“There are 26 crore school-going children in India. That’s 10 times the entire population of Australia. Can you imagine the complexity and scale at which the Indian Education system is operating?” 

The faculty member paused aptly not just for us to process what he had just said, but also to reflect on how nonchalantly we pass judgements about the Indian education system, the education budgets and policies over lunch and dinner tables. This was one of the opening hooks the faculty member used while teaching the course, Introduction to the School System in India (ISSI) in the first semester of the MA in Education programme. 

Not just that one statistic, but more intriguing ones, many concepts, theories, curricular principles, and history of education policies get introduced to us between the four walls of the classrooms. If the course was just doing that, MA in Education at Azim Premji University would have not stood out as one of the best Postgraduate programmes in Education in the country. 

We also get a total of four months of Field Immersion across four semesters. The Field Immersion is where we put those educational concepts, theories, and ideas on the anvil of the ground realities. This is where a bystander gets to become an actor in the scene.

In my third semester of MA Education programme, I spent three months in Barmer, North West of Rajasthan. As part of the programme, I had to teach at least 20 lesson plans worth of content to the students of a government school, 26 kilometres away from the town, collect data for my student research project and then design a teachers’ training module.

This may sound overwhelming to anyone, even the ones who have teaching experience. However, with the support from the field mentors and coordinators, we managed to pull this off within 3 months.

It is normal for us to be sceptical about the capabilities of a government teacher. I was no different until I interacted with a few in the school I was teaching. I would like to highlight two anecdotes that changed my perception about government school teachers forever.

Communities in Barmer follow caste hierarchies pretty stringently. It is common for a stranger to ask your caste in between introductory pleasantries. It is not difficult to imagine where children get the idea of inferior and superior beings.

The teachers in the school I was teaching at, have been very innovative and persistent in reducing the problem of caste discrimination within the school. The usual place for it to surface always would be around food or water. The upper caste children never used the plates used by the lower caste children. They never used to sit together for midday meals either.

Seeing this, teachers painted the bottom of the plates with codes mentioning the class and the role number. So, the students never mix up the plates. One may wonder how this is a solution for solving the problem of caste discrimination. The teachers put a very important condition, that the codes on the plates are for a year. This means, a student never gets to use the same plate next year. S/​he has to pick a plate coded with the respective class and role number for the subsequent year.

With this, there was a mix of plates of upper caste and lower caste students while being used. Though there was some resistance initially, as conveyed by the teachers, I observed that students made no fuss over using the plates designated for them. All the students sat together for lunch too. However, when the volunteer student serving the food was of a lower caste, the upper caste students made excuses for not eating the mid-day meal sometimes. But, I am hopeful, this problem will be resolved sometime soon. Changes come slowly.

Two of the teachers of the school have immensely contributed to the infrastructure of the school when the government does not release the funds. One can see their names on bookshelves, the renovated stage in front of the school, the rainwater harvesting tank, etc. It is commendable that the teachers do not even talk about it. I even wonder, if their names must have been forcibly painted upon the insistence of the headmaster who is keen on giving them the due credit.

It is easy for us to have our own perception of the public education system and pass unfair comments on it. However, when one gets to have a microscopic view, extraordinary teachers like the ones in Barmer will appear in front of us.

About the Author

Anantha Madhava is a student of MA in Education (2021 – 23) at Azim Premji University.

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