Editorial 1 : Recalibrating merit in the age of Artificial Intelligence
Context
There needs to be a sophisticated understanding of the interplay between technology and societal structures.
Meritocracy
- The concept of meritocracy, wherein individuals are rewarded and advance based on their abilities, achievements and hard work, rather than their social status or background, has been extensively debated.
- Proponents and critics of meritocracy offer compelling arguments about its impacts on society, highlighting its virtues and shortcomings.
AI as a disruptive factor
However, introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) into this equation completely complicates the idea of reforming meritocracy. AI, with its rapidly evolving capabilities, will be reshaping merit and the idea of meritocracy in six ways.
- First, by its very nature, AI questions the basis of human merit by introducing a non-human entity capable of performing tasks, making decisions, and even ‘creating’ at levels that can surpass human abilities. OpenAI’s Sora is evidence that creativity is not an exclusive human trait any more.
- Second, the advent of AI challenges the traditional notion of individual merit by prioritising access to technology.
- Third, AI systems trained on historical data can perpetuate and even exacerbate biases present in that data, leading to discriminatory outcomes in areas such as hiring, law enforcement, and lending.
- Fourth, an AI tool can predict pancreatic cancer in a patient three years before radiologists can make the diagnosis.
- Capabilities such as this can lead to the displacement of jobs that involve routine, predictable tasks. This also means that AI would impact high-wage jobs.
- Regardless of these, AI would push the workforce towards either high-skill, high-wage jobs involving complex problem-solving and creativity or low-skill, low-wage jobs requiring physical presence and personal interaction, which AI cannot replicate yet.
- This polarisation will exacerbate socioeconomic disparities, as individuals without access to high-level education and training are pushed towards lower-wage roles.
- Fifth, the opaque nature of many AI algorithms, coupled with the concentration of power in a few tech giants, poses significant challenges to accountability.
- Sixth, at the organisational level, the core of AI’s power lies in data and algorithms that process this data.
Conclusion
Thus, recalibrating meritocracy in the face of AI advancements demands a sophisticated understanding of the interplay between technology and societal structures. It calls for a deliberate rethinking of how merit is defined and rewarded when AI tools can both augment human capabilities and deepen existing inequalities.
Editorial 2 : A ruling that gives primary schoolteaching a new slate
Context
In August 2023, the Supreme Court of India upheld the decision of the Rajasthan High Court in ruling that the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) degree cannot be considered appropriate for primary schoolteaching — the relevant degree for this level of school is the Diploma in Education (DEd) or Diploma in Elementary Education (DElEd) or Bachelor of Elementary Education (BElEd).
Primary teaching has different requirements
- Teaching young students in primary grades is quite different in its requirements when compared to being a subject teacher for middle and high school.
- Understanding Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN), and being able to design and involve all students in a manner that ensures that they grasp these basic and foundational competencies is a very non-trivial task.
- Almost all of us have forgotten how we learned to read or manipulate the number system. Hence, teaching these competencies has to be learnt by prospective primary schoolteachers, through specialised teacher education for this stage, i.e., the DEd, or DElEd or BElEd.
- It cannot be reconstructed through autobiographical memory; love for children and good communication skills are not enough, and by no means does the BEd degree, with its focus on teaching subjects to students in middle school upwards, prepare teachers for this.
- The Right to Education Act 2009, therefore, not only lay emphasis on the need for professional qualification but also the appropriate qualification to teach.
- Yet, 15 years later, we find that graduates with BEd qualification continue to be employed for this stage of school.
The data
- The overall extent of professionally qualified teachers in the system looks good.
- The State of Teachers, Teaching and Teacher Education Report 2023 (SoTTTER-23) shows that 90% of teachers have some form of professional qualification.
- Of the 10% who do not have professional qualifications, 61% are in the private sector; 61% of this group are in rural areas.
- The proportion of DElEd qualified teachers in the government and aided sectors is between 60%-68%, as government recruitment norms, by and large, have regulated recruitment.
- However, in the primary school level of the private unaided sector, 22% have the DElEd or equivalent; 43% of primary schoolteachers in private schools have BEd degrees, and another 17% do not have any professional qualification.
- In the relatively elite English medium schools run by government societies, which include the Kendriya Vidyalayas, the Army, Sainik, and Railway schools, the proportion of DElEd or equivalent holders at the primary school level is only 24%, with about 56% being BEd degree holders.
Addressing the anomalies
- First, greater attention will need to be paid to increasing the supply of good quality DEd/DElEd/BElEd programmes in the country.
- Analysis of Teachers Eligibility Test (TET) data from one State shows that quality in this sector is only from the government-funded institutions while the self-financed sector is doing very poorly.
- However, there are concerns for the sector as a whole: only 14% of qualifying candidates had a mean score of 60% or above.
- The low mean scores in mathematics, at 46%, are cause for concern. There will have to be more attention in ensuring higher quality and pedagogical content knowledge of candidates.
- The Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) may also need to have section-wise qualifying cut-off marks included in addition to an overall qualification cut-off mark, to ensure that primary schoolteacher competence in mathematics.
- There is an urgent need to strengthen government support and innovation in this sector.
- Programmes such as BElEd offered by the Delhi University have demonstrated successful curriculum to strengthen knowledge, understanding and practice for this level/stage, long neglected in the university space.
- The recently announced Integrated Teacher Education Programme (ITEP) holds out the possibility of extending the successful model of bringing primary schoolteacher preparation into the university/Higher Education space.
Conclusion
- A recent Ministry of Education initiative to strengthen DIETs is welcome. With a full Budget expected in a few months’ time, one hopes that the government will respond in a comprehensive way to these issues, and provide allocation to strengthen primary/preparatory stage teacher education through greater government support and incentives for innovation in this sector.