Global Perspective – Team Project
Topic -
Human rights
Issue -
Discrimination in the education system
Aim -
To suggest ways to reduce educational discrimination
Outcome Description – An informative video highlighting the types & causes
of educational discrimination in India. We wanted to
show how educational discrimination affects the life of
millions o Indian students & possible solutions to
reduce it.
Explanation & Cultural perspectives –
We choose to study discrimination in the Indian education system, in doing so we
explored various cultural biases and socio-economic factors, which create barriers
in the way of getting a quality education. We used various studies on caste-based
discrimination (a form of cultural bias) in different parts of our country, newspaper
& magazine articles on the topic & personal interviews of eminent personalities in
the field of education.
We found that differences in culture, language & socioeconomic status do hinder
one’s learning opportunities. we observed that educational discrimination takes
place on the basis of caste, gender & economic status of individuals. In our
outcome, we drew our inferences from diverse ethnic & cultural sources such as
studies, surveys, and analyzing relevant News sources from different regions of our
vast country. The cultural perspectives were further explored by looking at the
different cultural experiences of Individuals in our group as they come from
different castes, religions & regions of India. Our group specifically focused on the
problems faced by scheduled caste & female students. We also chose to portray the
significant influence of Indian government schemes in helping underprivileged
students. In doing so we managed to show the effect of cultural biases & economic
status on educational discrimination and possible ways to reduce it.
Individual Element –
This project was a great opportunity for me to interact & discuss in length not only
with my fellow teammates (of both genders) but also with a wide variety of people
from different strata of Indian society. Understanding their viewpoint & comparing
them to my views on the subject. I learned that different perspectives on a topic
can exist in a team. In the process, I realized my strengths in presenting arguments
based on factual research and overcame my weakness of impatience by controlling
it & hearing out patiently the contrary viewpoint. I also learned that even though a
viewpoint looks perfectly logical & rational, but we should always cross-check it
with available research data and then draw any final conclusions. One other
weakness I realized during the process was adjusting one’s efforts according to the
team's requirements.
During our team project, we divided our research work into three
parts i.e.
1. Discrimination due to race, caste & gender
2. discrimination due to economic factors & huge Population growth.
3. Discrimination in school campuses.
To complete our part of the research process we read many web articles, blogs,
research project studies on the topic, and interviewed marginalized population
samples. This brought about clarity in our minds about why discrimination still
persists. we brought our research conclusions, probable solutions, and doubts to
team meetings & learned about other members’ findings, their views, experiences
& possible solutions in the end we debated all the findings and agreed on those
which correlated with factual data & discarded those which were mere subjective
arguments without any factual basis.
This whole process improved my
ability to attentively & patiently hear about others’ points of view and more
effectively communicate my views when they are corroborated by factual
statistical data. In hindsight, I believe my contribution has been significant in
reaching an outcome that encompasses various socio-economic factors
contributing to discrimination in education.
However, I did face some challenges during the project which tested
my limits in overcoming stressful situations. while working in a group setting, we
faced problems in coordination, as managing time for in-person meetings became
impossible due to,
1. Our school timing from 8 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. with no free periods & in the
evening we have to do homework.
2. All team members live a long distance from each other & meeting in a common
place became hard.
So we decided to meet online over weekends to overcome this obstacle. We also
have divided house over the issue of methodology to be adopted, half of the
members wanted to limit the project work to just interviews & another half on
proper data collection & analysis, in the end, we incorporated both elements to
develop consensus.
We set out our research
objectives to make a detailed outcome video on educational discrimination in
India, which will provide information about various types of discrimination in the
Indian educational system, the factors responsible for it & possible solutions that
can be applicable to the students of our class. Our outcome video had been useful
not only in providing clear-cut socio-economic factors but also enables my
classmates to look into real-world significance & consequences through our use of
the Interview technique.
Our goal of an ideal outcome would have
been a highly concise & strictly informative video which we believed would have
been the most effective way of raising awareness of the issue in the class.
However, in looking back on our project I believe there are many improvements
that could have been made. Due to many limitations of skill, time & experience.
Our video had a few conspicuous mistakes such as a long
three-part presentation instead of one succinct flow of information. In order to
increase the efficacy of our outcome, we should have taken less pertinent details
out of the final presentation. Our outcome could have been much more effective if
it goes beyond mere awareness to some practical solutions to this problem
applicable at the school level.
While going through many
aspects of the problem, I developed an understanding of the various causes & their
effect on the problem i.e., how a person’s socio-cultural background and attitudes
reinforced over many generations govern his/her behavior when he/she is
interacting with a person from underprivileged part of society. Similar tendencies
are reflected in a larger formal setting such as a school or office. People at large
think that this discrimination can be removed only through various government
schemes and there is a lack of initiative by society itself to take on any affirmative
action in this regard due to the vast number of people in the underprivileged
section, huge resources required for educational parity, deep-rooted segregation of
society on the basis of caste system reinforced over thousands of years.
This project was quite challenging for me as it tested my abilities to work in
a team environment, initially, I was not at ease working in a team, as most of my
projects I have done individually but as we progressed in this project, I made
modifications in my working style to complement other teammates efforts. This
project changed my thinking “that the end product of our research will be the sum
total of each member’s individual efforts” instead as we met & discussed the
progress, we frequently borrowed each other’s ideas & made course corrections on
other team members’ suggestions. Also as we became familiar with different
aspects of the issue, we realized that there cannot be a single solution for it, rather
a multipronged strategy has to be adopted by different sections of our society,
government, schools & us students to overcome this obstacle.
This project immensely benefitted me as I learned the importance of time
management, the process of cross-checking propositions against statistical data
analysis, & most importantly developing the patience to hear contrary views and
make changes in my research according to a culturally different set of ideas.
overall, we’ve been successful in achieving the goals of our research project
personally refined my ability to effectively convey my ideas, behavioral skills for
getting others’ cooperation & developing my ability to contemplate. Our Outcome
successfully provides socio-economic perspectives, cross-cultural views & steps
that can be taken at the classroom level to tackle discrimination.
BibliographyShrivastava Aditi (an eminent educationalist). “was interviewed” by Aparna
Saxena. 19 August 2022
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status, and culture as determinants of primary school enrolment in India”.
September 2010
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enrollment”. September 2012
Desai Sonali & Kulkarani Veena. “Changing Educational Inequalities in India in the
Context of Affirmative Action”. May 2008
Sagrika Shipra. “Education, and Caste Based Discrimination: A Sociological
Understanding”. 12 November 2021
Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S. Newman. “Caste and Economic Discrimination:
Causes, Consequences and Remedies”
19 October 2007
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February 2015
Kurian Oommen. “When school continue to exclude” Oxfam India. 02 April 2015
Centre for social equity & inclusion blog. “Zero discrimination & violence in
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Kumar Bagesh. “Discrimination in Indian Higher Education: Everyday Exclusion
of the Dalit–Adivasi Student”. October 28, 2021
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