Manjula and Dharma, society deschooled

Hampi, India

Manjula and Dharma

Dharma and Manjula are the mother and daughter who clean the Laughing Budha Guesthouse here in Hampi. (Dharma is the one who is not quite as short as Manjula!)

Manjula must be about ten years old. Every day for the past two weeks I have watched them as they clean the guesthouse. They wash the dishes for the restaurant, clean the laundry, and sweep the rooms, all by hand.

I was struck particularly by the sweeping. Every day Manjula sweeps the entire grounds of the guesthouse. Even though the grounds are dirt, the effect is a perfectly neat area free of any trash, twigs, or leaves. The straw hand brush leaves a pleasing curved brushed pattern on the earth.

Child labor laws are a major issue in India. Each state in India is enacting new laws and trying to enforce the existing laws. Regardless, there are large numbers of children who work instead of go to school. In the newspaper in Bangalore, a news article listed the reasons why children were not going to school.

When I was in Jaipur in Rajasthan, I was talking with a textile merchant whose shop was across the street from a school. The public schools aren't any good, he told me. The teachers don't teach, and the children can't do anything with their education when they finish. Private schools are good, public schools are bad, was the axiom he told me.

In Ladakh, a woman complained to me about the schools. The men went to the town of Leh to try to make money from the tourists, the children went to school, and all of the farmwork was left to the woman. It was an impossible task and ensured the diminishing of the family farm.

In Jaisalmer in Rajastan, a very personable camel guide of about sixteen years old could not read or write. He had had no education whatsoever. Every day he guided Westerners through the desert. It was evident that he longed to go to a western country. This was no surprise as he saw wealthy foreigners every day of his life. Would he always be a camel guide? Or could he use his ingenuity to do something else despite his lack of writing ability?

At the fort in Jaisalmer they were coincidentally filming a Bollywood movie about a camel boy. This fictional camel boy idolized a particular Bollywood film star. He ends up meeting the star and in the end becomes a famous movie star himself. And they say dreams never come true!

Ivan Illich criticized the institution of modern education in Deschooling Society. He wrote that "The pupil is thereby 'schooled' to confuse teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with competence, and fluency with the ability to say something new." Illich was talking about education as a bureaucratic requirement for entrance into the narrow circle of the economic elite. The converse point is that those who are educated but cannot fit into the circle are left with worthless knowledge and lack what they could know to do something useful.

Manjula and Dharma