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THE GIST of Editorial for UPSC Exams : 18 March 2020 (When every line in the book is violated (The Hindu))

When every line in the book is violated (The Hindu)

Mains Paper 1:Society
Prelims level: Not much
Mains level:Impact of riot on education

Context:

After a violent riot, teachers of young children have a difficult time deciding what to say in their classes when children ask awkward questions.
Some of these questions arise from the news that children have heard or from the scenes they have seen on television.
In some cases, they ask about what they have seen with their own eyes. There are also questions reflecting the children’s desire to verify something their parents have told them.
It is not difficult to imagine the bewildering array of queries that the recent communal riots in the nation’s capital have triggered in the minds of young people.

Little efforts:

How a teacher can address them is anyone’s guess.
Cities such as Mumbai and Delhi and many provincial towns of northern India have considerable experience of living through violent riots.
Little effort has been made to study the response of children to such occurrences and the dilemma that teachers face when classes resume after a riot.
A violent riot is normally seen as a breakdown of law and order. That it indeed is, implying a weakening of the state’s moral authority and people’s trust in it.
Within a few days, the state re-establishes its authority and state functionaries, such as the police and other officers, start to assume that the damage done to their credibility has been restored.

Impact of riot on education:

In the context of education, however, the impact of a riot goes much deeper. Although schools are the main provider of education, their routine functioning is hardly an adequate measure of the state’s expectation from their role.
As an institution of the state, a school — .........................................

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The real loss:

This perception is erroneous because it does not take into account the school’s real loss in terms of its own authority to serve and perpetuate the state’s morality.
Every core value of education is injured by the violence that breaks out among citizens during a riot.
It takes years to explain to the young that relations among people and communities are guided by certain values.
Even a specific topic such as respect for someone else’s property and publicly owned infrastructure takes a long time to teach in a manner that it would make sense to children.
All this effort is wasted when children see with their own eyes that people are killing others and burning shops, houses and buses.
In the case of Delhi, the damage done to children’s learning was greater as it included the incredible realisation that the police did nothing and merely watched when the killing and looting started.
The magical significance of the phone number 100 is conveyed to children in their primary classes. Why didn’t the police stop the riot, children want to know.

Then and Now:

No wonder that teachers feel like Sisyphus when teaching resumes after a riot. Sisyphus was a king depicted in Greek mythology.
He was condemned to a life of hard labour which involved routinely destroying its own accomplishment.
Sisyphus was supposed .....................................

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Official Curriculum:

Although the official curriculum now proudly claims to promote critical thinking and foundational learning, these terms provide little scope for responding to what is happening in one’s own neighbourhood or the country.
Like everything else in education, these wonderful sounding terms are now used for promoting hollow formal routines.
The Delhi riots coincided with an official visit of the American President, Donald Trump, to India, beginning February 24.
His wife, Melania Trump, was scheduled to witness how a government school transacts a so-called ‘happiness’ curriculum.
It was terribly ironical that she was attending a ‘happiness’ class in south Delhi while violence and fire raged in the north-eastern part of the city.
We can imagine the meaning of the happiness that curriculum designers hope to impart through this innovation.
In their design, happiness is another form of cynicism, marking the capacity to stay aloof and unaffected by the fate of fellow human beings.

Sanctity of education:

Textbooks, teachers and principals routinely tell children that India’s religious diversity is a matter of pride.
What, then, accounts for so ..........................................

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Conclusion:

Violent riots knock down the sanctity of public education and people’s faith in it as a resource for maintaining basic human values.
In a post-conflict phase, officers and teachers must decide what they will tell the young and how.
To follow the modern idiom and simply ‘move on’ (i.e. put the riots behind) is to invite the usual price that unresolved trauma incurs. Its effects go deeper.
The temporary social breakdown that riots signify requires a long-term strategy to restore teachers’ morale and people’s trust in schools.
Simply ignoring the damage done to the sanity of young minds is tantamount to letting democracy suffer the loss of intellectual vitality that education alone can provide.
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General Studies Pre. Cum Mains Study Materials

Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the “unparliamentary” expressions, consider the following statements:
1. Article 105(2) of the Constitution lays down that “no Member of Parliament shall be liable to any proceedings in any court in respect of anything said or any vote given by him in Parliament or any committee thereof”.
2. According to the Rule 380 (“Expunction”) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in Lok Sabha, Speaker while exercising discretion can order that defamatory words be expunged from the proceedings of the House”.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
(a) 1 only
(b) 2 only
(c) Both
(d) None