Homeschooling India

Urmila Samson is an unschooling parent of three and a mentor and guide to countless homeschoolers and unschoolers in India. She speaks at Urban Ashram every week to promote unschooling. She has been engaging extensively to help homeschooling parents find some clarity in their perspectives on the RTE. Her response to an email I had sent to the group Vidyut Kale on Homeschooling and RTE

I’m too lazy to find the exact quote, but it says that children between the ages of 6 – 14 have to be in school by law. I haven’t read anything about what the consequences will be. Also it has to be school and the definition of school does not include the wonderful non formal schools run by committed and talented people through NGOs and other means. Sometimes with little or no means, in fact. Those guys have been given a written letter to get recognized within 3 years or be shut down. This includes them getting those awful ‘qualified teachers’, whereas many of these have great teachers and volunteers who have little or no teaching qualification. These non formal schools are catering to children who the government cannot reach, or cannot teach. I feel that we should lie low and let Kapil get on with his business. He has too much to accomplish, an impossible task in fact. We will just be mosquitoes to be swatted. If we keep buzzing, he will be forced to deal with us, and he will not deal kindly. If you go back to when we first started this conversation, I said almost exactly what he has quoted being said: That we are an affluent lot who he can’t be bothered with. Let’s keep it at that.

Urmila responded to someone saying that if homeschoolers were silent on the RTE, it was because we accepted it, or we were afraid to speak out.

Ditto as Vidyut. I will, as I said earlier, go to jail, pay hefty fines or whatever it takes to keep my children out of school. I will even fight laborious court cases if necessary. You yourself said that going to jail leaving children at home is irresponsible. Well, I think that both, drawing attention to homeschoolers who are doing no harm and in fact doing just great for their children, as well as taking attention away from mass educational reform (I know many of you think school is categorically all bad, but I’ve seen children in worse conditions without schools. I’ve even seen a bunch of super rich kids happier in boarding school with caring classmates than in their home situation – an eye opener for me!) as irresponsible too. There are just too many families grateful for the opportunity of a school education. If there weren’t, then there would have been a mass uprising by now. Recently, Sangeetha has sent a link to one of Gandhiji’s books. I read under Compulsory Education, that he’d said that if people want to send their children to school, there is no need to make it compulsory; and if people don’t want to send their children to school, then it shouldn’t be made compulsory. Clearly choice to the people. Well, I see a hUUUUge majority choosing school, and people are not all sooooo stupid. And there are growing numbers opting for alternatives and out altogether, like us. Well, change has to be gradual, careful in order for it to be thorough, according to me. As I keep repeating, homeschooling and unschooling are not my main concern. I hope to be instrumental in changing the way people perceive education worldwide in order to make a complete shift. Freeing the children of the whole world has been my goal since age 9. This cannot be done by finishing off one’s fire on petty battles that will protect an always very small minority. For I see HS and US always as a very small minority however much our numbers swell. Where does that leave the other children??? So, let Kapil do his job as best he can. When the non formal people start to show him the light of day, he will be forced to see the sense of their more open perception of education and accept that. This will pave the way for us. There is always the chance that he will never see the light of day, in which case he will never, ever be convinced about HS and US, so we may as well stay out of the way till we know which way he is swaying. Frankly, I still think we are just too teeny-meeny and unimportant to even bother about ourselves!

This is a collection of my (Vidyut Kale) emails from an intense debate around the subject.

With all this conversation around the RTE, I am finding it difficult to keep track of what it is that is the threat to homeschoolers.

In all the reading I did, I haven’t yet specifically heard that every child MUST go to school or what happens if they don’t. What I am reading is more along the lines of the government MUST provide the opportunity for education for all children up to a certain age, which I don’t think is a bad idea. I don’t even know why it takes an act to do this.

One thing I caught in terms of the Srivastava thing was that she was not allowed to do the board exams at NIOS while under the age of 15 (or something), which while unfair, doesn’t sound like the end of the world – school kids can’t do that either. Even Kapil Sibal, in the ultra-irresponsible quote shared by Dona (*name changed) seems to be thinking that homeschoolers can go around the RTE. I do think that that case being rejected likely did more damage to homeschooling than the RTE, because it set a precedent where there was a comfortable grey area.

I am now wondering if, homeschoolers taking an initiative to challenge the RTE is only going to work against us and how necessary is it. If we think of the larger society, I can’t but help think that amendments are going to weaken the scope of the act, so they will be resisted. I was wondering if anyone knows in what way the act specifically goes against homeschooling. Or a quote or something that stops us from doing something for our kids…

Note: The quote referred to by Dona is about an informal first report by a journalist supporting homeschooling who interviewed Kapil Sibal about the possibility for ammendments. Apparently he responded “many will benefit from this act and for a handful of homeschoolers who are probably affluent and resourceful enough to send there kids abroad or get around the law, I will not consider amending the Act.”!!! This was met with quite some outrage within our group, since most of us are/were actually struggling to make ends meet or middle class. Plus, it didn’t seem right that the person responsible for a law being passed was happy to recommend it being bypassed. The article got published and it contained a vague quote about homeschooling not being a problem, though not a specific “ok”. Miraculously, it seems to have vanished from the internet. If I find it, I will grab a screenshot and host it myself, so it doesn’t vanish again.

To this, Urmila responded what she did Urmila Samson on Homeschooling and the RTE

And here is my next email where I am responding to someone who accused us of being silent because we accepted the RTE or that we were afraid to speak out.

I am lying low because I don’t accept it as their place to make life changing decisions for my child. I neither fear nor accept it. I simply consider it irrelevant. Put simply, this law of theirs has no ‘recognition’ from me. If that makes me illegal, okay. I will not waste my time with this unless they actually interfere with our life.

I am more interested in what I want to do. I have no hesitations going public with my status as an unschooler including thumping my chest and wearing holding a placard saying ‘unschooling/homeschooling’. If they really have an issue, they will find me and do whatever legal stuff they want to do, and then I will fight them. I am not going to go around anticipating that their sole purpose in life is to interfere with well thought out choices educated parents are making for their kids and get into a fight with them based on that assumption.

Really, homeschoolers are not who this law had in mind when it was made, and when they are looking for violations (if at all they get around to looking for them) they aren’t going to be hunting for homeschoolers, unless we get in their face and say, “Hey, I’m breaking your law because your law didn’t consider me when you made it and here I am” Then of course, they go, “Okay, thanks for letting us know, and please meet us in court at so and so date”

If at all I was stupid enough to stir up this hornet’s nest, I would never do it without having some plan to offer a way to check on the quality of learning happening. In fact, what little I have of social responsibility desires that there is never an explicit exception for homeschooling, because the first people to take advantage of it will be child labourers in the name of vocational apprenticeships. The homeschoolers will simply continue as they were.

Even if an exception were made for homeschoolers, as an unschooler it would be a disadvantage for me, since it will then introduce some form of controls and assessment and I will then have to spend time figuring them out and creatively fulfilling those requirements without pressure to ‘study’ on my child – hard work.

I’m not lying low out of acceptance or fear, I’m simply ignoring something I have deemed as irrelevant to my choices and I don’t want this to escalate anyway.

Another email from me as the conversation went in the direction of fear of consequences for us/our children for breaking law.

I can understand your concerns as a loving parent. I also see how much you believe in the path we have chosen, that you would not like the criticism or restriction of it. I believe that this can only enrich your child’s life and all the lives you touch.

Just to share a broader picture on why I think the RTE will not bother with us, and why it is so important to not disempower it:

The day the Indian government made education a fundamental right for 192 million children, Dimple Yadav, 11, woke up at 4:30 in the morning. Eyes heavy with sleep, she cleaned her house (in a village about 24 miles outside the capital), made tea and got busy preparing food for her family. After her parents, who work as laborers in Delhi, left at 6 a.m., Dimple fed and clothed her 5- and 7-year-old siblings and made her way to the local school with them in tow. By the time she took her seat in class, she relaxed for the first time since waking up, and was soon lulled into drowsiness, missing most of the day’s lessons. “I like school,” she said later. “But I do not know how long I will study. My mother has been saying that she needs me to be home so that someone can look after my brother and sister.”
For Dimple, April 1, the day when the Right to Education Act (RTE) came into being to mandate free and compulsory education for all Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14, has no significance. She may read about it in high school — if she can continue her education till then. But in all probability she will drop out of school soon, adding another number to the 50% of young girls who have done the same across India, for as simple a reason as having to take care of siblings. The RTE does not protect children from being taken out of school for agricultural work or housework, nor do laws against child labor consider housework or agricultural work to be child labor.
School Is a Right, but Will Indian Girls Be Able to Go? – By Nilanjana Bhowmick

Seriously, you think we have problems? There are kids out there who could get a much needed nap in school. Forget education.

I think, generosity is the biggest symptom, and enabler of empowerment. Can we have hearts big enough to let something be, even though it *slightly* suggests that what we do is illegal (remember, no one has said anything will happen to parents who don’t send kids to school) if it may possibly protect thousands and thousands from their circumstances? This is the kind of fight the RTE guys are fighting. Are we even a blip on that radar?

And so on. The discussion continues. The bottom line is that the RTE makes it mandatory for every child over 6 years to go to school. For homeschoolers, it is a given that we will be breaking this law. The questions are:

• While action is specified against schools, nothing of the sort is said about the parents. So, will there be consequences, and to what extent will the government go in enforcing them?
• How and when can we challenge this without jeopardizing the futures of millions of kids for our few? Most homeschoolers don’t wish to set a precedent in breaking this law for the very reasons that led to its creation. How can we go about carving a niche for us, so that we don’t end up criminals either?
• It is certain that till this ambiguity around the exact status remains, there will be many such heated debates and possibly challenges to the law in the future. I think the overall tone is anger about the lack of clarity. If I’m breaking the law, I’d like to keep a lawyer handy. There are precautions I will need to take…. I don’t think many are interested in going to school anyway.

Apologies that the emails are all separated by person. After several trials, I thought it best to clearly attribute things said to people saying them, so that anxious parents get a tangible sense of others walking this journey. I know its inconvenient. On the other hand, we can then read from our favourites without the clutter. Urmila has a tremendous following