Topics: Education
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20% of women in Arampur are literate and 45% of men. Even when education is free, it may be too costly for poorer families to allow children to attend when their labor is needed at home or in the fields. Many parents also fail to see the utility of education for children who will almost certainly become domestic workers and field laborers like themselves and their parents before them. Most surrounding villages have their own primary and middle schools. Public schools vary immensely in quality, from the bare-walled and chairless rooms of schools found in many smaller villages to the brick-built and well-attended high school. Arampur is home to two of the three local private schools and two madarsas (Islamic primary schools). In the last few years, these private primary and middle schools have grown with the local middle class who want an alternative to the sporadically staffed government schools. Thus, they act as magnets for upper-class children from all the nexus villages. The children of those who both can afford to spare their teenagers from work and consider higher education to be worthwhile attend the locally-initiated, yet public high school. Arampur High School works to integrate the nexus residents whose families can afford to allow them to attend. Until 1956, children had to travel daily to the town of Kendra, some twenty kilometers distant, to study in secondary school. Mahan Singh, a resident of the nexus village of Swami Sarai, founded Arampur High School in his home village and it serves the entire constellation of villages. Today this low, flat-topped, brick building acts as a key unifying force among the wealthier children of the nexus. Kids, who would otherwise grow up with more of an affinity for their individual villages, meet here daily, socialize, support the school cricket team, and make friendships and associations across village, caste, and (to a lesser extent) class lines. Although the school, which the government of Bihar later absorbed, is free, most students are male and from the elite classes and castes. A very few students from the Arampur nexus continue on to study in Banaras. The burgeoning middle class and landowning elite often school their children in the city's multitude of schools, madarsas, and colleges as well as in the three universities there. The children reside in residential halls or with extended family who have settled in the city. |