A successful failure

EducationWorld @23

Although disappointment with achievements of this publication, which has been ploughing a lonely furrow for over two decades exceeds contentment, there is cause for some satisfaction. Today, there is substantially greater acceptance within the establishment and society of several causes consistently advocated by EducationWorld, Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen

WITH PUBLICATION OF this issue, Education­World — The Human Development Magazine (estb.1999) completes 23 years of continuous, uninterrupted publishing. Given the thousand un­natural shocks that flesh is heir to, and formidable hurdles of public ignorance, institutional indifference and establishment hostility, uninterrupted publication of 276 issues of this pioneer education news magazine posed many a testing challenge. In retrospect even if we haven’t quite fulfilled our goal to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, we can justifiably claim to have advanced the long neglected subject of qual­ity education for all to at least mid-point of the national development agenda.

Since no public personality or media publication is likely to proclaim the modest achievements of this outlier publication which has been ploughing a lonely furrow for the past two decades, and although disappointment exceeds contentment, there is cause for some satisfaction. Today, there is substantially greater acceptance within the establishment and society of the message consistently proclaimed by EducationWorld that universal quality K-12, if not tertiary education, is the necessary precondi­tion for India to attain middle class nation status and national prosperity. Our message that generation of financial resources is impossible without development of human resources, has struck a resonant chord in mil­lions of hearts across the country, and perhaps within the establishment.

This is evidenced by several causes and policies consis­tently propounded by your editors having — without at­tribution as is customary — been incorporated into public policy. For instance, EW was the first strident voice in post-independence India to highlight the critical impor­tance of professionally administered early childhood care and education (ECCE) for youngest children.