Article Review/Reading

READING: Maertens, Annemie (2011); “Does Education Pay Off? Subjective Expectations on Education in Rural India”; Economic & Political Weekly, VOL XLVI NO 9, February 26, 2011, pp. 58 - 63

Based on my reading of the above article, I want to extract a few of the findings which I think are relevant to my field of practice, and area of interest, and also raise a few questions and add my thought and views on various findings put forth by the paper.

I’m not going to analyze the research, nor question her methodologies.  I’m aware that primary data are always based on perceptions of one member of the family, her primary research was about the economic aspect of BT Cotton (which used to be rather controversial in India), and that her funding came from, besides other, some American Agriculture Research Institute.  But no matter what, her findings were as important and as relevant as they truly existed in our society that we can see from our everyday life.

Given below are some points and finding mentioned in the article which I took liberty on presenting in my own words and in my own way.

Reasons cited for sending children to school are:

• Parental education
• Social and eco background of parent
• Work opportunities
• Village and regional development,
• School quality
• Cost
•  Educational subsidies

1. The parents of a child is more likely to let their children complete their education if

• Awareness level among parents is high (via media, school)If the parents know more educated people

2. The ideal age of marriage is 18 years of age, and among boys, it is about 23

• The implication is, parents will not want to invest in a girl child education because at age 18, they will not have the time to graduate and get a good job and the return from their education will not be benefitted by the investor.

3. Lack of awareness of the prospect of education 

• Among the decision maker at home, majority doesn’t know the future prospect (how much they can earn in term of money) of their child that education can lead to, the situation is especially bad among primary student, and among 8th grade student, the only exception is, in one village out of three, about 40% had some idea...

4. There is major gender discrimination.

•  Girls are expected to earn lesser than boys even after graduation
• Financial support and physical care are expected from the male child

Few thoughts and reflection:

Do we really see education as an investment, or do we send children to school for the sake of sending, or because of some pressure from authorities, or because it is made a compulsory right for every child?

To say or view education as a future investment might not go down very well with many parents or easy to digest, but if we analyze the final motives, it truly is an investment.

• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would learn something; achieve something and make a life out of that education.
• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would earn money and start supporting the family.
• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would not have to face the kind of hardship that the parents’ faced.We sent our children to school in expectation that they would overcome the various social problems that we faced.
• We sent our children to school because we have certain perception about educated people, and their enhanced capabilities.
• We sent our children to school because something or someone inspired us and changed our perception
• We sent our children to school because we can afford to send them to school.

Viewing from the perspective of a practitioner, there are nothing new about the findings, except that she put percentage after every claim.    But as a practitioner of education, what did we do about parents’ awareness level about education and the prospects opened-up by education and most popular, about gender discrimination?

If parents are not aware of the future prospect that education can opened up for the children that they sent to school from their hard earned money, then can we really expect them to question what is being taught at school, or how it is being taught?  We said that assessments are also a feedback towards the parents about their wards’ performance and the teachers’ teaching, now can we really expect the parents to make any sense out of that feedback?

My friend Lam has reflected that some of the reason behind the high rate of drop out in the country cannot always be solved within the school boundary alone. As such, it is important that we look into problem from a larger perspective to tackle these issues that primarily include a change in society's attitude, economic development, etc.