EQUALITY is an ideal rarely achieved in the real world. People suffer from inequality in different ways for various reasons and at the behest of agencies and organizations, individuals and institutions, social structures and power. These inequalities emerge from a multitude of systemic and a-systemic factors and in their cumulative effect prolong, maintain, legitimize and officiate the already widespread inequalities that manifest themselves in various forms in society and make their elimination a kind of impossibility.
Education has often been described as an emancipatory and liberating praxis, capable of pulverizing inequalities in whatever form they may be and of bringing a certain amount of socio-economic inequalities, of multiplying the lives of the disadvantaged and putting them on par with the so-called “higher” rungs of the social hierarchy. But here too, a kind of irony is observed and unequal access to education for various social groups not only minimizes the role of education, but further worsens the social status of those who are already marginalized and ostracized.
Here we will study inequalities in access to education as they exist and manifest themselves with reference to three groups of people in particular – people with disabilities, students from economically weaker sections of society and the transgender community. It will be studied how each of these groups experiences inequalities in terms of access to quality education. It will explore how this unequal access increases their state of marginalization.
The problem of people with disabilities begins with the process of admission to educational institutions. There have been reports where people with disabilities were initially denied admission. However, that’s not it. The panorama of challenges and the range of problems do not end with admission to a school, but rather begin with it.
People living on the disability spectrum have varied needs and various personalized requirements. In the absence of trained teachers, adequate logistics, desired gadgets and a set of specific equipment and aids, the mission of providing education to people with disabilities remains far from reality and does not rush not in the news.
A report reads: ‘Jammu and Kashmir is the only state yet to implement a 2016 law that recognizes 21 disabilities compared to the previous seven, suggesting the actual numbers could be even higher students. State infrastructure is not suitable for people with disabilities, activists said, especially in public offices and educational institutions.
Structural barriers in schools, limiting accessibility for children with disabilities, have often presented a dismal image. It is no wonder that the school drop-out rate of children with disabilities has reached an alarming level, thus casting a shadow over the prospect of their empowerment through education. Children with disabilities are 27 percent more likely to drop out than their peers without disabilities. These structural and visible barriers are in addition to the intangible and abstract obstacles and blockages that exist in the way of education for people with disabilities. This includes, but is not limited to, the bullying and stigmatization of these children by their peers and sometimes also by teachers. These incidents leave indelible scars on the child’s psyche and these psychological challenges sometimes become more all-consuming and complicated than the underlying physical handicaps. In this process, a child inevitably suffers a large psychological trauma and finds himself with little energy and determination to face these recurring episodes of socio-psychological violence and prefers to abandon from school/institute instead. The augmenting effect of all these detrimental factors not only leaves children with disabilities behind their able-bodied peers, but also complicates their self-reception through their bodily construction and the resulting regressive and repressive consequences.
Education in the modern world remains mostly privatized and although a good part of the population attends public schools, the general perception is that public schools are no match for private institutions in terms of the quality of education provided. , available infrastructure and the emphasis on extracurricular and holistic development of a child’s personality. Precisely because of the additional benefits associated with private schools, children from economically well-off families are admitted to these institutions, and children from economically weaker strata, who cannot afford the exorbitant cost of education in private schools, have to face at all few facilities are available and offered by public schools. This results in a well-known “private school effect”, a scenario in which students in private schools outperform public schools and therefore educational inequality stems from economic inequality which further feeds the loop, thus pushing it out of bounds. It is in the wake of this awareness and an attempt to reduce educational inequalities resulting from economic inequalities that the government of Andhra Pradesh recently announced a 25% booking quota for the weakest sections of non-subsidized private schools. But the precedent must be widely followed across the country to bridge the gaps in the education sector and ensure that economic considerations are not a barrier to the education that is aspired to. It also calls on public schools to be aware of their task of providing quality education and to fulfill the empty existing in the education sector.
Moreover, the issues transgender people face and the exclusion they experience are also multiple, with much complexity and nuance that comes with their social stigmatization, marginalization and othering. So the social construct is that it discourages the entry of transgender people into schools early on. Even though they somehow manage in the rarest of cases to gain admission into certain educational institutions, the bullying and taunting they face is beyond imagination, which only makes further marginalize them and despicably traumatize them. Until today, society in general has condemned, intimidated and alienated transgender people who do not conform to the so-called “mainstream” culture. They face discrimination in all aspects of their lives, including employment, legal recognition, access to social and economic opportunities, quality of life and livelihoods , education and other means of survival. Simply put, they are denied a life of dignity and respect. Members of the transgender community rarely talk about these experiences in public spaces due to taboos and stigmas attached to their sexuality and sexual orientation,” writes Tahmeena Rizvi. In fact, approximately 96% of transgender people are denied employment, 60% have never attended school. Such being the situation in the country, one can well imagine the seriousness and severity of the problem in Kashmir, which is already plagued by a host of socio-political quagmires.
No formal education for transgender people is popular in the Indian context. They are deprived of their family and school environment, transgender interrupt their studies and risk their future career opportunities. Extensive analysis of various reports and discussions with the community and stakeholders suggest that transgender people are the most illiterate or under-educated, become reluctant to pursue further education. The average qualification is at secondary or upper secondary level. Enrollment is significantly low and the dropout rate at primary and secondary level is still very high. They are hardly educated as they are nor accepted by society and therefore do not receive adequate schooling. Even though they are enrolled in an educational institution, they face harassment and bullying every day and are asked to leave school or they to abandon by them selves.
The situation of education as reflected in the unequal access to people of different backgrounds becomes antithetical to the very enterprise and practice of education and the way in which it fosters existing inequalities is tragic and inhuman. The ideal and purpose of education remains defeated in the absence of inclusion and this inclusion draws our attention to the marginalized and left behind sections of our society and urges all stakeholders to push inclusion to its logical limits by making education an emancipator and a leveler. Only then will education appear as a light in the darkness of the world.
- The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the editorial position of Kashmir Observer
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Amir Souhail Wani
The author is a writer and columnist
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