“Truly, I say to you, as you
did it to the least of my brothers you did it to me” (Matthew 25: 40).
“I have seen how cruelly my people are being treated … I have heard
them cry out” (Exodus 3:7).
“Education is the key to empowering the marginalized so that they can enjoy
their God-given dignity……As Church, in imitation of Jesus who made a
preferential option for the poor, we commit ourselves to focus particularly on the
marginalized in order to enable them to take their rightful place in the life of
the country and their contribution to the progress of the nation” (CBCI 2006,
7-8).
“Our institutional services must cater increasingly to the poor and there
must be reservations both in admission and in employment for the Dalits and Tribals
(CBCI 1998, 5.6).
“Education in India stands at the crossroads today. Neither normal linear
expansion nor the existing pace and nature of improvement can meet the needs of
the situation” (National Policy on Education, 1986, 1.9).
“Every country develops a system of education to express and promote its unique
socio-cultural identity and also to meet the challenges of the times. There are
moments in history when a new direction has to be given to an age-old process. That
moment is today.” (National Policy on Education, 1986, 1.1)
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A
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INTERNATIONAL CONTEXTS
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1.1
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We live in a knowledge-dominated world today. We witness and marvel at the tremendous
progress in science and technology. Science-backed technology now produces an abundant
variety of goods and provides a wide spectrum of services, in response to the expanding
needs of all categories of peoples. This has radically enhanced the standards of
living of people, significantly reduced the burden of work, and has greatly increased
human capabilities not only in the physical but also in the mental domain. As a
result, there is more time available for leisure and for humanizing activities.
The Information and Communication Technology has broken down many barriers between
peoples and nations and enables them to share easily their knowledge, interests
and concerns, if they choose to do so.
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1.2
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There is also a negative side to this welcome progress. The benefits it offers are
enjoyed only by a few, excluding almost the majority of the nations and their peoples.
Access to knowledge and constantly changing technologies is jealously guarded. Even
when available, the cost is forbidding. Hence, the economic and political inequalities
are reflected in the knowledge gap between the privileged and the less privileged
and marginalised. Globalisation and liberalization and their structural designs
and mechanisms have forced open their entry into the markets of weaker nations,
especially those in the Third World. Access to high technology enables the rich
nations to exploit the wealth and natural resources of other countries, such as
oil, gas, metals, and forest produce with the technical and skilled local workforce,
which in turn are paid only very low remuneration. This has led to a situation in
which only a few nations continue to enjoy great affluence while the rest are compelled
to live in poverty and powerlessness. Most of the decisions that directly affect
the lives and concerns of the majority are made by these few rich nations, thus
making a mockery of democracy, the sovereignty of national governments and human
rights issues. As a result, in our knowledge-intensive and technology-driven world,
where possession of appropriate competences is absolutely necessary, the majority
of the nations and their peoples have become marginalized. It has resulted in the
present international social order that is extremely unjust, since it has created
a very unequal world society, with a very large degree of exclusion and consequent
marginalization.
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1.3
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Thus, side by side with great progress, we also witness today massive poverty, inequalities
and injustices in many fields of life. Fortunately, in the meanwhile, human aspirations
for equality and participation, for human dignity and freedom have also grown in
great measure. However, these can be exercised only by those few who have had the
benefit of education, and high levels of training and opportunities. Several NGOs,
people’s organisations and movements are active in enabling poor and marginalised
communities to recognize and assert their rights. As a result, they use a rights-based
approach to highlight these inequalities and injustices, always proposing a determined
but peaceful approach to the problems. They urge policy- makers and executives to
make a major course correction.
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B
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THE INDIAN SCENARIO
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1.4
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Within our country, we mirror in many ways the above-described international situation
and conditions. Here too we notice an affluent minority, along with a growing middle
class with high aspirations, and a significant percentage of the remaining 30-40%
or more who are poor, many of them very poor. These are the ones who have been marginalized
in varying degrees and who suffer from many kinds of deprivations. While we have
an abundance of relevant policies, legislations and schemes to remedy these inequalities,
practical actions to implement them have been few and have remained largely ineffective.
Hence in spite of these policies and the clear guidelines of our Constitution, even
the basic rights of the common people, such as education, health care, housing and
basic rural infrastructure remain unfulfilled. Decisions favouring the big industries
within the country and the multi-national companies from overseas, have resulted
in a great deal of displacement of tribal communities and in the forced migration
of the rural people to the cities in search of livelihood and the hope of better
living conditions, who often find themselves in worse situations. As in the global
context, in India too money and market are emerging as the sole points of reference
for the maximization of profits, forcing every other consideration and value to
yield to the demands of economic growth and the progress of a small minority.
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1.5
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In addition, we face a particular problem in our country. There is a culturally rooted
belief in our society that there is a division between people who work with
their minds and others who work with their hands. The former are created superior
and to rule, while the others to remain subject and be ruled. For good measure,
a divine sanction was also attributed to this socially engineered caste hierarchy
so that the so-called upper and lower spectrums of society internalized it as the
will and design of God. There is thus a long–established belief system, a
profound mindset and civilizational bias, that people are not meant to be equal.
However, in the last three or four decades of modern Indian history, this socially
ascribed status, this cultural myth is being challenged and the humanly engineered
sharp borders are beginning to get broken down, though still at a slow pace. As
the CBCI proclaimed, “discrimination against anybody on the basis of caste
is a sin against God and humanity” (CBCI 1988, 4.2).
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1.6
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Another crucial challenge is the growing assertion of ethnic, regional, cultural
and religious identities. There is more and more intolerance, various forms of communalism,
tensions and divisions and even violence as a result. A call to mutual understanding
and warm collaboration is timely.
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1.7
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Making a major contribution, through education, towards creating a more just, equitable
and harmonious society is a key objective of this policy document.
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C
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THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT
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1.8
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In today’s context, relevant education is an essential resource for life and
living. The presence or absence of this critical resource is a basic divider of
our Indian society today. India had the distinction of having the insight that it
is knowledge that liberates us (gyana marga mukti marga). But knowledge had
remained the prerogative of a few in ancient Indian societies. The unavailability
of this essential resource, namely, a good ‘quality education’, continues
to deprive the poor of availing of the many opportunities in life even today. As
a consequence, a significant third of our population is sidelined and marginalized,
while there is such an over-abundance of both knowledge and affluence with the few
rich and the powerful in India.
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1.9
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In spite of significant progress since Independence, the educational situation in
India remains rather dismal even today. In 2001, India had about one third of the
world’s illiterates — almost 46% and 35% of its female and overall population
in the 7+ age group respectively, that is 296.2 million persons. Less than 11% of
students enrolled in grade-one pass a Public Examination. More than 80% who fail
in a Board Examination fail in Mathematics and Science.
About half of the children between the age of six and fourteen (82.2 million) are
not in school. They stay at home to care for the cattle, tend to the younger children,
collect firewood or work in the fields, tea stalls or restaurants. These children
are thus denied their childhood. Even among those who started school, around 39%
and 66% still dropped out before the end of Class IV and X respectively in 2001-02.
Only a very low percentage of the rural girls who go to school reach Class XII.
Most of these dropouts and out-of-school children are from the marginalized sections
of society, namely Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, various categories of the OBCs, and
girl children. Various factors such as poverty, caste and gender discrimination,
irrelevant education and lack of educational facilities are responsible for this
dismal scenario.
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D
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THE CHURCH’S CONCERN FOR THE MARGINALIZED
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1.10
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Education has been a major concern for the Church, as she perceives it as an essential
tool for the full development of individuals and empowerment of people, specifically
of the poor and the marginalized. Such education alone can win for them their legitimate
rights and dignity in society. Hence, the Church sees education as an agent of transformation
not of the individual person only but also of society. That is the critical reason
why the Church has initiated this new policy of education as an effective instrument
for the transformation of our unequal society. The basic cause for the continuing
gross inequality in India is the very low level of educational attainments among
a large percentage of our priority groups, namely Dalits, Tribals, women, and the
deprived categories of the OBCs.
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1.11
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This abiding concern of the Church had been translated into many practical actions
in the past. The Church has been a pioneer in bringing modern education to India
and in the vanguard in providing education to the marginalized, and specifically
to the rural poor, to tribals and to girls. Even today, about 60% of our educational
institutions are in rural areas serving the poor and the underprivileged. The Church’s
contribution in the field of education has had a direct impact on the social and
cultural aspects of Indian society. Education has opened the many closed doors of
knowledge to countless thousands of these marginalized persons and endowed them
with dignity and status, competences and upward mobility across the length and breadth
of our country.
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1.12
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It is in a multi-religious, multi-cultural and multilingual context that the Catholic
educational institutions in our country have been imparting education, and thus
serving all communities. Our schools and colleges must continue to remain sensitive
and respond appropriately to the legitimate assertion of regional and cultural identities
by different groups. This is a challenge that Catholic educators must address. By
providing education to all, irrespective of caste, colour and creed, the Church
does make a distinctive contribution to attain the goals of national integration
and participates in a second freedom struggle to build a just, participatory and
inclusive India envisaged by the Constitution. We already have enough evidence of
what ‘quality education’ can do and has actually done to empower the
marginalized. By implementing this Policy, the effectiveness of our mission in education
will be multiplied manifold.
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E
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THE THRUST AND PRIORITY AREAS OF THIS POLICY
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1.13
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In its two millennia of history, the universal Church has been responding to the
needs of society and specifically to the members of its weaker sections wherever
she worked. In India too, there is “need of a greater focusing of the Church’s
educational efforts in view of the situation prevailing in the country where millions
of people are getting increasingly marginalised” (CBCI 2006, 5). The present
policy is framed against the above context. It is to express clearly and forcefully
the Church’s commitment to the cause of empowering the marginalized. This
contributes to create a New India, a regenerated nation.
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1.14
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The strategic options of this policy are briefly stated below. Their elaborations
are contained in the chapters that follow.
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a)
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It articulates a vision and puts in focus the mission dimension of our ministry
of education, and specifically sees education as a spiritual ministry of
service (Ch. 2).
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b)
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It provides a framework and gives some indicators to assess the quality of an education
that is integral and developmental, covering the physical, intellectual, emotional,
social and spiritual domains and thus provides a total education (Ch. 4).
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c)
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It focuses on our total commitment to build a new and inclusive society in India
through the provision of an education of quality and relevance to the marginalized
sections of society, namely the Dalits, Tribals, and minority ethnic groups
and thus expresses our solidarity with them and our commitment to justice, equity
and love for all (Ch. 4).
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d)
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It invites the educators to provide education of good quality to all, and not merely
to the elite in society, profiting by the many technological and pedagogical advances
made in recent years in the field of learning technology and thus make education
a powerful instrument for empowerment (Ch. 4).
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e)
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It specifies and elaborates certain guidelines regarding management policies (Ch.
5).
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f)
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It challenges both the students and the staff to become sensitive to the pluralistic
nature of our culture and so cross the many narrow borders and walls that we have
created, so as to contribute to the evolution of a seamless society, according to
the vision of the Constitution.
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g)
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It invites the management to shift those paradigms that have become outdated and
to adopt more relevant ones; to give much higher priority to the critical role of
leadership rather than place emphasis on administrative and control aspects. Such
paradigm shifts will result in increasing greatly our present level of effectiveness
of our educational provision. Then we become enabled to fulfill better our mission
in education (Ch. 6).
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h)
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It invites the members of the education community to generate enthusiasm and commitment
to care for Nature while promoting sustainable development by conserving the natural
environment.
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i)
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It contributes to the evolution of an Indian society that is gender sensitive, presenting
gender equity and equality.
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j)
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It identifies several factors and indicators of a value-based learning climate
in our institutions (Ch.4).
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k)
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It articulates some guidelines to nurture a culture of faith in our students
and in particular among the Catholic students, and the necessity of providing a
spiritual formation to all our students (Ch.3).
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