The Indian government has not been able to open enough schools so that all of the rural villages have access. So children can not always go to school. In addition, it’s sometimes too expensive for villagers who are laborers to send their children to school. So their parents must make hard choices. A priest from a family of six girls and three boys told me that his parents could only afford to send the boys to school. Today, with a Masters Degree in English, he’s a teacher in the Junior College and a success story. His sisters didn’t fare so well.
A child is considered a success if he makes it through the fifth grade. Normal school ends after the tenth grade. Technical schools teach the trades as an alternate choice to Junior College. A few very lucky ones make it through their bachelors degree.
For the girls who are never given a chance to go to school, the Church has opened a few training centers that teach them basic skills for being a mother and wife. The curriculum is like our old home-ec programs and it lasts 10 months. At the end of the program the girls have learned enough how to sew to earn money when they go back to their villages and they are given a treadle sewing machine. This is all the education they will ever get. I have met many of them and they are gorgeous, delightful, happy girls who just need a chance.
Dawn, This is so depressing. It's going back to the early colonial days here in the USA I don't think people in the States know how good life is here. You are doing a nice job giving the readers of your blog the feel and culture of the everyday life of most Indians in India.
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