It is a beautiful morning and all the kids in India are ready for a new day of school. They arrive there only to find out that their teacher is absent, again. Or their teacher has them feed him tea instead of learning about the material that they need to know. Fifty seven percent of the kids don’t know basic math skills such as division, or multiplication, and can barely read a full sentence (Aneja). There is a major lack of education as well as a major lack of motivation in teachers. A lack of education in India is a major issue, this is a problem that needs to be solved.
There are many issues with the education system for primary school as well as high school including teachers not being qualified, uneducated generations before and many kids are not getting the basic education skills that they need. Most parents and generations before are also uneducated, which is not helpful for the kids because their parents cannot help them or teach them what their teachers are lacking. This is a common theme throughout India and makes it difficult for kids to refresh and study what they have learned in class. Some problems that can cause a lack of education are family background or support, or the lack of. Different socio-economic opportunities, too much pressure on them, lack of guidance at home, lack of structure and the feeling of insecurity (Education in India). The education situation is in shambles. Only three and a half percent of students graduate on average (Robinson). Also, only thirty one percent of teachers don’t have a degree (Krishna). Forty percent of schools in India don’t even have electricity. How students do in school and the skills that they gain is associated with higher `wages and an increase in economic growth. They tested fifteen-year-old teenagers and found that they are five years behind the fifteen-year-old kids in East Asia where the education is much better there. Another issue that India faces is gender roles and problems. These issues have become prevalent due to the violence against girls (Education in India). Changing gender mindsets is crucial and one way to do this would be to give more education about gender issues in the classrooms India, along with many other countries face future labor issues due to the lack of education. Their Prime Minister wants to make school and learning more practical and make education more relevant (Bouissou). All these issues are making it very difficult for kids and teenagers to get a quality education.
Although there are also many counterclaims that are changing the arguments against the education system. For example, they have the largest number of kids in schools throughout the world compared to their population. Two hundred and sixty million children attend school in India. This is more than any other country which is impressive but the quality that they are getting is not nearly good enough. Only half of the fifth-grade students can read a story at the second-grade level, and only one in four can do basic division, which are both fundamental skills (Education in India). The mindset is a major issue because they are more concerned with sending data to the “higher-ups” or upwards in the system rather than using the data in the classrooms to improve learning (Joshi). It is not the kids or the parents fault because it is due to the lack of funding and motivation. The school system is only given about half of the funding that they should be getting which is a major issue when dealing with electricity, working bathrooms, technology, books and much more (Krishna). Another counterclaim is that a large proportion of the issue is the teachers fault. Teachers can sometimes allow cheating on exams. Kids even as young as the age of six are told to sweep the floors, serve food to their teachers and are even beaten with rulers (Krishna).
There are many main causes of this situation such as poverty, gender and mindset. There is an overwhelming poverty issue throughout India. There are a lot of gender issues involved with the poverty. The teacher’s mindset is having major effects on the students learning. Most children are enrolled in the school and roughly seventy percent have a regular attendance. Although one “plague of the system” is teacher absence. Teachers don’t show up for class. Teacher attendance is at a low eighty-five percent. People have many different Socio-economic opportunities. “The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) found that students who have higher confidence in their performance and students whose parents have higher standards perform better.” (Joshi) According to the ASER child education is going downhill fast. In the past five years the quality has decreased. Forty-eight percent of students can read a level two text. This number has declined from last year, by almost a full one percent (Khanwalkar). Parents are uneducated too. The RTE Act only accounts for children ages six to fourteen and after that they are on their own. Forty percent of people are not able to find a full-time job. These failures in the education system leads to a major deprivation of basic needs (Krishna). One report, that surveyed twenty-five thousand households found that four in ten cannot tell the time. One in four cannot count money correctly, thirty-six percent don’t know India’s capital city and forty two percent are working whether they have education or not (Watt). There is a major overpopulation issue in India right now. A survey done by CNN, shows that only about five percent of India’s population make enough money to pay taxes. Less than ten percent have a job with a salary (Robinson). There are too many people to support the already weak education system and there are too many kids to hold accountable.
