Almost 180 years after British educationist Lord Macaulay penned his famous Minute on Education decreeing an education system to train clerks for the British raj, an overwhelming majority of the country’s 1.4 million schools are loyally following Macaulay’s education system. Fortunately all is not lost – Summiya Yasmeen 1916. Typical school classroom scene in British India. Children are seated at row desks with a teacher at the head of the class instructing students from a textbook. This daily routine culminates in a sudden death memory-testing exam at the end of the academic year. 2016. Typical classroom in post-independence India. Children are seated at row desks with a teacher at the head of the class instructing students from a textbook. This will culminate in a sudden death memory-testing exam at the end of the academic year. Over the past century, while urban India has moved from the bullock cart to automatic motorcars, from scarce landline telephones to almost 1 billion touch screen smartphones, and from queuing up at ration shops to online shopping, Indian education is still mired in the colonial era. Almost 180 years after Lord Macaulay penned his famous Minute on Education decreeing an education system designed to train clerks for the British Raj, and in the process uprooted “the beautiful tree” of the gurukul system of Indian education based on peer learning pedagogies, the overwhelming majority of the country’s 1.40 million schools — especially 1.20 million government primary-secondaries — are loyally following Macaulay’s education system designed to churn out armies of government clerks. “Indian education was redesigned by the British in the 18th century. Its purpose was to produce people who would be useful for administering British rule in India. At the time, India had already been conquered and ruled by people from Central Asia for over 800 years. No trace of its earlier heritage was either evident or in public memory. Indians had forgotten what it was like to be free. British-designed education to produce clerks and factory workers continued after independence. Amazingly, it continues even today. Government schools in particular, go on mindlessly producing 19th century people using 19th century curriculums, 19th century pedagogy and 19th century examination systems. But 21st century learners learn differently. We need to factor the Internet into our schools and examinations, and set up collaborative learning spaces in schools”, said Dr. Sugata Mitra, professor of education technology at Newcastle University, UK, in an interview with EducationWorld (May 2016). Dr. Mitra is an awardee of the TED prize (2013) for his Computer-in-the-Wall experiment, and has subsequently pioneered the Internet-enabled SOLE (self-organised learning environment) and School in the Cloud innovations in K-12 education. Although post-independence India’s middle class has almost entirely opted for early childhood and primary-secondary education provided by the country’s 320,000 fees-levying private schools, and even bottom-of-the-pyramid households are abandoning free-of-charge government schools in droves, the quality of education provided by the majority of India’s private schools is only relatively superior. According to the Quality Education Study 2011 conducted by Bangalore-based…
