Reckoning education as an industry

Four decades ago, when I was working as a Librarian at BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited) Higher Secondary School in Hyderabad, my colleague teachers tried to form themselves into an association and register with the Registrar of Trade Unions as a trade union. They, however, were told by the authorities concerned, that, education does not come under industry as per the Industrial Disputes Act and hence they cannot do so. The reason given was, staff working in the Educational institutions cannot be described as ‘workmen’.

In another instance, teachers working in the same school which was run on the pattern of Kendriya Vidyalayas (Central Schools) and was affiliated to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) and managed by BHEL, a a reputed Government of India Public Sector Undertaking, were denied facilities like gratuity, leave travel concession, bonus and other such benefits on a par with the rest of employees of that PSU on the grounds that Educational institution is not an industry.

The teachers’ competence is restricted to what may be done in school. Work and leisure are alienated from each other as a result; the spectator and the worker alike are supposed to arrive at the work place all ready to fit into routine prepared for them. In one of the Supreme Court Judgments (Bangalore Water Supply and Sewage Board vs. A. Rajappa and others, 1978, AIR), Justice Krishna Iyer observed that, “Why is it strange to regard education as an industry, its respectability, it’s lofty character, it’s professional stamp?”

Then touching the aspect of “workmen,” Justice Iyer commented that: “Two reasons are given to avoid the conclusion that imparting education is an industry. The first ground is that teachers are not workmen by definition. Perhaps they are not, because teachers do not do manual work or technical work. We are not too sure whether it is proper to disregard, with contempt, manual work and separate it from education, nor … has education to be excluded…”

School is the world’s fastest growing labour market. The engineering of consumers has become the economy’s principal growth sector. As production costs decrease in rich nations, there is an increasing concentration of both capital and labour in the vast enterprise of equipping man for disciplined consumption. During the past decade, capital investments directly related to the school system rose even faster than expenditure for defence.

Thus the “learning industry” is moving to the centre of the national economy. A school combines the expectations of the consumer expressed in its claims with the beliefs of the producer expressed in its ritual. Justice Krishna Iyer, in the same judgment observed elsewhere that: “In Gandhi’s India, basic education and handicraft merge and in the latter half of our century, higher education involves field studies, factory training, house surgeoncy and clinical education and sans such technological training, and education in humanities, industrial progress is self-condemned.

If education and training are integral to industrial and agricultural activities, such services are part of industry even if highbrowism may be unhappy to acknowledge it... Education is the nidus of industrialization and itself is an industry. Mahatma Gandhi’s dictum is ‘work is worship.’ Gandhi and Zakir Hussein propagated basic education which used to work as modus operandus for teaching. We have hardly any hesitation in regarding education as an industry.”

With the introduction of 10+2+3 pattern of education a couple of decades ago, which emphasises “vocational courses” at the 10+2 stage, and when “socially useful productive work” was made part of the syllabus using work as “modus operandus” for teaching, then as held in the judgment, education should be declared as an industry.

Schools and other educational institutions sell curriculum – a bundle of goods – made according to the same process. The distributor-teacher delivers the finished product to the consumer-pupil, whose reactions are carefully studied and chartered to provide research data for the preparation of the next model.

The result of the curriculum production process looks like any other modern staple. It is a bundle of planned meanings, a package of values and a commodity whose “balanced appeal” makes it marketable to a sufficiently large number to justify the cost of production. Consumer pupils are taught to make their desires conform to marketable values. Thus, they are made to feel guilty if they do not behave according to predictions of consumer research by getting the grades and certificates that will place them in the job category they have been led to expect.

Distinguished economists all over the world have accepted that growth of human knowledge through formal educational process helps in the development of the economy of a country. Then there cannot be a doubt as to “education is wealth or not.”We see in most of the countries a major part or substantial portion of the nation’s income is utilised on education. During the present decade, there is an increase in the expenditure on schools and on higher learning.

In actual sense and in real forms, education is an industry relying more on labour than on capital and thus it uses a high proportion of qualified manpower available. If we add those engaged in full-time teaching to those in full-time attendance, we realise that this so-called superstructure has become society’s major employer.

Now the question raised is: “what is the return”? Since profit motive is one of the conditions to be an industry. If anyone takes up a project and conducts a research and undertakes to obtain statistical data – which can easily be done – then, the life-time earnings of those educated individuals, either by way of savings from their salaries or business profits or otherwise, and compare the same with their investment for getting their education which qualified them to earn, the difference, which in industrial terms, is known as profit, perhaps will be more than that of any industry.

But the difference here is, both the individual and the community, through their services gain from this profit, as is not in the case of an accepted industry. Students also see their studies as the investment with the highest monetary return, and nations see them as key factor in development. A model society would never follow the idea that education has no economic benefit, because the extra skills and abilities resulting from education would still yield outcomes that are beneficial to the community. There is a benefit to the individual as also to the community.

Justice Krishna Iyer said the same thing in his judgment that, “so long as services are part of the wealth of national, educational services are wealth and are industrial.” He added that: “A man without education is a brute and nobody can quarrel with the preposition that education in its spectrum is significant services to the community. Education is a service to the community and hence industry.”

By Vanam Jwala Narasimha Rao