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THE
CONTEXTS AND CHALLENGES FOR THIS POLICY
“Truly,
I say to you, as you did it to the least of my brothers you did
it to me” (Matthew 25: 40).
“I have seen how cruelly my people are being treated …
I have heard them cry out” (Exodus 3:7).
“Education is the key to empowering the marginalized so
that they can enjoy their God-given dignity……As Church,
in imitation of Jesus who made a preferential option for the poor,
we commit ourselves to focus particularly on the marginalized
in order to enable them to take their rightful place in the life
of the country and their contribution to the progress of the nation”
(CBCI 2006, 7-8).
“Our institutional services must cater increasingly to the
poor and there must be reservations both in admission and in employment
for the Dalits and Tribals (CBCI 1998, 5.6).
“Education in India stands at the crossroads today. Neither
normal linear expansion nor the existing pace and nature of improvement
can meet the needs of the situation” (National Policy on
Education, 1986, 1.9).
“Every country develops a system of education to express
and promote its unique socio-cultural identity and also to meet
the challenges of the times. There are moments in history when
a new direction has to be given to an age-old process. That moment
is today.” (National Policy on Education, 1986, 1.1)
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A |
INTERNATIONAL
CONTEXTS |
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We
live in a knowledge-dominated world today. We witness and
marvel at the tremendous progress in science and technology.
Science-backed technology now produces an abundant variety
of goods and provides a wide spectrum of services, in response
to the expanding needs of all categories of peoples. This
has radically enhanced the standards of living of people,
significantly reduced the burden of work, and has greatly
increased human capabilities not only in the physical but
also in the mental domain. As a result, there is more time
available for leisure and for humanizing activities. The
Information and Communication Technology has broken down
many barriers between peoples and nations and enables them
to share easily their knowledge, interests and concerns,
if they choose to do so. |
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There
is also a negative side to this welcome progress. The benefits
it offers are enjoyed only by a few, excluding almost the
majority of the nations and their peoples. Access to knowledge
and constantly changing technologies is jealously guarded.
Even when available, the cost is forbidding. Hence, the
economic and political inequalities are reflected in the
knowledge gap between the privileged and the less privileged
and marginalised. Globalisation and liberalization and their
structural designs and mechanisms have forced open their
entry into the markets of weaker nations, especially those
in the Third World. Access to high technology enables the
rich nations to exploit the wealth and natural resources
of other countries, such as oil, gas, metals, and forest
produce with the technical and skilled local workforce,
which in turn are paid only very low remuneration. This
has led to a situation in which only a few nations continue
to enjoy great affluence while the rest are compelled to
live in poverty and powerlessness. Most of the decisions
that directly affect the lives and concerns of the majority
are made by these few rich nations, thus making a mockery
of democracy, the sovereignty of national governments and
human rights issues. As a result, in our knowledge-intensive
and technology-driven world, where possession of appropriate
competences is absolutely necessary, the majority of the
nations and their peoples have become marginalized. It has
resulted in the present international social order that
is extremely unjust, since it has created a very unequal
world society, with a very large degree of exclusion and
consequent marginalization. |
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Thus,
side by side with great progress, we also witness today
massive poverty, inequalities and injustices in many fields
of life. Fortunately, in the meanwhile, human aspirations
for equality and participation, for human dignity and freedom
have also grown in great measure. However, these can be
exercised only by those few who have had the benefit of
education, and high levels of training and opportunities.
Several NGOs, people’s organisations and movements
are active in enabling poor and marginalised communities
to recognize and assert their rights. As a result, they
use a rights-based approach to highlight these inequalities
and injustices, always proposing a determined but peaceful
approach to the problems. They urge policy- makers and executives
to make a major course correction. |
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| B |
THE
INDIAN SCENARIO |
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Within
our country, we mirror in many ways the above-described
international situation and conditions. Here too we notice
an affluent minority, along with a growing middle class
with high aspirations, and a significant percentage of the
remaining 30-40% or more who are poor, many of them very
poor. These are the ones who have been marginalized in varying
degrees and who suffer from many kinds of deprivations.
While we have an abundance of relevant policies, legislations
and schemes to remedy these inequalities, practical actions
to implement them have been few and have remained largely
ineffective. Hence in spite of these policies and the clear
guidelines of our Constitution, even the basic rights of
the common people, such as education, health care, housing
and basic rural infrastructure remain unfulfilled. Decisions
favouring the big industries within the country and the
multi-national companies from overseas, have resulted in
a great deal of displacement of tribal communities and in
the forced migration of the rural people to the cities in
search of livelihood and the hope of better living conditions,
who often find themselves in worse situations. As in the
global context, in India too money and market are emerging
as the sole points of reference for the maximization of
profits, forcing every other consideration and value to
yield to the demands of economic growth and the progress
of a small minority. |
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In
addition, we face a particular problem in our country. There
is a culturally rooted belief in our society that there
is a division between people who work with their minds and
others who work with their hands. The former are created
superior and to rule, while the others to remain subject
and be ruled. For good measure, a divine sanction was also
attributed to this socially engineered caste hierarchy so
that the so-called upper and lower spectrums of society
internalized it as the will and design of God. There is
thus a long–established belief system, a profound
mindset and civilizational bias, that people are not meant
to be equal. However, in the last three or four decades
of modern Indian history, this socially ascribed status,
this cultural myth is being challenged and the humanly engineered
sharp borders are beginning to get broken down, though still
at a slow pace. As the CBCI proclaimed, “discrimination
against anybody on the basis of caste is a sin against God
and humanity” (CBCI 1988, 4.2). |
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Another
crucial challenge is the growing assertion of ethnic, regional,
cultural and religious identities. There is more and more
intolerance, various forms of communalism, tensions and
divisions and even violence as a result. A call to mutual
understanding and warm collaboration is timely. |
1.7
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Making
a major contribution, through education, towards creating
a more just, equitable and harmonious society is a key objective
of this policy document. |
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C |
THE
EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT |
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In
today’s context, relevant education is an essential
resource for life and living. The presence or absence of
this critical resource is a basic divider of our Indian
society today. India had the distinction of having the insight
that it is knowledge that liberates us (gyana marga mukti
marga). But knowledge had remained the prerogative of a
few in ancient Indian societies. The unavailability of this
essential resource, namely, a good ‘quality education’,
continues to deprive the poor of availing of the many opportunities
in life even today. As a consequence, a significant third
of our population is sidelined and marginalized, while there
is such an over-abundance of both knowledge and affluence
with the few rich and the powerful in India. |
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In
spite of significant progress since Independence, the educational
situation in India remains rather dismal even today. In
2001, India had about one third of the world’s illiterates
— almost 46% and 35% of its female and overall population
in the 7+ age group respectively, that is 296.2 million
persons. Less than 11% of students enrolled in grade-one
pass a Public Examination. More than 80% who fail in a Board
Examination fail in Mathematics and Science.
About
half of the children between the age of six and fourteen
(82.2 million) are not in school. They stay at home to care
for the cattle, tend to the younger children, collect firewood
or work in the fields, tea stalls or restaurants. These
children are thus denied their childhood. Even among those
who started school, around 39% and 66% still dropped out
before the end of Class IV and X respectively in 2001-02.
Only a very low percentage of the rural girls who go to
school reach Class XII. Most of these dropouts and out-of-school
children are from the marginalized sections of society,
namely Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, various categories of the
OBCs, and girl children. Various factors such as poverty,
caste and gender discrimination, irrelevant education and
lack of educational facilities are responsible for this
dismal scenario. |
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D |
THE
CHURCH’S CONCERN FOR THE MARGINALIZED |
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Education
has been a major concern for the Church, as she perceives
it as an essential tool for the full development of individuals
and empowerment of people, specifically of the poor and
the marginalized. Such education alone can win for them
their legitimate rights and dignity in society. Hence, the
Church sees education as an agent of transformation not
of the individual person only but also of society. That
is the critical reason why the Church has initiated this
new policy of education as an effective instrument for the
transformation of our unequal society. The basic cause for
the continuing gross inequality in India is the very low
level of educational attainments among a large percentage
of our priority groups, namely Dalits, Tribals, women, and
the deprived categories of the OBCs. |
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This
abiding concern of the Church had been translated into many
practical actions in the past. The Church has been a pioneer
in bringing modern education to India and in the vanguard
in providing education to the marginalized, and specifically
to the rural poor, to tribals and to girls. Even today,
about 60% of our educational institutions are in rural areas
serving the poor and the underprivileged. The Church’s
contribution in the field of education has had a direct
impact on the social and cultural aspects of Indian society.
Education has opened the many closed doors of knowledge
to countless thousands of these marginalized persons and
endowed them with dignity and status, competences and upward
mobility across the length and breadth of our country. |
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It
is in a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multilingual
context that the Catholic educational institutions in our
country have been imparting education, and thus serving
all communities. Our schools and colleges must continue
to remain sensitive and respond appropriately to the legitimate
assertion of regional and cultural identities by different
groups. This is a challenge that Catholic educators must
address. By providing education to all, irrespective of
caste, colour and creed, the Church does make a distinctive
contribution to attain the goals of national integration
and participates in a second freedom struggle to build a
just, participatory and inclusive India envisaged by the
Constitution. We already have enough evidence of what ‘quality
education’ can do and has actually done to empower
the marginalized. By implementing this Policy, the effectiveness
of our mission in education will be multiplied manifold.
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E |
THE
THRUST AND PRIORITY AREAS OF THIS POLICY |
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In
its two millennia of history, the universal Church has been
responding to the needs of society and specifically to the
members of its weaker sections wherever she worked. In India
too, there is “need of a greater focusing of the Church’s
educational efforts in view of the situation prevailing
in the country where millions of people are getting increasingly
marginalised” (CBCI 2006, 5). The present policy is
framed against the above context. It is to express clearly
and forcefully the Church’s commitment to the cause
of empowering the marginalized. This contributes to create
a New India, a regenerated nation. |
1.14
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The
strategic options of this policy are briefly stated below.
Their elaborations are contained in the chapters that follow. |
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a)
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It
articulates a vision and puts in focus the mission dimension
of our ministry of education, and specifically sees education
as a spiritual ministry of service (Ch. 2). |
b) |
It
provides a framework and gives some indicators to assess
the quality of an education that is integral and developmental,
covering the physical, intellectual, emotional, social and
spiritual domains and thus provides a total education (Ch.
4). |
c)
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It
focuses on our total commitment to build a new and inclusive
society in India through the provision of an education of
quality and relevance to the marginalized sections of society,
namely the Dalits, Tribals, and minority ethnic groups and
thus expresses our solidarity with them and our commitment
to justice, equity and love for all (Ch. 4). |
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d)
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It
invites the educators to provide education of good quality
to all, and not merely to the elite in society, profiting
by the many technological and pedagogical advances made
in recent years in the field of learning technology and
thus make education a powerful instrument for empowerment
(Ch. 4). |
e)
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It
specifies and elaborates certain guidelines regarding management
policies (Ch. 5). |
f)
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It
challenges both the students and the staff to become sensitive
to the pluralistic nature of our culture and so cross the
many narrow borders and walls that we have created, so as
to contribute to the evolution of a seamless society, according
to the vision of the Constitution. |
g)
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It
invites the management to shift those paradigms that have
become outdated and to adopt more relevant ones; to give
much higher priority to the critical role of leadership
rather than place emphasis on administrative and control
aspects. Such paradigm shifts will result in increasing
greatly our present level of effectiveness of our educational
provision. Then we become enabled to fulfill better our mission
in education (Ch. 6). |
h)
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It
invites the members of the education community to generate
enthusiasm and commitment to care for Nature while promoting
sustainable development by conserving the natural environment. |
i)
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It
contributes to the evolution of an Indian society that is
gender sensitive, presenting gender equity and equality. |
j)
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It
identifies several factors and indicators of a value-based
learning climate in our institutions (Ch.4). |
k)
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It
articulates some guidelines to nurture a culture of faith
in our students and in particular among the Catholic students,
and the necessity of providing a spiritual formation to
all our students (Ch.3). |
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