Amartya raise question on the state of education in Bengal

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, February 12, 2007
His own schooling was in the state. But Amartya Sen was anything but happy with the state of education in Bengal, at least at the primary level.
The Nobel winning economist rapped the state government on Monday for failing to provide proper education to children, forcing them to seek private tuitions. “I am a Leftist, but I will have to say that primary education has for a long time been neglected in Bengal compared to another Leftist state, Kerala,” Sen said at the convention of All Bengal Primary Teachers’ Association (ABPTA).
“Many people say that I write the same thing about the state of primary education since 1956. But then I have done that because there has not been much progress in this regard. So I have kept repeating the same thing,” he said.
He observed that the progress and well-being of Kerala was largely due to its strength in primary education. “Bengal has more cases of malnutrition and school dropouts compared to Kerala, which is because the latter’s primary education is stronger,” he said.
Criticising the culture of sending primary schoolchildren for private tuitions, Sen said, “It is a matter of shame for us. Other Southeast Asian countries such as China, Thailand and Indonesia have never heard of the concept of sending primary school students for private tuition. It only shows that the child needs extra help to learn and the teacher at school is not able to address his problem. It is an abnormal situation and we do not know how to get rid of it,” Sen said.
“I am not saying private tuition is very bad — even Tagore too had taken private tuitions instead of going to school but then everyone is not Tagore. The problem of private tuition can be understood only when we look at other countries,” he said.
Sen’s Pratichi Trust will now work with Unicef and ABPTA to help revive the 1,200 primary schools in Kolkata by 2008. According to Unicef, the child dropout rate in schools is 7 per cent in India whereas in Bengal it was 10 per cent.
Apart from the administrative problem and economic problem Sen felt the social problems related to primary education too needs to be addressed. “Though many schools have set up a mother-teacher committee, but the formers must realise that the those whose children are first generation learners cannot speak about their problems at open meetings and need more one-to-one interaction.”
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com