Education Of Tribal Girl Child: Problems And Prospects

Abstract

Education is considered as the backbone of the development; both at the household and societal levels. But educating the tribal girl child has been a challenging task for the administration because of a number of inherent 'Pull', 'Push' and 'Pull-Push' factors that are related to various socio-cultural, economic, ecological, administrative and other related factors. This volume has tried to find out all these at the field level and to critically analyse the ongoing schemes and programmes. It finds some measures to tackle the problems backed up by some grass root level realities and cherishes as to how the tribals could wake up and send their daughters to school spontaneously. This study is a comparative one which has not only tried to focus the situation of education among the Scheduled Tribe (ST) girls at the inter-departmental level between the schools run by the ST & SC Development Department (SSD) and School and Mass Education Department (SME), but it has also focused the problems at the intra-departmental level taking the STgirls vs. ST boys and ST girls vs. Non-ST girls as two major units of comparison. The study provides a rich theoretical base apart from a detailed discussion on the development of National System of Education, the steps taken towards improving the literacy among the women in general and tribal women in particular, their present state of educational status as compared to their Non-ST counterparts. The perception on modern education and attitude of parents towards educating girl children is a very vital aspect. These aspects are dealt with special reference to some social situations in gender perspective. The study has focused on enrollment, absenteeism, retention, dropout and academic performance comparatively among the ST girl students studying in schools of the concerned two departments. Moreover, it also discusses about the causes of dropout, non-enrollment and absenteeism among the concerned students. Thus, the result, though based on the micro-level field realities, it has macro implications in the Indian context and as such it will be very useful for the policymakers, planners, administrators, academicians, researchers, students, civil societies and all those who are interested in the educational problems among the STs, especially the ST girl child.