India’s Experiment in Schooling Tests Rich and Poor
Shri Ram, a nontraditional school founded in 1988, would seem well-suited to the experiment. Rather than drill on rote learning, as many Indian schools do, Shri Ram encourages creativity by teaching through stories, songs and art. In a typical class, two teachers supervise 29 students; at public schools nearby, one teacher has more than 50. Three times a day, a gong sounds and teachers and students pause for a moment of contemplation. Above the entrance, a banner reads, “Peace.”
Yet the most notable results so far are frustration and disappointment as the separations that define Indian society—between rich and poor, employer and servant, English-speaker and Hindi-speaker—are upended. This has led even some supporters of the experiment to conclude that the chasm between the top and bottom of Indian society is too great to overcome. Shri Ram itself is challenging the law in the Supreme Court, arguing in part that the government exceeded its authority in imposing the quotas. “We have a social obligation to bridge the gap between rich and poor,” says Manju Bharat Ram, Shri Ram’s founder. “But sometimes the gap is just too wide.”
The government feels a “just and humane” society can be achieved only through inclusive education, says Anshu Vaish of India’s Ministry of Human Resource Development, and private schools must do their part. Teachers will adapt, and the rich and poor will enrich each other’s learning, she says, adding that education is “an act of faith and social engineering—but not quick-fix social engineering.”
To give you a clearer picture of the school system in India, India’s government-run school system is a shambles, undermined by teacher absences and a lack of investment. That drives families who can afford it to private schools. This year, Shri Ram accepted 84 out of the 2,288 applications from its traditional, non-poor students—a 3.7% acceptance rate, even lower than Harvard College’s.