By
Sarita Gupta
255 girls from
Odisha who had dropped out of school completed their 10th standard
education after nine months of remedial training and sat for their board exams.
The results came out last week: 158 of them (62%) passed, with one even coming
in the first division.
This is not big
news in a country the size of India, and the only ones celebrating aside from
the girls and their families was a small team gathered around a conference
table at the headquarters of Pratham. I happened to be visiting a similar batch
of girls in Chhattisgarh a day earlier, who will be taking their exams in
mid-May. Here is what I saw of their determination and the barriers they are
overcoming to get what most of us think of as our birthright and take
completely for granted.
I grew up with
a daily reminder that being born a girl in India in the early 20th
century could be a raw deal. My grandmother lived with us and she was
illiterate. Her parents were not poor, they simply saw no reason to educate
their daughter. My grandmother was married at 13
and widowed at 25. which consigned her and her two children to a life of utter
dependence on her in-laws. Transported to the US when her son (my father)moved there,
she lived in a cocoon, secure in the family bosom but in a narrow world where her
considerable intelligence was wasted on chewing over the family gossip and magnifying
every slight.
It is still not
easy for a girl to be educated and make her own life choices in today’s India,
even as the country has gained wealth and power unimaginable to my
grandmother’s generation. Leave aside issues of safety or employability where
huge gender gaps exist. Even in something as gender neutral as educating the
nation’s children, girls lag: only 40 Indian girls out of every 100 that begin
primary school will complete 8th grade. This number, shocking as it is, masks even
bigger gaps between urban and rural, and between middle and lower income
families.
The reasons for
dropping out of school are many and complex—one study cites 20 of them—but the
end result is the same. An uneducated child faces a bleak future. The girls and
women I met in Chhattisgarh had heartrending reasons for dropping out. Several
did so to get married. Two lost their fathers and had to start earning a living
to support the family. Yet all of them had made the decision to come back and
finish 10th grade.
They did not
make this decision by themselves. There was a small army of people pushing them
forward. In the vanguard of this army is the Pratham community organizers, who go
door-to-door to survey who is in school and if not, why not. When they find an
older girl or woman dropout, they spend considerable time convincing them and
their families to enroll in a nine-month program which includes daily study
with an instructor in the village plus a monthly stay at a residential camp.
The families have to commit to handling the girls’ chores while they go away
for five days every month.
The camp has an
administrator and three faculty members to provide instruction in Hindi,
English and math. There is another group at Pratham headquarters that has taken
apart the standard curriculum, applied “western” pedagogical methods to it, and
painstakingly created new teaching and learning materials.
I ask the girls
in Chhattisgarh what they plan to do after they graduate. Silence. Except for
two government workers who need to pass 10th grade in order to be
eligible for promotion, the rest have not dared to dream of an altered future.
My father, born
to an illiterate mother, planned to drop out of school when he was 13 so that
he could help out in the family business. The only one against this plan was an
uncle who somehow saw his potential and moved heaven and earth to get him
educated. My father in turn made sure that no effort or expense was spared to educate
his four daughters, all of whom went to Ivy League universities in the US, and became
financially independent. In two generations my family was able to rewrite the
destiny for its girls. It will happen to you too, I tell the Chhattisgarh
girls.
This is the
drive behind Pratham and what motivates its 2,000 staff and 60,000 volunteers:
the chance to recreate a new India in which every child has learnt well and has
the means to become a productive, prosperous citizen. The 255 girls from Odisha are proof it can be done. Chhattisgarh will be close behind.
Sarita
Gupta is founder and president of Indico, International Nonprofit Development
Consultants. She recently began working with Pratham USA.
Very Informative Article.
ReplyDeleteLife never gives second chance but as per my thinking nothing is impossible and if you have the courage to do it then do it at your best.
Thanks.
education and career counselors