When Classrooms become Marketplaces

Credit By: INAYAT ZAFFAR

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22 Apr 2026

Children deserve classrooms that are not marketplaces, but spaces of dignity, discovery, and hope

In the Kashmir Valley, the school bell no longer only signals the start of learning; it often signals the start of a transaction. Over the last decade, education here has steadily shifted from being a social responsibility to a profit-making enterprise. Coaching centres, private schools, packaged tuitions, and branded “future-ready” institutes now dominate the educational landscape. Parents pay, students perform, and institutions prosper. But beneath this busy marketplace of aspirations lies a troubling question: what happens to the idea of education as a public good, and who is being left behind?

Commercialization has brought with it a new language. Children are “products”, results are “outputs”, and parents are “customers”. Education is sold as a ticket out of uncertainty, a guaranteed seat in a professional college, a government job, a life beyond conflict and instability. This promise is powerful. Many families willingly sacrifice savings, sell land, or fall into debt to secure a place in a prestigious school or coaching centre.

Yet, this promise is rarely questioned. Are we truly empowering young people, or are we narrowing their dreams to marks, ranks, and cut-offs? Schools and coaching centres proudly advertise toppers on giant hoardings and social media, but they rarely show the faces of those who fall through the cracks: the student who cannot afford the fee, the one who learns differently, the one whose talent lies beyond the prescribed syllabus.

Govt schools, meanwhile, struggle to compete in this new marketplace. They are judged not on their role in building an equal society, but on how many students they send to elite institutions. When the measure of success becomes narrow and exam-centric, everything else in education slowly erodes; critical thinking, creativity, compassion, and the ability to question injustice. The classroom that should nurture curiosity becomes a training camp for competitive exams.

The impact of commercialization is also deeply unequal. In rural parts of the Valley, many children still walk long distances to reach understaffed schools with poor infrastructure. For them, the glittering promise of private education in urban centres is simply out of reach. Even in towns, parents of modest means often feel compelled to enrol their children in private schools, fearing that government institutions will doom them to a future of limited opportunities. Education, instead of bridging class divides, is hardening them.

Teachers, too, are caught in this logic of profit. In many private institutions, they are underpaid, overworked, and easily replaceable. Their value is measured less by their ability to mentor and more by the grades their students produce. The respect traditionally accorded to a teacher is gradually being replaced by the pressure to deliver “results”. In such an environment, how many teachers can afford to encourage dissent, independent thought, or unconventional careers?

Commercialization, however, is not inevitable. It is the outcome of choices; policy choices, social choices, and moral choices. The state has stepped back from its responsibility to strengthen public education, creating space for private players to rush in. Society, too, has slowly accepted the notion that “good education” must be expensive, exclusive, and exam-driven. Parents feel they have no option but to participate in this race, even when it goes against their own instincts.

The task before us in Kashmir is not to romanticize a past that may itself have been imperfect, but to honestly confront the present. If we continue on this path, we risk building a future where only those who can pay will truly learn, and where degrees are plentiful but wisdom is scarce.

A different vision is still possible. It would mean investing seriously in Govt school, ensuring qualified teachers, stable infrastructure, and updated curricula. It would mean regulating private institutions with transparency, so that profit does not override ethics. It would require parents, teachers, religious leaders, and policymakers to ask a simple but radical question: is our education system helping children become more human, or merely more competitive?

The greatest injustice we can commit is to turn education, our only peaceful path to collective transformation, into yet another commodity. The Valley’s children deserve classrooms that are not marketplaces, but spaces of dignity, discovery, and hope.

(Author is an educationist and public speaker)