Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Fo c us Ed uc ati o n P o l i c y
MPP student Pallavi Shukla builds a school in Lakhimpur, Uttar Pradesh
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urga, the Hindu goddess of power, is often depicted mounted on a tiger, her eight arms loaded for bear with a trident, a sword, a thunderbolt, a spear.... Some say this powerful goddess was born of the gods’ fury over an illiterate demon who was wreaking havoc on Earth. Pallavi Shukla ’s first student (pictured left), was named Durga. Ironic, says Shukla, since Durga couldn’t write the alphabet when they started. “She was a great student, and she picked up everything very quickly,” Shukla explains, “but she’d had a spotty education and needed to get back on track.” »»» Just out of college, 2011 Riecker Fellow Pallavi Shukla found a job in New Delhi developing patches for Microsoft. As an electronics and telecommunications engineer, the work was ideal. But it wasn’t enough for Shukla, who loved working with people, and wanted to get out from behind a desk and do something. Education, she thought, had given her the tools she needed to move to a big city and make a lot of money, but also to decide what she wanted to do with her life. As such, she reasoned, it would be a powerful way to make a difference in the lives of India’s poor. It’s not that India doesn’t have schools for the poor, Shukla explains, but that the country’s public schools are almost entirely attended by the poor, while the country’s private schools cater to the wealthy. “I could ask a kid which school he goes to, and I could tell the economic strata his parents belong to,” says Shukla. She describes asking poor children what they wanted to be when they grew up, and hearing them say farmers, housewives, or bus conductors. When she asked her cousins, though, they would say doctors and astronauts. Durga, one of Shukla’s first students at the BPS Public School.
“When poor kids go to schools for the poor, their world view isn’t broadened by education,” Shukla explains. “Education should teach them not only to expect good things, but to reject what’s not right.” In addition, the families of India’s poor, first-generation students haven’t been very effective at holding teachers accountable for quality education. In general, they don’t expect much of teachers, or have high hopes that education will provide their children with a path out of poverty. Photo: Pallavi Shukla (mpp '13)
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