Patriarchy continues to exercise its stronghold on the Indian social structure despite various laudable efforts by civil society organizations, certain schools and courts. There are government schemes which also try to improve the situation on the gender front but schemes can only go a certain distance in shaping social consciousness.  

As children are socialized into patriarchal structures, over a period of time, their own consciousness gets shaped in a certain way. The roles that they see other women in their immediate families become part of their consciousness unless they are influenced by other members of the family or in the external setting comprising of their school in their early years and then the wider society. At the wider social level if children see a woman sarpanch in a seat which has been allocated for women as per Article 243D of the Constitution, only serving as an acting head of the village, while the male member of the family is involved in the crucial meetings, then that cannot be considered empowerment in the true sense of the word. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 brought to the fore the issues in terms of how gender intersects with the school curriculum. Many of the states have even modelled their curriculum on the framework of NCF 2005.  

In my own efforts at implementing programs in the past, I have had a chance to see how activities within the school setting normalize gender-based roles. As we visit schools in the morning hours, we can see how some daily rituals are neatly segregated by the teachers, with girls many a time taking over the responsibility of cleaning the premises while boys contribute in terms of carrying certain objects such as musical and sports instruments to the assembly section. Thus any effort to bring parity of gender in textbooks can lose its edge or capacity to spur critical thinking unless the teachers make a conscious effort at bringing attention to the social structure which continues to dominate the sense of what is normal.

Schools and within them the adolescent age group students offer immense opportunities for engaging in critical thinking. Engagement on themes such as patriarchy has been done using the reference frame of both constitutional values which are based on philosophical ideas pertaining to justice, and equality to name a few.

As students in the adolescent age group are in the process of trying to find their own sense of self and their place in the larger world, acquainting them to the nature of the social order goes a long way in sensitizing them towards relating to their fellow students with a sense of equality. Along with playing a critical role of realizing a just social order, they can contribute towards the objective of taking students away from rote memorization and developing higher-order thinking skills, as articulated in the New Education Policy of 2020.

The road to a society founded on principles of social equality is long but schools and teachers can play a significant role in realizing the ‘woh subah’ as beautifully penned by Sahir Ludhianvi several decades back.

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