Dissecting The Myths Of Merit And Meritocracy PART-V

Merit and Education: Flawed Marriage

One of the universally pandemic assumptions in liberal modern societies, in particular, is that people who do not have access to prevalent system of education are unquestionablely ‘idiotic', ‘uncivilised', ‘hard-headed' so on and so forth. Their capacities to think, understand, access, observe, analyse and create are compromised and doubtful as if these faculties are solely dependent on education. The belief in modern system of education and knowledge –distribution machinery brings with it coupled vested interests of the dominant communities. It helps in arranging a hierarchy of status and discrimination based on ascribed notions of differences .The conventional system of schooling is known to originate from 17 th centuries alchemist Moravian Bishop John Amos Comenius or Jan Komensky (1592-1670), Czech educational reformer and religious leader,best known for his contributions to teaching techniques which, along with principals of education, are presented in The Great Didactic (1628-1632AD. But what goal of universal education had he in his mind? The fundamental of his theory were:

•  Human brain could be transformed through infusing certain texts into ‘wise apparatus';

•  Human labour could be enhanced towards parameters of ‘skill, usable to capitalist system of production';

•  The ‘undesirable social behavior' could be channelized to pursuance of objectives of certain classes.

The words and phrases in quotation marks need close attention and may let the inquisitive mind to know what his social objective was.

Science, knowledge and information have usually been yoked to serve particularistic class interests. Technical and ambiguous terminology in knowledge has its own class-characterization and socially subversive role. This consequently influences specific groups to access and attain it; its spread and assimilation of such knowledge according to developed indices of intelligence and socio-economic conditions of the seekers of knowledge. Thus, place in socio-informational hierarchy, prosperity or penury, class affiliation, social segregations and alienations or empathy and occupation of parents etc. like material conditions and affect degree of accommodation, assimilation, extraction and internalization of prevalent system of recognition, evaluation and accreditation.

French scholar, Pierre Bourdieu assessed the role of the school in preparing and nurturing an elite class drawn from the society's ruling group. Clearly, exactly the same process is going on in India and it is doubtful if state educational institutions are performing to empower and emancipate for our most marginalized communities. We have a parallel system of Scholl and higher education which serves the caste and class polarized disciples. The elite and private institutions take most of their ‘raw material' from upper caste and classes where as government institutions and second tier of educational traps attract the lower caste and class disciples. The caste and class elite preserve their dominance and block the rest from mingling and sharing the power and wealth of multiple natures.

This helps in psychological self-scrutiny of the aspirants. The self-image is negatively distorted of most of the aspirants at costs of escalation of a few. The so-called failures and its real success in establishing values of dominant societies .It provides the means of justification ,rationalization, sublimation and appropriation as they may suit the system of incumbent and their aspirants.