system.
That, in turn, has given us policy makers who “never formulate standard-based polices” but only “tertiary or superficial polices”, he stated while challenging the teachers in the audience to really reflect on their calling and the kind of students that they are producing.
Also asserting that though seminars and workshops are important, Ngullie stated that academic activism alone is not enough. “We need intellectual enterprise first.” As solution, he said that the policymakers must first acknowledge the problem, identify it, then strategize and push for reforms.
Another panelist, Dr Kuntal Ghosh, speaking on “Democratic space in Universities”, reflected on how autonomy has now become a tool of autocracy across university campuses in the country. Dr Nishina Nekha also spoke on the socio-economic perspective of Higher education.
In the morning plenary session, AIFRTE member, presidium, Prof Madhu Prasad shared how the commercialization has rendered education as a means to an end and not something of intrinsic value. “Since 1997, higher education is increasingly being traded as a tradable commodity,” she said.
The professor also pointed out that India is currently dealing with two concepts of nation: one, the concept of a nation that is in the Constitution and the other, the RSS concept of a nation with communal character and religious majority. She asserted that that the problems witnessed across university campuses today was because of “crushing of academic autonomy.”
In the other technical session on “School education in Nagaland”, the resource persons were Pheluopfelie Kesiezie, Prof Buno Liegise, Prof Lungsang Zeliand and Asst Prof Narola Chuba.
