The 1970s

The 1970s in India were tumultuous times, at least when it comes to the actions of the central government. Indira Gandhi, who became prime minister in 1966 and would remain in the post until 1977, represented the embodiment of both hope and frustration, with too great a dose of the latter bringing a temporary end to her reign. The 1970s were so eventful politically, culturally and socially that it might seem inappropriate to merely focus on changes to the education system. With that in mind, what follows will represent a summary of

50 This term will be henceforth employed in reference to the educational dynamic of the cultural arbitrary.

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important currents as they relate to education and, like the rest of this work, should not be viewed as exhaustive. On the whole, the 1970s in India can be understood as a further pronouncement of political, cultural and social fault lines, points of acute tension which Congress, in further centralizing power in the name of a quasi-socialistic vision of society, arguably did little to dampen. As concerns the link between education and, roughly speaking, power, the tensions were: first, that social mobility could transpire via the strategic operationalization of identity, an idea which was not unique to the 1970s but certainly gained tremendous currency; and second, that in light of this idea, the strategic pluralization of identity, the state needed stronger measures at its disposal to prevent dissolution and further partition, an idea which no doubt struck fear in the hearts of Congress, not least because of what India’s neighbors to the east and west experienced in 1971. Something simply had to be done to hold everything together.

The process of sanskritization, described for the first time by the late influential Indian sociologist M.N. Srinivas in the 1950s, had become mainstream thinking in the 1970s and provided sufficient theoretical and empirical rebuttals to the idea that the caste system – and thus all of Indian society – was rigid and that identity was a static concept.

Sanskritization, in Srinivas’ (1995) words, is: “the process by which ‘low’ Hindu caste, or tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual, ideology and way of life in the direction of a high, and frequently, ‘twice-born’ caste” (6). He goes on to explain that this process does not lead to structural change but only to positional change, meaning it affects only the redistribution of positions of social value, not the constitution of such positions.

This is certainly not to suggest that the caste system was immutable and perfectly determined social structure prior to Srinivas (or Ambedkar); rather, sanskritization provides a conceptual understanding of how social mobility depends on the formation of social groups, a formation which itself is aimed at upward caste and thus social mobility. These functional exercises in group formation along idealized lines had the effect, arguably, of shifting the onus for social transformation from all individuals, who could hope to acquire the necessary resources via education, back to the group. The point of this, however, is not to draw attention to a false choice between individual versus group identity; rather, it suggests that there was a pronounced disconnect between the central government and its promise of equality and what was actually delivered. Absent a formal social mechanism which could provide social

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mobility to individuals – i.e. a transformative secondary education system – individuals turned to the construction of nascent group identities to ensure mobility.

Although the term sanskritization suggests a link between language and social positioning, this link is not entirely straightforward, especially given that language represents a particularly contested terrain of struggle, most pronouncedly in the realm of education. The politics of language are important. A more involved analysis of language politics, particularly in the context of education and the process of sanskritization, would add depth to the analysis at hand. For the sake of analytical expediency, however, it should suffice to note that emergent claims to a given position in the social hierarchy through language policy and its relation to education are important. That Hindi, the dominant language in terms of percentage of native speakers amongst the Indian population, should also serve as the national language was and remains an unpalatable notion for much of the population. The resultant (re)emergence of English as a kind of institutional lingua franca, especially in secondary and tertiary education, certainly represents significant problems; however, it might be the “least bad” of the alternatives, given that so few (.02 percent) in India speak it as a so-called

“mother” language (cited in Mohanty 2006: 267). Official language policy in India has undergone some significant changes since independence, but the fact that English has stubbornly remained as a “subsidiary official language” alongside Hindi has underscored another Indian social quality: multilinguism. This quality gives reason for hope: according to Mohanty, this leads to greater “cognitive and intellectual skills”, among other things, even amongst the “unschooled” (264).

Sanskritization and local language endeavors resulted in changes to society, changes which could be understood as threats, especially in the context of larger geopolitical movements and their effects, for example, on domestic secessionist movements. These changes, combined with challenges to Gandhi’s centralized grip on power, perhaps best explain the context in which the most significant change to education in the 1970s, the 42^nd Constitutional Amendment of 1976, transpired. Gandhi, as the result of an unfavorable (to say the least) court decision in 1975, was very nearly forced out of office for election fraud by the High Court of Allahabad, declared a state of emergency and ruled via “president’s decree”, a for-her handy tool leftover from the colonial legacy. In order to not wade too deeply into historicity, it will suffice to remark that this state of affairs lasted until 1977 and occurred against the backdrop of significant internal and external difficulties, including domestic

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unrest which was linked up to economic struggles stemming from the recently concluded war with Pakistan and the oil crisis starting in 1973. Rather than stepping down (or aside), Gandhi proceeded to centralize power in order to overcome the diverse crises she faced.

It was during the “emergency” that the 42^nd Constitutional Amendment was passed, an amendment which in its entirety fairly represented this significant thrust toward centralization. The attempts to centralize power were not focused on education; the prospects of national education, however, did change significantly, as educational policy ceased to be the exclusive domain of the individual states. From December 1976, education became a concurrent power, meaning the central government had gained the ability to steer national educational policy beyond the somewhat limited purview of the commissions of the previous two decades. The respective state governments were to become partners with the central government in matters of education (Pathak 2012: 21). According to the British Council (2014), by no means an unbiased source, the goals of this consolidation were three-fold:

“reinforcing national and integrative character of education; maintaining quality and standards including those of teachers at all levels; and promoting excellence” (35). Such points are impossible to glean from a reading of the actual amendment, although it is quite clear that there was a modicum of consensus at the federal level to include education as a concurrent power.

While the 42^nd Amendment, its goals, and the context from which it arose opened it up to significant and transformative criticism, it can be stated with a degree of certainty that its extension of educational policymaking power to the level of the central government helped lay the foundation for the eventual realization of Article 45 of the original constitution. The 1970s in India are still hotly contested times. What some view as pure overreach is viewed by others as a necessary step in order to hold the country together.

Similarly, some view the years 1975-1977 as proof that Indian democracy was not mature enough; others point to the same years to suggest that democracy was so strong that it could endure a couple years of trying times. The enduring legacy in the realm of education and a legacy which perhaps more successfully evades the pitfalls of historicity can be formulated thusly: the central government, the government of India, received a much more pronounced foothold in education. This is important, especially if one considers processes of socialization and how they function in the context of a national society.

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In Germany, the 1970s were equally challenging, at least from the perspective of policy. The so-called revolution of 1968, whereby young people took their legitimate grievances to the streets, is generally understood as a defining social moment in the history of postwar Europe. In short, the movements were not successful in the traditional sense, insofar as the military-industrial complex did not lose power, wars did not cease, atomic energy was not abandoned, capitalism did not lose its luster, etc.; they did, however, prove to be training grounds for future politicians and new political orientations, both of which would eventually, echoing Winston Churchill’s cynical quote about political orientation and age, be coopted.

The generation which came of age in the spring of 1968 did, however, have a lasting impact on the German education system. As mentioned above, the Hamburg Agreement of 1964 had the dual effect of reinforcing the tripartite system and providing a modicum of space for alternative imaginations. The Deutscher Bildungsrat (German Advisory Council for Education) was founded in 1966 and was conceived of as a parallel organization to the KMK.

According to Achim Leschinsky (2005), the goals of the Council were fourfold: “a) to propose demand and development plans, b) to make reform recommendations for the structure of the education system, c) to enumerate the associated financial requirements, and finally d) to articulate recommendations for long-term planning at different stages…” (818;

translated by author).

The formation of the Council quite obviously preceded the events of 1968, but the impetus for change, or at least recognition that the education system was not dealing sufficiently with the requirements of an increasingly heterogeneous society, was already extant. In fact, as Leschinsky (2005) contends, “The Council was created in the 1960s, because the ‘lag in modernity’ of the German education system and the inability of the system to extricate itself from this predicament became publicly known” (823; translated by author).

It could certainly be argued that the Council itself experienced a change in orientation subsequent to 1968. Such an idea is plausible if one peruses the Council’s list of publications between the years 1967-1970, with the publications in 1967-1968 being first and foremost concerned with technical issues (teacher shortages and financial planning), and the publications subsequent to 1968 being geared toward more creative and reform-minded topics, including all-day schools, comprehensive schools, secondary school reform and the overall structure of the education system (see Deutsche Nationalbibliothek).

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While the emergence of all-days schools is certainly fascinating regarding the effect it has had on school performance, family structure, gender emancipation, etc. (see Stecher 2011), the emergence of the Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) is of particular interest for the present purposes. The idea behind comprehensive schools in Germany existed prior to World War II, although the American military government’s Basic Principles for Democratization of Education in Germany of 1947 and its insistence upon equality through comprehensive education (Braun 2004: 38) has apparently led to some ambiguity as to the providence of egalitarian and democratic reform endeavors in Germany (for example, see Puaca 2009). Just as democracy was not a foreign concept on German soil, but rather had a long and admittedly spotty history, the notion that comprehensive schools could offer a viable alternative to the tripartite system was and is not inimical to “Germanness”. The nomenclature changed slightly (Einheitsschulen resurfaced later as Gesamtschulen), but the principles – egalitarianism, equality of opportunity, “humanism” and the “horizontalization”

of secondary schooling – remained the same.

In line with the recommendations of the German Advisory Council for Education, ten-year pilot phases for comprehensive schools (Gesamtschulen) were first operationalized in 1967, with a “roll out” across all of the Federal Republic (with some exceptions) into the 1970s. The idea was that the pilot phase would produce the necessary evidence for the superiority of the comprehensive school relative to the tripartite system, but in reality, the comprehensive school versus Gymnasium debate was a political litmus test of sorts, with the CDU favoring the old model and the SPD championing the new. This debate, which did not result in the abandonment of either the tripartite or comprehensive model, remains unresolved; be that as it may, one can view the emergence of comprehensive schools in the 1960s and 1970s as an opening or loosening up of secondary schooling in Germany.

According to Hubert Ertl and David Phillips (2000), the conflict was more political than pedagogical:

The alliance between the Christian Democratic Party and the Christian Social Party (CDU/CSU)…was not willing to change a system which it saw as a stronghold of economic success and development. More than anything else, the Gymnasium was regarded as the best guarantee for high achievement (396).

In an increasingly rare instance in which democracy and education collide, citizens in North-Rhine Westphalia voiced their concerns about and displeasure with sweeping changes

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to secondary education via a popular referendum in 1978, preventing reforms to the Land’s school system which had been proposed by the SPD-led government (Landtag NRW). The proposal of 1978, which would have combined lower secondary schools (grades five through ten) and left upper secondary intact (“tracked”), was viewed as a political waystation of sorts en route to fully integrated comprehensive schools. It was defeated. Although the comprehensive school model lost a significant amount of momentum in becoming a viable, widespread model at the national or even regional level, the extant schools were able to continue in their existence. The conservative and culturally elitist elements in North-Rhine Westphalia, in this case the Landeselternschaft der Gymnasien, a parent organization for pupils at the highest level schools, and the Union of Philologists, were the driving forces behind the abandonment of the reform endeavors (Landtag NRW).⁵¹

Attempts to reform the education system in the Federal Republic in the 1970s were frustrated by a number of factors: a lack of political power on the part of reformers due in large part to the federal nature of German politics; a financial crisis, the floating of the dollar and the resultant uncertainty; the Cold War, domestic disturbances and a lack of political incentive to tackle education (a persistent problem in most polities); and a large proportion of the population that viewed the Gymnasium as quintessentially German, a connection to a past that seemed removed from more regrettable happenings. That comprehensive schools have not disappeared from the educational landscape after the enthusiasm and eventual disappointment of the 1970s is a positive sign for the development of a more equitable secondary education system.

Although the Gymnasium is arguably one of the pillars of “German identity”, there is an equally strong dose of Reformpädagogik (progressive education) in extant narratives.⁵²

51 The culturally elitist and conservative elements seem to be on the wane and are thus more likely to focus their grievances on subject-specific matters than on matters of general school structure. For example, if one spends enough time discussing education with enough people in the country, one is sure to encounter ideas such as: “culture begins with the Latin language”. In spite of the chauvinism implied by such a statement, this old approach to humanistic education is fine, provided that everyone has a real opportunity to learn the language of culture.

52 One is hard pressed to find, for example, a biography of Helmut Schmidt, chancellor from 1974-1982, which does not focus on his time at the Lichtwarkschule, an alternative school in Hamburg (see, for example, Schwelien 2015).

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One can locate a modicum of hope in the fact that the tumult of the 1970s, the frustrations of reformers, and the inability of society to change in line with the wishes of the self-assured, youthful left, did not result in a complete “either this or that” approach to schools. The notion that comprehensive schools emerged not as a total replacement, but as a measured alternative to the tripartite system, is indicative of a larger orientation toward compromise. The secondary school system was still largely organized vertically; there proved to be enough space, however, for some horizontal, “flattening” endeavors. While it is tempting to highlight the above as proof positive that the German approach to education has been ultra-conservative since the founding of the Federal Republic, such a conclusion is wholly unsatisfactory (Ertl and Phillips 2000: 405) insofar as it does not get at the reasons behind the general aversion to reform.

While the consolidation of the central government’s power to steer education might be interpreted as a stepping stone to future, large-scale reforms in India, much of the conversation dealt not with the structure of secondary education as such but with the herculean task of finally making free and compulsory education a reality. This did nothing to change the cultural-educational arbitrary, although laying the groundwork for universal education can be interpreted as a success of a different kind. In Germany, the 1970s unfortunately represent a missed opportunity of sorts to completely reform the system.

Instead of changing secondary education entirely in the form of comprehensive schools as the only show in town, reformers were forced to settle with the space left for them in the Hamburg Agreement of the decade prior to put comprehensive schools on the agenda. Since then, comprehensive schools can be understood as egalitarian beacons in a sea of supposedly meritocratic sorting mechanisms. This was an important opening.