move to class II, new children will be admitted to class I, and so on till completion of 8
years of elementary education. The rationale for admission in class I only must be
appreciated in human terms. Teachers who are used to a selective, homogeneous
classroom environment cannot be expected to develop the required positive attitude
and professional skills to deal with a diversified class overnight. The same applies to
children. Children who have grown up to an age of nine or ten in a homogeneous or
segregated environment have been socialized into a structure of norms and behaviour.
They cannot be transformed on demand. Also, the overall school ethos cannot be
expected to respond to a new policy in a positive manner all of a sudden. Education is
indeed an act of faith and social engineering – but not quick-fix social engineering. In
view of the fact that children take time to socialize and teachers take time to develop
new attitudes and pedagogic skills, the RTE Act provides for admission of
disadvantaged and poor children at the entry level, covering pre-school and Class I.
With these children moving up, and a new cohort of children entering pre-school and
Class I in each successive year, the school will gradually have a more diverse
population spread across all classes. Progression at this pace will allow children the
opportunity to grow up together and create bonds: bonds that can survive social walls.
Progression at this pace can allow the school to develop the professional capacity to
respond to the intellectual and emotional needs of children from diverse backgrounds.
Children who are younger than eight years of age are yet to develop a stable social
identity. Their values are still forming, and their motivation to derive meaning from
experience, both concrete and social is very strong. Therefore, it is a valid argument
that the policy of mixing children from different socio-economic strata has the best
chance of succeeding if it starts from the formative years of nursery/kindergarten and
Class I. Diversity enhances learning and development, while segregation impoverishes
the classroom environment of all schools, private or government.
Admission of 25% children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections in the
neighbourhood is not merely to provide avenues of quality education to poor and
disadvantaged children. The larger objective is to provide a common place where
children sit, eat and live together for at least eight years of their lives across caste, class
and gender divides in order that it narrows down such divisions in our society. The other
objective is that the 75% children who have been lucky to come from better endowed
families, learn through their interaction with the children from families who haven’t had
similar opportunities, but are rich in knowledge systems allied to trade, craft, farming
and other services, and that the pedagogic enrichment of the 75% children is provided
by such intermingling. This will of course require classroom practices, teacher training,
etc. to constantly bring out these pedagogic practices, rather than merely make children
from these two sections sit together. The often voiced concern about how the 25%
children from disadvantaged groups and weaker sections can cope in an environment
where rich children exist can be resolved when the teaching learning process and