Article review:

Education emergency: a social X-ray

-DAWN

June 14,2024.

 Prime minister recently declared education emergency, much needed for critical education
system , experts are needed to step forward
 Here comes the reforms:
 focus on social margins out-of-school children are areas of concern that fall under the UN’s
SDG-4
 dual lens microscope is needed to address the issue
 focus on complex challenge of educational access for out-of-school children
 critical analysis of the society and system that have allowed this issue to swell to such
an extent
 26.6 million Children who have not seen inside of class room is not an overnight development. It
requires a sustained neglect apathy, and deep indifference to reach such a sorry state of affairs
 Let us explore how sociology can help us understand the issue and inform our response

‘When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’
-Wayne Dyer
 First consider the social ecology of these children.
 The issue is not solely educational rather socio-historical and political production
 Numerous policies to address the issue but they fail to tackle the roots of problem
 Lack of comprehensive understanding of deep-seated issues that perpetuate
educational inequality
 It is a case of slow death of development, an invisible social virus through its symptoms:
multi-generational poverty, social injustice, health inequalities, oppression, human
rights violations , corruption, child abuse , intolerance and hypocrisy
 Exclusion of the children has been an incremental process through history, where
society eats itself up, driven by self-destructive forces, like an autoimmune disease.
 These powerful centers reproduce peripheries, which in turn produce social margins
whose existence becomes most invisible
 Education as an institution alone cannot resolve the problem
 It needs supports and protection through values like social justice, human rights and
freedom
 Interventions should be supported and sustained through global and national
commitments to social justice
 A composite response to this challenge requires a multi sectoral, multi-institutional, and
multidisciplinary inputs
 Achieving SDA-4 needs to be supplemented with other SDGs especially
SDGs1,2,3,5,6,16, and 17
 Secondly, consider the variability within out-of-school children.
  Group is not homogeneous but diverse in demographic character, physical location,
degree of mobility, and range of visibility
 Category includes street children, rag pickers, child beggars nomads children of seasonal
migrants, and child laborers etc.
 Each group faces unique challenges and barriers
 Education for all means all , these children not only have the right of education but
health and freedoms as well
 Therefore, one-size-fits-all solution is inadequate
 Different strategies are different for different groups
 Thirdly, we must diversify the curriculum and pedagogy.
 Need of diverse group require corresponding diversified pedagogical methods.
 Traditional schooling is not a panacea
 Flexible, situationally relevant learning opportunities tailored to the social realities of
marginalized children must be provided
 School are place dependent institutions but learning can be spatially mobile, online,
media based, hybrid, or distance-based.
 Learning model needs proper understanding of non-formal educational approaches
which are currently under explored
 Unicef’s temporary learning Centre which proved viable must be multiplied
 A comparative educational analysis, such as innovations for out-of-school children in
Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Kerala offer valuable lessons.

“We cannot solve our problems with same thinking we used when we created them.”

-Einstein