Today I admitted that Education Governance may be my first love (professionally, of the decade, ok!). I also admitted that it broke my heart a decade ago when I spoke of education governance and the audience dedicated to education improvement had never come across the idea (Session was in Mumbai then) except as school inspection and monitoring of tests, classes and notebooks. To police is not to govern, I tried to say but it was as if we were speaking different languages. So as every half decent facilitator does, I switched to their language and spoke of the annual cycle of education and the feedback loop from practice. At least I was still speaking of self improvement cycles.
This was mid way through my first introduction to education governance in the mid 2000s, the first time I became a school governor and today. I have been on various management, advisory and society boards since then and have found myself run the gamut of emotions from respect (rare!) to suppressed gasps of dismay. There is a protocol to governance sessions – the first rule of governance is to govern oneself as a committee and that itself could be the subject of an essay. Needless to say, but I will – boy – do we need to put in humongous amounts of work into this arena. If the superbosses of educational institutions are leading guidance in this manner, are we sure we are on the right path?
Question is – should I take this on?
Pros- It matters. It will bring real questions to the table. I can.
Cons – it takes ages to reform established practices. No one wants to reform established practices.
As ever, yours truly, reporting from the land of Hmmmm.
Meeta W Sengupta 