Time to Think, Act Differently

The challenge of education and learning English is no longer just a problem. We are in a state of crisis. Like a killer disease that eats away silently till the body finally surrenders, this country is steadily moving to a place where the inequity of education will eventually be too heavy a burden to bear.

The mountain ahead of us is multi-layered; there are no shortcuts and yet climb we must.

The Current Situation

Firstly, the scale of what we must solve is enormous. Credible studies are constantly telling us that more than half the students in India’s public-school system struggle to read text-books of lower grades. Official numbers of illiteracy show just the tip of the iceberg. Almost everybody knows somebody who may count as literate in a survey or census but can barely go beyond writing their name. Is this literacy in a world of the internet and information? We will have to enable a very large number of Indians – of school age and above – to learn English effectively if we wish to go beyond the semantics of the claim.

Secondly, it is necessary that we drive change at great pace. For the nearly 250 million children in school today the future is now. They cannot wait for experiments in learning English and isolated wins; if we continue in that vein, it will be too late for too many, very quickly.

Finally, literacy is a necessity to acquire the skills needed in the new world. Economic growth no longer implies huge factories of employment as operating levers change influenced by new business models. The future is increasingly unpredictable and though India is a country endowed with plenty – a huge populace and an abundance of natural resources – will our physical size count or will we be overtaken forever by Singapore and Scandinavia who are powered by their engines of knowledge and innovation?

Learning English and Literacy

Most countries have stolen a march on us. In Europe and Japan, almost 100% literacy was achieved at the beginning of the last century. Countries like China have invested and made significant strides in building quality and capacity to deliver education. Travel across Vietnam and it will be impossible to ignore the prominent building in every village or small town i.e. the local school. What will we do to solve our mammoth challenge? We have a large network of schools and do not lack policies or systems. Yet, we are failing miserably at the last mile. Upkeep of school infrastructure, teacher training and skills, vacancies, teacher absenteeism – it is a long list of ailments that traditional solutions which rely on existing methods have not been effective in addressing.

Science and technology are driving tremendous change around us. Behemoths like Google and Facebook are virtual planets of their own. Some countries are scaling back the size of their police force as citizens are increasingly watched by electronic eyes. Bitcoin, an unregulated form of money, is already accepted tender and is changing the way trade can be transacted. A couple of decades ago, when we lagged the world in terms of telephone connections, cellular technology helped us leapfrog the challenge of copper cables to reach over a billion connections. Do these innovations offer us a fulcrum that can shake us out of reverie?

Technology, a viable solution?

In 2015 an ambitious project was launched covering many regions in the country. Over 1 million students in India’s government (and government-aided) schools were introduced to technology-enabled English learning in class. Thousands of teachers were trained to deliver English reading classes with the help of computers and reading software. The results of this project have come through recently. Across board, students exposed to this method have shown remarkable reading improvement as compared to those who did not get the same opportunity. This project and these results are not a flash in the pan. The goal was to demonstrate technology integrated with the curriculum can solve the reading challenge effectively, efficiently, at speed and for scale. The success of this initiative creates reason to consider such solutions for each school to reach every student.

Digital India needs to mean much more than connectivity, communication and commerce. It is now time to think and act differently – technology can help significantly with learning English and numeracy reaching our millions in the proverbial blink of an eye.

The original article has been published by The Economic Times