By Fr Soroj Mullick, SDB –
The impact of such retrogative steps on Christian schools would be felt due to: the insistence on merit, forgetting the marginalized and Dalits; financial burden on children; centralizing even the texts; indoctrination promoted by right wing ideology; no mention of minorities; socially and economically marginalized will be left out; closure of smaller colleges in the rural, forcing village students to migrate to cities to larger institutions.
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The Churches must stand by education of the poor and Dalits as first priority, and reassert federalism and equality as a constitutional rights. Pope Francis says, the Church must be a poor Church, to be with the poor and go to the peripheries. The Christian institutions must see how dropouts can be stopped and how to retain the Christian students at higher educational level.
The Director of The Hindu Publishing Group, N. Ram says, “The unprecedented disruption of the educational system, and the consequent loss of learning at all levels, caused by this pandemic is a matter of the gravest concern.” He further states: “The virus crisis has exacerbated pre-existing educational inequalities, which in turn reflect grim socio-economic realities.”
Besides, the NEP 2020’s over-centralisation and arbitrariness in decision-making on issues best left to colleges and universities such as the final examinations, will create uncertainty, anxiety, and distress to students and their families. New self-management skills are required of Christian institutions to successfully emerge free from this NEP’s bulldozing, through collective human resilience, with renewed sense of hope and collective intelligence in building up a robust educational system.
Education Meant to Cultivate Culture
As educational institutions are facing the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, how can they adapt a quality education of the young children who all have the constitutional right to basic education?
For this, Indian education firstly will have to cultivate culture. Here, we wish to delve into an education in perspective, considering the COVID-19 aftermath, with the impact of the recent national education policy and with an emphasis on a technology based education. It is affirmed that the future education is going to be a blending learning – integrating e-learning and classroom teaching.
In order to cope up with COVID-19 crisis and overcome challenges posed by the NEP that is bound to widen the pre-existing educational inequalities, there has to be big changes in the mindset of all stakeholders involved with education. In this scenario, Christian Churches will have to be courageous explorers on the new ideas for educational wisdom and culture. The future of Indian education and its learning outcome will depend on how these educational institutions take up courage to change their educational policies by listening to all that is happening around, and develop its curriculum with suitable inculturated pedagogy with responsibility, to motivate and train the teachers, and make education an ever evolving cultural process.
Christian educational institutions need to be committed to accompany the students in an integral form, to provide the necessary tools for the service of educational quality, to educate humanly and spiritually as “good Christians and upright citizens.”
In fact, according to Pope Francis, the seven pillars of education as a common issue that helps build a nation’s future are: the need to welcome and integrate diversity as a resource; the farsightedness and the courage to face the new anthropological challenges, even those we struggle to understand; restlessness as a driving force of education; questioning and research as a method; awareness and acceptance of limits; and the familiar and generative dimension of the educational relationship. Besides, an integral holistic education will include: sports and games; theatre, art and music; creative composition; creative experience and its exercise to generate a dynamic that involves the person psychologically and spiritually; religious studies with the sense of the sacred; and dedication.
Tomorrow: NEP 2020: Courage to Change Christian Education System
Fr. Soroj Mullick, SDB is a Salesian priest from the Kolkata Province. He has a Licentiate in Catechetics and a Doctorate (Christian Education) from UPS, Italy. He has number of years of teaching experience in college and in the formation of future priests. Besides, he has written number of research papers and articles, and has 25 years of Ministry in India and abroad as Educator, Formator, Retreat Preacher, Editor and engaged in School, Parish Catechetical & Youth Ministry. He is now an assistant priest in Bandel Basilica, rendering pastoral and catechetical ministry to the parishioners and to the pilgrims. He can be contacted at [email protected].