The Assam government has recently closed down 1700 government schools. How should we respond to this? What is the role of the government in school education? This is an important question. But let us first ask what the government stands for. Though a government is responsible for almost everything under the sky, it just cannot shrug off certain responsibilities.
One of these responsibilities is education. When we speak about a government, immediately we also speak about its responsibilities for education and health. Why are health and education so important? The health of a nation is also its wealth. So is education. What is the use of being healthy if the person is not educated? Now, what do we mean by education? Swami Vivekananda once said something significant and vital to education! He said: “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man.”
This means every child is born with some talent and faculty. Education is the means through which this hidden talent in a child could be brought out. There is another thing. We live in a varied and colorful world. Here every talent has some relevance. This means everybody can earn a livelihood through their talent. So education helps us bring out the hidden talent in us and thus it also helps us in getting a livelihood. That is why education is so important and vital for a nation. If we have to rise as a developed nation, education must be our focus.
This is why closing down 1700 schools in Assam is a matter of grave concern. This shows that the state of education is in shambles in Assam. The reason cited for shutting down the schools is mostly the absence of students. But have the parents stopped sending their children to school? No. Rather they are ready to do all kinds of compromises so that their children could go to school and they get good and quality education. If children have stopped going to these government schools that means the children and their parents have lost confidence in those schools.
They have realized that they are not getting quality education from these schools. Has the quality of education degraded in all these schools in one fine morning? Or it has happened over the years? Certainly, it must have happened over the years. Then who is responsible for the steady degradation of our public education system? It is none but the government. The interesting thing is the chief minister of Assam claims himself to be the most efficient administrator and a large number of his supporters also believe this. But the education department of Assam was under this efficient minister for the last 15 years.
So what went wrong? Why the government headed by an efficient minister could not stop the downward slide of the education department which culminated in the closure of 1700 government schools in one go? If this trend is not halted will there be any government schools in Assam in the years to come? When public education is facing this crisis, we have witnessed a flurry of activities in the private sector so far as education is concerned.
More and more moneyed people have started investing in education. Education has become a lucrative business. Forget about others, the wife of the present chief minister of Assam has opened up a very expensive and luxurious school in the vicinity of the city of Guwahati. How do I view this? For me, under the present circumstances, the opening of a five-star school by the wife of the chief minister is utterly an immoral act.