"Enhancing effectiveness of education delivery" 

A Journal of the Bombay Management Association

Prof. Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya & 

Mr. Ravi Balgi 

Volume : 15 E-REVIEW: March 10

Page | 1

 Dear Members,   Hope  you  found  reading our  last  e‐review  interesting, which had  an  article written by Mr. K. R. Bhargava, Chief Commissioner of Customs, Nhava Sheva, Mumbai, who had emphasized the need for constructive skepticism.   In this e‐review, we bring you an article by Prof.  Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya of  NITIE & Mr.  Ravi  Balgi,  on  how  education  can  reach more  effectively  to socio‐economically  poorest  sections  of  the  society.  They  recommend cartoocation, reusing the ancient technique of story telling through a pictorial depiction!   Happy reading.   Best regards,  

    Abhijit Phadnis Chairman, Editorial Board  Note: The views expressed by the author/s in BMA E-review are their own. The editorial committee neither endorses nor necessarily agrees with the views.

EDITORIAL BOARD  Chairman Mr.  Abhijit Phadnis  Members Dr. Pradeep B. Kakkad Mr. S. Mohan Dr. Anil Naik Mr. Gladwyn A. Pinto

Page | 2

Cartoocation; A new way of educating the poor Indian 1. Introduction

Indians, for long have pondered as to how India can become a developed nation. Before one seeks answer to it, it is important to find out, what is the definition of a developed nation? One way of looking at this would be that in a developed nation every citizen has access to a good quality of basic amenities of life like food, clothing, shelter and health-care. Further the citizens have easy and equitable access to justice and education for living an economically self sustainable life. India is a land dominated by village landscape. According to an estimate by an agency there are 638596 (IndiaDevelopmentGateway, 2009) villages in India, where more than 68.2% of India’s population resides. This means, that about 7 out of every 10 Indians live in villages. The primary source of income for the majority of Indians is agriculture or agriculture related businesses since villages have primarily agriculture as a dominant livelihood sector. In spite of being an agrarian country, Indians have made mark in many other fields like in as Information Technology professionals, manufacturing experts, space scientists to name a few. For other developing countries India is a beacon of hope and inspiration. India has also been christened as an emerging economy. India is charting its own path to become a developed nation in the next quarter of this century. It is also true that India is a land of contrasts. This statement can be substantiated by the number of billionaires India has in the World’s Top 50 rich individuals, while 33% of India is still resides below poverty line. India has some of the world’s best quality higher level educational institutions like Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Management. On the other hand 300 million Indians have not been able to get even basic education after 60 years of Indian independence. The sharp contrast in which the haves of India and the have-nots of India live can be appreciated across many aspects in terms of health care benefits, access to justice and many other quality of life parameters. Thus, only when majority of the people at the base of the economic pyramid that is the people in the Indian villages and slums are developed, one can state that India is truly developed. It is very important to note that education is a pivotal factor which provides an individual the opportunity and scope to earn food, clothing and shelter and helps in uplifting his/her quality of life lived. Swami Vivekananda famously stated “Education is the manifestation of the divinity within”. Further many thinkers have argued that educated mind is an independent mind and has a huge role to play in the development the self, the society, the organization, the state and above all towards the development of nation. Education provides an individual the power to rationalize and make decisions and find acceptable solutions to problems. In other words education instigates individuals to look at problems as challenges and opportunities. The theme of providing education to all is perhaps one of the most significant challenge that the government, United Nations, Non-Governmental Organizations, private institutions and individuals all trying to address.

Page | 3

Even though providing education to all has been an important issue to various sectors, but over the years, what the statistics reveal are alarming regarding the collective performance of all these educational initiatives. Thus, a new approach towards providing education to all has to be sought. In this paper, the authors attempt to provide a perspective study of Indian education system and attempts to figure out an innovative teaching mode to teach the have-nots of Indian society. In this land of Mahatma Gandhi, who remarked, “The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock market. We want to provide only such education as would enable the student to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of the character of the educated. The girls, we say, do not have to earn; so why should they be educated? As long as such ideas persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education“. Mahatma Gandhi introduced the concept of ‘Nai Talim’ (NCRI, 2009), which has the potential of making India self sufficient and sustainable.

The authors also acknowledge the character building role education has and this would be included in the education content to be provided. But all is not as bad as it was in the era of Gandhi. As presently, it should also be noted that in urban India and in many parts of rural India, girl students not only enroll for studies but outperform the boys in academic performance (HT, 2007). Further it must be brought to notice that, poor people are investing in education at the cost of food security (Sadagoppan et al., 2007). As they have understood the value and significance of education. 2. Current Scenario of School Education in India In India schooling is divided into four levels Pre-Primary or Kinder Garten Schools which familiarize and introduce a child to a collective learning environment. This starts from a three- five year old kid. The next part of education is Primary School education which spans for the next five years of the child. The next level of schooling is the secondary school education which spans for the next five years and takes the child to the teen age. The last stage of the school education is the higher education which spans two years. This schooling is (2/3+4+3+2) in some or (2/3+5+5+2) in others, thus spanning a minimum of 12 to maximum 15 years of ones life. The KG, the primary, the secondary school education provides a basket of educational content from different streams for an integrated holistic development of the child. The basket of courses offers languages, subjects like history, civics, geography, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, economics etc. In the last two years of school based education, functional expertise and streams of specialization is provided to the students. In this article the authors are primarily concerned towards developing a model for primary and secondary school education. The next question arises as to how many Indians have access to different levels of schooling.

Page | 4

A look at the latest figures in year 2008 will provide a better perspective regarding the same. 98% of India’s habitation has primary schooling facility, while 90 % of Indians have upper primary schooling facility (SSA, 2008a). For every five primary schools there are two secondary schools. Also in certain primary schools the current infrastructure is being upgraded to provide secondary school education at the sites of primary school education. Over the years the government has taken many steps to improve the education system through various innovative steps, like public private partnerships, NGO’s involvement, pure private initiatives in the school education system etc. Still the national average drop-out rate between standard I to X is 62.69% (Dongaonkar, 2006). This is a matter of grave concern because out of every 10 enrolments 6 individuals (majority) are not able to finish their schooling.

More than two third of the student population are not able to enter into functional streams of higher education which is important from the livelihood perspective of the individual. A large section of these drop-out children belong to the socio-economic backward communities, which according to some estimates form 70-80 percent of the student population (NIC-RDIS, 2009). The drop-out rates of students vary across different levels of schooling in India. 31.47% of the enrolments at the initial level of primary education do not finish their primary education. This is very serious as every third individual enrolling for primary education is not able to complete even the very basic primary education. One step higher at the upper primary level, 52.32% of the enrolments drop-out. That is every second enrolment is not able to complete the education at the upper primary level. Coming to the secondary level, 62.69% of the enrolments are not able to complete the secondary level education as has been mentioned earlier. The drop-out rates of students at different levels of school education also vary across different states of India. Like the dropout rate is highest for Bihar at 82.5% and lowest for Goa at 37.9% which means for every ten student enrolments in Bihar two individuals complete the intended levels of education, while in Goa the number is six (Dongaonkar, 2006). Bihar is one of the socio-economically poorest states in India, while Goa is one of the most advanced. Many thought that in India hard infrastructure in education that is school buildings, books etc are the bottle necks for the delivery of superior education. But this has been contested of late. Some reports have found out that in spite of providing infrastructure, and schools in neighborhood, kids don’t complete school based education. It is important to find out, what are the major impediments in generating the hunger to learn at the first place and secondly to satiate the hunger for learning. It must be noted that, the term drop-out has been defined by the concerned authorities in the wrong light. Because many kids don’t drop-out but walk-out of school. Here some light must be shed on the term walk-out. The children in rural India come from large poor families, mostly run by single male member. Formal school education does not help in supporting these families economically. Hence, children from these families choose to walk-out from schools to help run their families. In some cases, they have to take care of their younger siblings, while their parents earn livelihood (Sadagoppan et al., 2007).

Page | 5

Taking this further to understand the context of high student drop-out rate an understanding of the overall attendance of the teachers and the students at various levels would provide a better perspective. Graph 1 and 2 provides the track of teacher- student attendance at the primary levels and the upper primary levels.

Graph-1 Tracking Teacher and Student Attendance (Primary Level) (SSA,2008). Thus the lowest student attendance at the primary level are in the states of Bihar(42%), Uttar Pradesh (57%), Rajasthan (63%) while the lowest teacher attendance are in the states of Gujarat & Madhya Pradesh (70%), Chhattisgarh (75%), Bihar(76%).

Graph-2 Tracking Teacher and Student Attendance (Upper Primary Level) (SSA,2008). Thus the lowest student attendance at the upper primary level are in the states of Bihar (37%), Uttar Pradesh (60%), Orissa (69%), Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal (70%).While the

Page | 6

lowest teacher attendance are in the states of Assam (52%), Madhya Pradesh (67%), Chhattisgarh (73%), Bihar (75%). The graphs 1 and 2 and the discussions so far paints a hard hitting and gloomy picture about the Indian school level education system. It is important to reiterate here, the fact that most of rural India is below poverty line (BPL). The figures are estimated around 33crores according to the definition of BPL by the Indian government (NIC-RDIS,2009). With this context, a large number of kids study up to class IV (primary) and drop out at upper primary and above school level. The drop out girls and boys are relatively same. Reasons for the drop out are as follows:-

• Upper primary schools are located far away from their villages and hence commuting to schools regularly is a problem as that incurs commuting costs on a daily basis which they cannot afford given their poor and fragile economic status.

• Most students are from BPL families and have to support their families’ needs (BBC, 2009).

• There are students who stay in disputed or naxal affected that is low intensity violence zone areas which add to the fallout rates.

• Teaching as a career is considered as one of the last options in India, and hence finding talented, motivated individuals to educate children is hard to find. Thus the quality of education suffers.

• Education sector pays relatively less salaries, though it is one of the most profitable sectors and does not suffer from cyclicity of demand. This becomes more important because education sector will keep growing in India for the next few decades because India has a large proportion of kids between 6-14 years of age and if India is not able to provide quality education to these individuals then India’s future is not secured.

• Teachers also default on attendance, thus motivating children to attend schools becomes more difficult (SSA, 2008; Dongaonkar, 2006).

These kids are given such education, which does not encourage “creativity” and “curiosity”, the fundamental requirements for getting knowledge and hence are de-motivated to come to school. There are reports, that the attendance is seen improving only because of the mid-day meals (initiative by Government of India) and also by illegal methods like employed by teachers in some schools (Dongaonkar, 2006). Thus it is the promise of food that attracts the students and their parents to send their children to school. Good quality education means greater cost and hence can’t be afforded by poor rural people. Also more than 90% of the good quality institutions are located in semi-urban and urban areas, leaving rural places with fewer options (Dongaonkar, 2006). Some other significant reasons for lack of education in India could be better understood by understanding the proportion of population living in the slums of urban India. Slum population is approximately 4% of India’s population. It is estimated that approximately 23.7 % of urban population lives in slums. By 2030, approximately 50% of urban population will live in slums (UNDP,2009). This shift is largely due to the migration of rural Indians to cities which is due to marginal and sub-optional existence in villages. Often families stay in make

Page | 7

shift shelters after migration from rural areas, and hence pursuing education from neighborhood school too becomes difficult, because the future of child’s shelter too is unknown. The children do not pursue education due to various reasons, prominent among them being that they are bread-winners in their family and hence education is not a priority issue to them. Also it must be added that the children do not go to schools because of the poor quality of education imparted (UNDP, 2009). Although the mentioned reasons portrays a negative state of affairs but there are individual cases which provides a positive light like in the case of a poor village girl named Chumki Hajra, whose motivation to satiate the hunger to learn makes her pursue her schooling in the evening after serving as house hold worker in Murshidabad, West Bengal in the daytime. From the above discussion, it is clear that the strategies and the structures implemented to reform education in India are either not implemented properly or are generally biased towards achieving other motives. It clearly indicates that, the authorities and institutions which govern the education system in India have failed to implement and bring into place education curriculum, which is equitable (Sadagoppan et al., 2007). Although public schools in India are the largest in numbers, but a study conducted by IIM-A in more than 13 states on India confirmed that due to absenteeism by teachers and poor quality education, more than 50% Indians preferred private schools (TOI, 2006). This brings us to another interesting solution to address the education problem. In the last 10 years India has seen a growth in privately run schools, which serve better quality education as compared to the public (government) schools. More than 50% urban slum kids and in villages 22.5% kids go to such schools to seek education. The number of private schools has increased, because the poor even though they manage with much difficulty, have realized the importance of education and the huge economic benefits that come from it (Nilekani,2009). The above discussion has led to the following conclusions:-

• Infrastructure for school education is not a problem in India • Children ‘walk out’ of schools and not ‘drop out’ to support their families and add to

local economy. Hence, the current education system (curriculum, teaching and evaluation methods, educational pedagogy) is unable to suffice the needs of the rural as well as urban poor.

• The quality of teachers, teaching methods, curriculum do not encourage holistic development of students and hence, expecting students to be interested in learning and returning to schools each day is not of any value.

• The various initiatives taken by the Government with public-private partnerships are either not implemented properly or are mechanical strategies which will collapse sooner or later.

One can argue that work based education will provide a better solution to the education problems in India for the secondary and higher levels of secondary schools. Not only will it help in educating children, but it will also be instrumental in reforming young minds to take lead and spearhead nation’s progress. It is rather implied to set ‘Nai Talim’ based model schools of learning. The reasons, why ‘Nai Talim’ based educational systems have not been

Page | 8

implemented on a large scale is not within the scope of this paper and hence the authors have not included the same in this paper, though the ‘National Focus Group on Work and Education’, talks about it (Sadagoppan et al., 2007). 3. Solutions

To address the challenges mentioned in the previous section various institutions are working to implement an equitable system in place. Multiple methods are being employed by the government to improve the education system and to achieve ‘zero out of school kid’ plan which means reducing drop-outs to near zero level. Many corporate houses have realized that the educated mass alone can form their work force and such business houses have joined hands with government initiatives to bring education to the masses. NGOs are playing an active role at their own level and also in aligning corporate educational initiatives with their own for educating the masses. The Teach India initiative is a very apt example for the same. Thus a synergy amongst private sector, government and NGOs is emerging in educating India (TeachIndia, 2009).

But, there are certain basic questions that need to be answered like; • Is the education encouraging ‘creativity’ and ‘curiosity’ in the kid? • Is he motivated to return back to school day after day? • Is the education gained in school helping him to develop a scientific and rational

outlook in this world? • Is the education being presented in an unbiased manner so that the sentiments and

feelings of minorities, kids with special needs and such others are not affected by any means?

• Is education touching the poorest of the poor and the most far flung Indians? • How does one ensure that the teacher is carving a moral individual through

education? There have been over the years some initiatives which are worth mentioning as they have addressed the questions mentioned in a suitable and commendable way. These initiatives have been tabulated in Table-1.

Page | 9

Table-1 discusses some of the commendable education initiatives in India in the recent past

Table-1 SrNo Initiative Description Impact/Benefit Disadvantage

1.

Universal Enrolment (SSA,2008)

To reduce 76 lakh out of school kids to zero, for class standard (I to X)

--Bridged social gap between kids from various groups (SCs, STs, Muslims) --Brought more girl kids to schools, thus increasing girl child education

--The education syllabus is not equipped to equip kids with practical skills to support themselves; hence these mechanical strategies will collapse (Sadagoppan et al., 2007).

2.

Learning Enhancement

Program (SSA,2008)

To improve quality of education, for class standard (I-III)

--Better regional level learning specific to languages, science and mathematics.

--In spite of this, the kids do not drop-out but walk-out, because they have to support themselves and their families (Sadagoppan et al., 2007).

3.

Parallel Implementation

Structures (SSA,2008)

Education beyond formal

classrooms

--To make education equitable by including diversified curriculum based on various factors (Sadagoppan et al., 2007).

--Poor management and incomplete implementation has led to failure as there is no formal grant of degree or certificates.

4. Zero Single

Teacher Schools (SSA,2008)

All schools must have more than two teachers

--To maintain a healthy Student:Teacher ratio -- Teachers specifically with science and mathematics background to teach respective subjects.

--Hiring quality teachers is difficult and hence, the overall quality of education is poor.

5. Mobile Schools (SSA,2009a)

To bring back children of brick kiln workers, nomadic workers by making a school in a mobile van which travels through various

--Aggressive implementation of School in neighborhood --Teachers + NGO+ private partnership has bore fruit.

--Is being done at a very small scale level.

Page | 10

SrNo Initiative Description Impact/Benefit Disadvantage

locations repeatedly.

6. Mid-Day Meals

For all public school kids, to make them come to school by providing them food during lunch time.

--Promise of food motivates families to send their kids to school. --Improved performance due to nourishment from food.

--Attendance of kids in some parts is seen to increase only during the meal time, defeating the purpose entirely.

7.

Learning Guarantee Program

(SSA,2009b)

By Azim Premji Foundation, to assess the quality of learning by children.

--Aim to assess whether kids have understood what they have been taught and whether the children have put it to some use.

--Is being run in five states and assesses kids with the current curriculum, which itself has many flaws.

8.

Information and Communication

Technology (ICT)

To deliver education services conveniently to masses.

--To implement IT enabled multimedia content to be delivered to schools with private-public partnership (ET,2006).

--Less than 0.2 percent of the work force has been engaged in this sector and has been over hyped (Sadagoppan et al., 2007).

9.

Education Collaboration

Network (IBM,2006)

By IBM, through collaboration with teachers, schools and experts in various fields to facilitate high quality education.

--To improve India’s Education system through IT. --To create a collaboration for knowledge and information sharing for improving education.

--Involves multiple partners and due to lingual barriers, poor infrastructural facilities it is not becoming very effective.

Apart from institutional level initiatives there are certain commendable individual level initiatives which are worth mentioning and they have been briefly discussed as follows:-

• Students in a Kolkatta school teach street children basic mathematics, science and languages and help to educate the kids (BBC-Sanjay, 2009).

• Babar Ali from Murshidabad, West Bengal, a school student himself teaches approximately 600 students outside his house after attending his own school, which is

Page | 11

10kms away. The village kids cannot go to school due to their poor economic condition, but are having the Hunger-To-Learn (BBC, 2009).

Subsequent to the discussion on these success stories relating to the extant initiatives regarding education content preparation and delivery the authors in the next section discuss a new teaching mode. 4. Cartoocation; Cartoon based education Everybody likes watching movies. Further one can state that cartoons are liked by all children between the age-group of (6-14) years as also the adults do. Kids remember stories and it has been a very effective method by which knowledge of Hindu mythology and ancient scriptures has been passed to next generation until art of writing was discovered. Story telling is an art and is one of the most innovative and creative methods by which a concept can be explained or a moral can be taught to a student. And, if the story can be converted into a movie or a cartoon film students would be more than interested to learn the same. This would also pull children to schools and be a solution to generate interest in learning and make learning fun. This would further lead to hunger to learn, which would be satiated in the same process of learning through cartoons. It has been studied and observed by an agency that, cartoon based education has been very effective and has been used in the past by schools and institutions at a pilot project level to measure the efficiency of the concept, though cartoon-based education was implemented in various forms and methods. Some examples of education through cartoons:-

• The ‘Mittu and Meena’ series on Door Darshan (DD) has been over the years one of the most innovative ways in which awareness is being spread.

• Education through cartoons would be one of the most innovative methods to impart education in quality (teacher, education, infrastructure) starved country. 200 public schools in Delhi used Pokemon; a cartoon character to teach kids and to make learning fun. This idea of teaching through cartoons is going to be implemented in another 300 more schools (SSA,2009c).

• Amar Chitra Katha series regularly publishes cartooned stories of Indian historical heroes and mythological characters. Hence, they play an instrumental role in educating children about history and figures of national importance.

CD and DVD players are easily available in India, and the price of a CD, DVD and CD/DVD player is very low. If cartoon based education can be produced in vernacular languages and can be distributed among the masses using CDs and DVDs then this model of delivery can be quite effective and successful in imparting knowledge and also spreading education to masses because of low price, high volume, and standard quality. The process of Cartoocation has been shown below in Figure-1.

Page | 12

The process of Cartoocation has been diagrammatically explained in figure 1. The process can be further explained in words as follows. It must be noted that one of the factors, which enables a student to develop interest to learn more is determined by the ability of the teaching skills in a teacher. As discussed previously, it is difficult to find such teachers in large numbers in India. This paucity of quality teachers is perhaps the reason behind the genesis of this paper. The first step that the authors here propose is to bring together experts in instructional pedagogy who would be able to develop or modify the current educational curriculum so that, it helps to develop the all round personality of the kid. The second step after the curriculum is created would be that, a group of good quality subject expert teachers and story-board experts would brainstorm to create a story from a particular chapter. The third step once the story-board is made would be, a group of illustrators would create illustrations from the story-board using technology. The fourth step would be to create animation from the illustrations. Though all the steps discussed so far are important, the fifth step would be to add voice over the animation to explain the educational concepts in the story created from the chapter. This would result into a synergy of best instructional methods with the best methods of education. The product formed after applying the above five steps would be pilot tested with a group of kids and the effectiveness of the content thus created would be studied and used for process improvement. It should be noted that each of the five steps discussed would have its own individual as well as over all feedback loop for improvement and optimization. The educational content will form a part of the knowledge repository, which will be distributed to the target audience which is group of kids from slums, rural population, schools and various education institutes through various methods for various purposes. Figure-2 explains the process of cartoon based education delivery model diagrammatically.

Figure-1 Cartoocation Step-2.Pilot testing the best method of teaching to get

the most effective method as well as content representation

Step-1.Developing Educational Curriculum

Step-3.Converting educational content into cartoon based

content Step-4.Adding voice on to the educational content in

vernacular language

Step-5.Producing content on CDs and other modes of mass communication and reaching to the kids

Feedbac

Page | 13

Tata Sky/Airtel/Dish etc. It should be noted that in India, the number of homes having television as well as television viewers have grown significantly in the last decade. Hence the authors feel that it would also be good to provide the cartoon based educational content through mass modes of communication/entertainment. Here the authors are making a significant point because providing good quality education through mass modes of communication would not only overcome the paucity of good quality teachers but also be able to provide the good quality education from very few quality teachers. The various modes of delivery of the educational content can be explained further. According to an agency report it is estimated that 119 million homes have a television set in India of which 62 million homes have a cable connection. It has been found that DD, India’s national television channel, which is also one of the largest broadcasting companies in the world reaches up to 89.6% of India’s one billion population (KPMG,2007). DD has also setup various regional television channels. Hence, the authors strongly feel that the cartoon based educational content can be broadcasted over Door Darshan channel in various languages, thus leveraging the available facilities to provide good quality education. The authors realize that setting up of infrastructure at the national level is costly and hence, have suggested alternate delivery modes as shown in figure-2. As discussed previously India has ample infrastructure and has community centers in the form of schools. The authors suggest using these schools to deliver the educational content to the students through Direct to Home (DTH) services, which are playing a significant role in bridging the digital divide

Figure-2 Making Cartoon based Content Available to Students Soft copy

of Content

DTH CD TV Channel

Home Community Based

Community Based

(Schools)

Computer/ VCDs etc.

Home Community Based

Students

Feedback

Feedback

Page | 14

between rural and urban India. Compact Discs (CDs) and CD players are also available for very less cost and hence community centers can easily setup these facilities through collective contributions. The authors emphasize learning through CDs, as it would enable the students to learn at their own pace. It would be like having a good teacher anywhere whenever needed. Thus the authors propose to make the cartoon based educational content available to the children primarily through CDs and television channel. Thus, cartoon based education can become a very potent tool for educating the uneducated. Its enhanced potency comes from the benefits of Cartoocation. The benefits of education through cartoons could be following:-

• Learning becomes more interesting, because everybody likes to watch cartoons e.g. Tom & Jerry, Mickey Mouse and others. The concepts of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, civics, geography, history and other subjects can be taught through cartoons with more fun.

• Cartoon characters will pull the students to the class as seen with the Pokemon experiment in Delhi Public Schools (SSA,2009c).

• Lesser number of efficient, passionate teachers can be put together to create content to explain studies in the form of story and presentation.

• With the increasing use of technology and animation tools making presentation and movies has become simple.

• This can aid in upgrading the teachers’ skills and ensure quality education is imparted among students.

• Children would love to learn at their own pace through CD based education and would partially eliminate the requirement of pool of good quality teachers required to teach. This will have a leveraging impact given the resource constraints a country like India faces.

• The audio content embedded on the education content imparted would help the students to learn better language skills like pronunciation and vocation.

The authors strongly feel that, because cartoons are easily accepted by all age groups, hence adult education can also be a very big domain for cartoon and CD based education. Even management education can be taught effectively at grassroots. Many latest techniques of agriculture, animal husbandry and other rural livelihood related subject domains can be effectively delivered through cartoons. Awareness about health education, water harvesting, disaster management and other similar areas can be effectively delivered through cartoon based education. The authors are also aware that cartoon based education does not impart practical training and hence does not align with the ‘Nai Talim’ based method of teaching and learning, but this method of providing cartoon based education will at least provide the correct knowledge required to take up practical training. Here, the authors are making a very strong point because it should be noted that in a huge country like India in spite of having huge human resources and potential for growth in all fields, India still lacks skilled resources which reflects the poor state of education in India time and again. Hence, it is imperative to state that cartoon based education may not permanently solve the problem of lack of ‘Nai Talim’ based education in India, but it can act as a bridge to smoothly transit to ‘Nai Talim’ based education from the current poor quality education.

Page | 15

5. Limitations of Cartoocation and future direction The discussions in the previous sections highlighted the benefits of cartoon based education, but Cartoocation has some limitations. The limitations of Cartoocation have been mentioned as follows:-

• Creating animations takes time and requires highly creative and skilled resources. • This system of education although innovative, does not align with ‘Nai Talim’

objectives which help in holistic development of individual. • It requires CDs and CD players and display device, which could be somewhat

expensive. • Some topics might not be covered effectively in CD based teaching.

Once Cartoocation starts in practice, the authors firmly believe that new and incremental methods and methodologies can be ushered in to make the Cartoocation system more robust and effective. This article has attempted to highlight the state of affairs of the Indian education system, and discovered some areas of concern which need immediate attention and solution. It also has drawn significant attention to the various government initiatives being taken to improve the condition of education in India. In the end, it has given reasons, why Cartoocation is one of the best methods to educate the have-nots of society. Education through cartoons just teaches essentially the same education content albeit, in a different way at a lower cost with superior quality. Because of this process, it triggers interest in the students to learn and further triggers creativity and curiosity in the individual to make him a more resourceful individual in the society. One important point that must be taken care is that, Cartoocation should necessarily have a strong grounding on ethical and moral perspectives. This could be delivered again as a story telling matter. The subject domain expertise content supplemented with the ethical dose will help develop the child into a moral citizen. This was precisely what was expounded by Mahatma Gandhi in his ‘Nai Talim’ method of teaching. This will surely be a very big step in our dream to make India a morally strong developed nation. References KPMG(2007). Media penetration in India CII-KPMG Report, Obtained through the internet: URL: http://www.diehardindian.com/ [accessed 04/12/2009] NIC-RDIS(2009). National Informatics Centre- Rural Development Informatics Projects- Below Poverty Line Census-2002. Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.nic.in/nicportal/RDISproject.html [accessed 04/12/2009] India Development Gateway(2009). Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.indg.gov.in/ [accessed 04/12/2009]

Page | 16

NCRI(2009). National Council of Rural Institutes. Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.ncri.in/html/naitalim.html [accessed on 04/12/2009] BBC(2009). British Broadcasting Corporation’s Hunger to Learn Series. Obtained through the internet: URL: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8299780.stm [accessed 04/12/2009] UNDP(2009). United Nations Developed Programme India: Urban Poverty Report 2009. Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.undp.org.in/ [accessed 04/12/2009] TeachIndia(2009). Teach India is a Times of India initiative. Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.teach.timesofindia.com/ [accessed 04/12/2009] BBC-Sanjeev(2009). Education in India by Sanjay Bhaskar. Obtained through the internet: URL:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKspt58JbsM [accessed 04/12/2009] Dongaonkar, D(2006), ‘Missing Links in Education system in India’. Obtained through the internet:URL:http://www.dise.in/Downloads/DISEnstudies/Prof%20Dayanand%20%20Dongaonkar.pdf [accessed 12/12/2009] TOI(2006), Times of India Report 8th November 2006 ET(2006), Economic Times Report 13th November 2006 HT(2007), Hindustan Times Report 2nd November 2007 SSA(2008), Priority Areas under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, (2008-09) SSA(2009a), Brick by Brick is an Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan success story. SSA(2009b), Corporates helping kids make better sense of education is a Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan success story. SSA(2009c), Out of box idea is a Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan success story. Sadagoppan, Anil and members of the group (2007) ‘Work and Education’, National Focus Group (National Council of Educational Research and Training), Number of Pages: 150 Nilekani,N (2009) ‘Imagining India’, Penguin Group USA, Number of Pages: 511 IBM(2006), ‘Improving India’s Education System through Information Technology’