A work-able way to learning
Sushama Sharma
“I think you are spoiling your child’s career? Why do you send your child to that school? Don’t you think he will be wasting his time in useless outdated activities like gardening, cooking, and cleaning?”
These comments from close relatives were being shared by Mrs. Dagwar with me. She felt pressurized and guilty when members in the family strongly reacted to her decision to admit her second child in Anand Niketan, a school run on nai talim ideas of education. Mrs. Dagwar was working with a voluntary agency which questioned the conventional consumerist development model and trained women to become small producer groups. Still, the pressure was so much that Krishna, the child, was removed from the school and sent to an English medium school, where his older brother, Ved was already studying. But the mother soon realized that she had made a mistake as the school did not give any individual attention to Krishna and there was no innovativeness in teaching. She re-admitted him to our school expressing her regret. Almost two years later, one fine morning, Ved, studying in class 8, came on his own to meet me and said that he wanted to quit his school and join Krishna’s school. Now both the brothers and the parents are enjoying ‘the outdated education system’ of nai talim. From the school’s point of view, a year later, the children are enjoying themselves and have overcome a large deficit in age-specific normal learning levels.
For most parents, the term “education” has been reduced to schooling for employability; employability with fat salaries. Even the economically weaker sections have become more aware and do not want their children to suffer in non-performing schools. Irrespective of the availability of free education in government schools, they prefer private schooling at the cost of curtailing their primary requirements like good food. Quality education is required for “quality living”. High monetary gain, higher positions, high consumption levels, bank balance, more leisure and leisure trips, less amount of physical work are the main indicators of “quality” today. A family may not buy a newspaper or books but would prefer to buy electronic goods, such as a television or even a computer. Television is not watched for education, its main purpose is to create wants through unending advertisements and establish a consumerist culture through entertainment.
One essential point that needs to be understood is that technology is not neutral. It may have reduced the drudgery but it has also driven people to becoming mere consumers. Even the food culture is becoming uniform and market-oriented, and not necessarily inclined towards healthy food. A realization that there is ‘interdependence and intricate balance’ in Nature develops humility in and motivates a person to become scientific in the real sense and introspective of one’s needs and desires.
On the other hand, the other dominant world view assumes that the very purpose of our existence is to consume indiscriminately with the assumption that man is the most powerful species on this earth and has evolved to rule on it. The purpose of life then becomes the indiscriminate use of nature for satisfying one’s greed; competition becomes the rule of existence, naturally leading to exploitative and violent relationships.
Industrial revolution, mass production through huge technologies, colonization of certain human societies by the other and the new ruthless global trend and the current values instilled by it provide evidence of this. We have come to a point of exhaustion of natural resources within just a few 100 years. With limited resources on this beautiful and only ‘Mother Earth’ for our existence, this world view is causing irreparable damage to its balance, leading to excessive pollution of air, water, and soil, depletion of natural resources causing global warming and after effects due to climate change. Enough evidence has been given by many and recently by Jared Diamond, an American scientist and author, wrote about how human civilizations have vanished due to mismanagement of resources and has warned us against it in his book, Collapse.
Gandhi was able to see this flow much ahead and warned us against this in Hind Swaraj. There were other personalities in the East as well as the West who had realized the limitations of the New Era and the values it held – Tolstoy, Ruskin, Henry David Thoreau to name a few. Gandhi’s vision took shape from the influence of the East as well as the West, as we all know and was expressed through his struggle for the independence of a huge country like India. His experiences, observations, and learnings in South Africa, India, Europe, and the World Wars led him to strongly question the major world view held in the West and followed by many Indian leaders and literates of the time. We need to know that he not only ridiculed this world view, he also rejected it in his life and appealed to the people of this country and the world over to be critical of this and change towards a peaceful, non-violent, just and sustainable relationships between people and the countries. He refused the proposition that the value of a human being lies merely in consumption. His Experiments with Truth is a search for the meaning of human existence. He believed in unity in diversity and that TRUTH is multifaceted and cannot be fully understood and thus was ready for open dialogue. We need to think about this when we as human communities, almost a century ahead, in a world with better evolved science and better equipped technology are so aggressively and violently relating to each other. Unrest and wars are an everyday feature today. Growing religious fundamentalism is also a major concern. So, have we, been able to prioritize on reducing hunger and poverty, even to provide basic education, health and sanitation to create a better world? Do we feel secure and trustworthy with each other? Gandhi suggested the sustainable way to achieve this – through low cost, small, self-reliant, self-governed and less energy intensive methods of production and lifestyles. He talked of decentralized and largely self-reliant grass-root democracy. E. F. Schumacher, economist and environmentalist, has also elaborated on the possibility of this and many others have stated the urgency and inevitability of this for human survival.
Here I would like to come to the point of education again. Anyone can see that our education system serves the corporate agenda today. Can we aspire for constitutional values through the extreme commercialization and stratification of the education system that has taken shape today? The investments in public education have constantly gone down. Extreme individualization and overall reduction in social accountability has adversely affected the educational rights of our children. Education of children in the lower socio-economic strata is getting worse. To establish ourselves in the global world, we are opting for English as a medium of instruction rather than strengthening it as a global language and exposing children to it gradually. This is affecting the learning of a majority of children from a background where English is hardly spoken. Even teachers are incapable of teaching in English. This is also adversely affecting basic conceptual understanding in crucial areas like mathematics and sciences.
Gandhi was not merely for academic education as he realized the inadequacy of it in creating a new thinking individual with the capacity to act as per the values held. To him a balanced development of body, mind, and spirit (socio-emotional faculty) was important to be a good human being. As a part of his own growth and life, he experimented on the education of his own children and the children of his ashram mates in Phoenix in South Africa and at the Tolstoy ashram. He experimented with his ideas of education in Champaran and Sabarmati and convincingly gave his own philosophical and pedagogical framework to this, calling it “nai talim (New education)”. He advocated incorporation of craft as a medium of instruction. According to his observations, a carefully designed experience through productive craft was the best way to develop a child. For him a holistic and integrated learning was more important than compartmentalized academics that had no connection with actual life. He said that this was his best gift to the nation. At the National Conference held in Wardha in 1937, Congress leaders and educationists committed themselves to take nai talim all over the country. A huge survey was also carried out gradually covering more than 50,000 schools, both government and privately managed. The result was a mix of excellent to half-heartedly implemented work. Documented history tells us about the lack of political will in implementing this, double standards applied to the students of mainstream and nai talim and also the rejection of this talim by the elite of this country. Finally, despite the appreciation of the social and pedagogical foundations of this type of education, it was wound up by the 1960s.
Whatever little experience we have had in understanding the principles of nai talim, we have tried to implement it at Anand Niketan School, Wardha, with limited individual and group strength. There is immense potential in this pedagogy. We have found it workable and effective. We have tried to go by the spirit rather than words. With all the limitations of time, our ability and commitments, we would still like to stand for it.
The ideas of learning by doing, designing learning experiences from simple to complex, known to unknown, exploratory learning, etc., go perfectly well with nai talim. However, what is worth teaching-learning and where do we want to go through education are questions that need to be answered by all of us. Gandhiji thought that in a densely populated country like ours, production by the masses for the masses through environmentally-friendly technology will honour everybody’s right to work and express with dignity. He
dreamt of co-operative societies. This has been utopian till now; many might still feel so. But, it’s for us to decide how to take a call.
The author is Principal, Anand Niketan, Sewagram, Maharashtra. She has been working in the field of education for the last 25 years. Anand Niketan is a school for children from 3 to 14 years. She can be reached at sushama.anwda@gmail.com.
