This continues the argument in the previous column.
SHOULD PARENTHOOD NEED QUALIFICATION?
Last November I wrote a column
proposing that boys should have to take a test to qualify for being allowed to
be schooled with girls. Of two mothers, one said that girls could learn to
survive in a men’s world only by dealing with boys at an early age: that she
had so much trouble handling her male colleagues because she went to a girls’
school, and she had sent her daughter to a coeducational school. Another mother
wrote just the opposite: that she would never have succeeded so well in an IIM
and later in professional life if she had not been sheltered in a girls’
school. But she said something else that was interesting: that parents should
also have to qualify to send a child to school. That set me thinking.
There are supposed to be 3½
million adults in California alone who are functionally illiterate – that is,
who cannot take a written driving test or fill in an official form. California
has a special problem because many have migrated from Mexico and do not know
English. But the whole of US has a problem with public schooling: it leaves
millions uneducated.
The conservative diagnosis of the
problem is that teachers in government schools have secure jobs and do not
teach; the solution is to introduce competition. Ever since racially separate
schools were struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1960s, children have a
right and an obligation to go to a neighbourhood government school. So they are
obliged to go to one of the nearest government schools – unless their parents
pay to send them to private school. If the nearest school does not teach,
it is just the children’s bad luck. What the conservatives advocate is that
children should be given all or part of the cost the state government incurs to
go and spend it on attending any school of their choice. Naturally, teachers’
unions oppose such proposals tooth and nail.
But three States have introduced
school vouchers on a limited scale. Florida has started giving schoolchildren a
standardized test. If a school’s students fail the test twice in four years,
then they can go to another school; the State would give the child the tuition
fee in a private school or the average cost per student in the district’s
government schools, whichever is lower. The tests were introduced only
recently, so only 53 students have migrated, but soon 60,000 will become
eligible. Ohio has introduced a pilot project in Cleveland. If a family’s
income is below twice the federally defined poverty level, its children qualify
to migrate to a private school. They are given 90 per cent of the fee if the
family is below the poverty line and 75 per cent if it is below twice the
poverty line, but in no case more than $2250 a year. The lucky children are
chosen by lottery – 3484 this year. The Milwaukee scheme is similar: the cutoff
is 175 per cent of the poverty level, and the maximum fee payable is $5106. Not
more than 15 per cent of the students of government schools can migrate; this
year the number is 7996. In addition, rich activists have privately funded a
Children’s scholarship fund. Their limit is 270 per cent of the poverty level. They contribute a part of the fee; the average is $1000. They get 1.25 million
applications, and fund about 40,000 students.
Jodi Wilgoren of The New York Times visited two schools
in Florida that had lost students as a result of migration; the impact on them
was electric. They have recruited more teachers and reduced class size. They
have dropped science and social studies which do not figure in the State tests,
and started concentrating on eligible subjects – reading, writing and
mathematics. They have stopped school picnics, and instead introduced “test
fairs” – on Saturdays the children come and take mock tests. The tests
typically involve multiple-choice questions; so the students are taught how to
narrow down the choice – and thus increase the probability of getting the
answer right. In other words, the schools have become more like the private
tutorial classes one finds all over India.
Not all the arguments against
school vouchers are self-serving: the question is, how far is the poor
performance of children the fault of teachers, and how far due to other causes.
Poorly performing children come from poor families, often families headed by
single mothers or even grandmothers, for many single mothers abandon the
children and grandmothers adopt them out of pity. They come from families which
have never seen a book. They are often children seen as superfluous or a
nuisance, who never get any sympathy from adults. America’s youngest murderer,
a child of six, shot dead a girl in his class in February. His 25-year-old
father was in jail, his mother was a drug addict. He had no bed in his house,
and slept wherever he could find space and peace. It is doubtful if he got
regular meals. Newborns or infants are often found left dead in rubbish heaps.
Not all families are this bad. But there are many families in which children
live on sufferance; education is a very low priority amongst the parents of
such children.
Besides, if children are allowed
to migrate, not all will be able to. Only those can who are taken by better
schools. The better schools will also be worried about their standards, and
will take only the better students. So the poor schools will be left with the
worst students, and will become even more hopeless.
Even if the government pays the
entire fees of a private school, sending a child to one inevitably entails
additional costs for books, materials, uniforms etc; in India there would also
be the costs of the schools’ ad hoc demands for money. A family has to be able
and prepared to incur these. Really poor families may not be able to.
And then, a child does not become
good simply by going to a good school. It becomes good by doing homework. It
must have the minimum space and quiet at home to do it; and it would do far
better if its parents actually helped her. These familial inputs are not
available to many American children.
In a free society like America, it would be unthinkable; but we in India should be asking ourselves
whether couples should not have to qualify to have a child. Activists in
advanced countries get very exercised over child labour in India. But if they
have to labour, it is not the children’s fault; it is their parents’ fault. We
might, like good socialists, forbear to say that loudly: after all, poverty is
a misfortune, not a fault. But one does not have to pass on the misfortune to a
child; that is sheer cruelty. Especially these days when conception is
perfectly controllable, surely it is not unreasonable to expect people to
control it if they do not have the means to bring up a child. They can have all
the fun without the responsibility of bringing up a child.
