Middle class children go to school. Poor children go to work. And the ones in between go to pathetic schools that prepare them for nothing.
Would you call this unfair and unequal? Well, if you would, then brilliant. Schools are achieving what they set out to achieve. That is, to create the inequality in our minds—the schooled are more eligible than the unschooled.
Take an honest look back at the time when you just passed out of school. How employable were you? How much did you know? Better still think what you use at your job and how much of it you learned at school? Most likely you learned what you did because your parents took interest in your learning. Or you learned from friends and peers and through self motivation (mostly outside school). So why is schooling so important for procuring jobs?
Uneducated children who work on the streets may show more grit, maturity, problem solving ability, and lateral thinking than the schooled minds. The issue is that we think “schooling” to be an important part of our lives that we could not have done without. There is no logic behind that thought, we are just “schooled” to think that way.
So how do we as a society reduce the “schooling” divide? We ban child labor, we increase taxes, we fund free schools, we spend crazy amount of money getting the poor to school. As a result, a child (usually a male child) is sent to a bad (charitable/government funded) school to study (God knows what). This definitely makes the statisticians very happy. In this happy scenario, we forget to ask one small question: What happens to this semi-schooled child?
For this semi-schooled child the world is an unfair, unequal place where his lack of proper education is a bigger impediment than his education is an enabler. Schools achieve what they set out to achieve—to create the sense of inequality in this child’s mind.
I doubt if we can bring equal opportunity by defining x years of schooling as the most essential, basic background for almost all jobs on the planet. I am not suggesting the unthinkable—that is, to employ the illiterate. However, what I am suggesting is to remove schooling as the basic criteria for entry into work places. Give the poor child, at least the possibility, to teach himself up to a level without feeling a sense of inequality.
What I’m also suggesting is to give children the opportunity to learn through work. Design work (that is paid) and that creates learning. With all the emphasis on learning by doing, this should not be very difficult. All children (not just poor ones) can have workshop days, where they apply what they learn or work and then learn from what they are doing.
For example, children learn about hygiene. Now how do they apply this concept? They take up a community project where they are in-charge of maintaining the hygiene of their slum, and the government/community pays them for work in this area. They probably do street theater and travel to villages to educate others about what they’ve learned, and earn from that. Which place will be better for learning? The school that teaches concepts only or the workplace that teaches and provides the opportunity to apply them and then pays the children for their responsible work?
Instead of considering work a taboo for children, making it an essential part of learning will make our children more ready to take on serious roles as they grow up. They’ll have a perspective of things that today’s (even professionals) lack. This will also have several other advantages:
- If children earn and learn, then more parents will willingly send them to these places.
- Instead of working as housemaids, bricklayers, rickshaw pullers—children will be drawn to a more organized and less exploitative work environment that will nurture them.
- Children will achieve some life skills as they work. These skills can be used to procure jobs that require them.
- Children will feel competent and useful as they learn and support their families.
- The burden on charity and social welfare will reduce.
- Organizations may mature up to see these children as valuable assets and not question their credentials on the basis of their schooling.
Many might suggest that schools provide education for the sake of education. I’d say that is an illusion. Schools provide education for the sake of climbing grades and for segregating society on the basis of grades. The education that we got (within the walls of the school) was meaningless. We knew it when we were young. It’s only that by the time we grew up, we started believing that if we wasted so much time doing it and if all organizations think it important, we must have achieved something useful.
Children work in agricultural fields in India and that is not banned. I feel children should work in all areas of expertise. Pull them out of manual labor and give them all sorts of work where they need to apply creative thought, where they can extend what they learn to the society, and where they don’t just sit staring out of the class window wondering where the next meal will come from.
*Totally influenced by:
Deschooling Society – Ivan Illich (I feel every schooled human should read this to release their minds)
Karl Marx’s protest against the Gotha program
Learning About Learning 