New Strategy for Nai Talim

by

Satya Teertha^1*, P. Usha Rani² and Dr.P. Sudhakar³

^1* Research Scholar, Acharya Nagarjuna University ,and Managing Trustee, Haritha Eco Trust, A.P.

² Secretary, Haritha Association for Learning from Environment (HALE),Khammam Dt., A. P.

³ Research Faculty, Centre for Rural Development and Technology, IIT Delhi

[This paper was published in the Book "PERSPECTIVES ON NAITALIM" a publication of National Council of Rural Institutes(NCRI),

Ministry of Human Resource Development,Government of India.]

Abstract Realizing the importance of education for social revolution, Mahatma Gandhi envisioned an education system called Nai Talim or Basic Education for a new India which emphasized education through productive activities. However this vision has not been realized to its full potential. Productive activities, work or work experience and uses are usually only treated as co-curricular or extra-curricular activities for education or limited to vocational education. Gandhian philosophy of education has much broader perspective and can be a source for holistic education. We present a new strategy for achieving this potential. Our strategy is to use productive activities as experiments or examples to teach some concepts in the existing main stream school curriculum and thereby transforming the school from a mere teaching(memorizing) shop to a hub for technology development , demonstration, dissemination and community development.

Education

Education is the back-bone of any country. It prepares the individual for successful living in the society. It enhances progress and development. Education is not only a vocational or natural, spiritual necessity but also a social necessity. Education is the most powerful tool that can change the society. Education is a process that transforms the personality of a child, helps in knowledge and skill acquisition, besides inculcating the norms and values of the society and preparing the child to be a responsible yet an awakened citizen of the country. Education is understood as key to transformation and human evolution, not as an end in itself, but as a way to promote a sustainable way of living.

Nai Talim

Realizing the importance of education for social revolution, Mahatma Gandhi envisioned an education system called Nai Talim or Basic Education for a new India which emphasized education through productive activities.Gandhiji’s proposal for independent India’s education came out of the All-India National Educational Conference in Wardha in 1937, but his vision and beliefs about education permeate all of his writings - from Hind Swaraj to articles appearing in multiple issues of the Harijan and Young India. His idea of Nai Talim emanated from his dissatisfaction of the British- style schooling system and his intense desire for over all rural development.

It stressed on linking education with work as a means of social transformation. Gandhiji wanted all education to be imparted through some handicraft or industry (Gandhi M.K. Basic Education, Bharatam Kumarappa, 1951). He emphasized charkha and khadi through which a student would not only garner the practical knowledge of arithmetics, about cotton and its agricultural practices, its marketing, etc. but would also know the local resources and the state of the native industries under colonialism. Gandhiji believed that the students could earn through spinning while getting educated at the same time (Integrating work and education, Vinod Raina). Thus on the one hand Nai Talim aimed at imparting education to children and on the other hand it also helped them acquire a skill that would ensure a means of livelihood for their families. Further, it would make the students confidant and useful resource for their parents and their country.

When seen in a broader perspective the ideals of Nai Talim were meant for better communal harmony because it would be inculcating dignity of labour, mutual respect, better participation and understanding among the people. The basic education system primarily aimed at transforming the backward, illiterates and the unprivileged ones into self-confident citizens (The relevance of Mahatma Gandhi’s Education Philosophy for 21^st Century, Makrand Paranjpe, 2005). The blueprint of the educational system in the form of Nai Talim for independent India was to be a “practical religion, the religion of self-help” and a means for revival of the indigenous industries (The Wardha scheme of Eduction:An exposition and examination,Varkey, C. J.,1940). Hence it is beyond doubt that Gandhiji had a vision of a holistic education system, structured around the learning of a craft.

In fact, the near total dependence of local self governments of those days on excise revenues from liquor sale in funding the schooling, medical care or community development was completely unacceptable to Gandhiji on every scale: be it ethical or other wise. How ever, down to earth practicality of Gandhiji together with ethical conduct challenged him to think of an alternative to the stark reality of the prevailing expensive schooling that is clearly beyond the reach of the local community.One of the primary objectives was to make the cost of good education affordable to the community by integrating productive activities (may be read as healthy income generating) of the community into the social life of teachers and the taught in schooling. In the process, the local community has a chance to be self reliant and free from the diktat of the central power of the state.(young India,2-2-1921;Harijan,5:181)

80 years down the line, the dilemma still haunts: heavy dependence on excise revenue of the liquor sales is cited as 'practically' unavoidable by most state governments for implementing the programmes aimed at benefiting the below poverty families. It only high lights the severity of the challenge for Nai Talim.

Problem

Unfortunately numerous doubts are raised about the relevance of Nai Talim in the current society. In 1960 the committee headed by Dr.Zakir Hussain declared that the experiment of basic education was failed in practice. In 1964 Dr.Kothari commission disclosed that though the principles of Nai Talim are virtuous, it failed in practice because of not being able to create a suitable curriculum.(Trends and problems of Indian Education,M.R.M.Rao,1986)

In realizing the true spirit of Nai Talim, the institutions failed to correlate the productive activities with the school curriculum. A school where a child learns the art of making wax candles or handicraft items becomes expert in his respective field of the productive activity but is unable to understand the inherent principles as may be taught in the main stream school. Thus, he may turn out to be efficient in generating income for himself but his curiosity to know the science behind those activities eventually fades off and this creates lack of interest in the students which in turn could prove to be detrimental to his intellectual competence.

The Gandhian philosophy of education aimed at making each individual, community and village to be self-sufficient and self-reliant by way of imparting an economic skill like spinning, weaving and carpentry to the students. However these skills are often mistakenly dubbed as a vocational education system. For Gandhiji, the handicraft or any other productive activity was a means to arouse the student’s curiosity and his enthusiasm for learning and not just a vocation. His aim was to enroot learning through vocation and not to limit education for only learning a skill. Unfortunately, the vocational education system as practiced appears to have limited itself to learning a skill for making a living and has not addressed the innate desire of humans to scale new heights of intellectual prowess.

And even in imparting a skill, it is no where near the traditional way of self reliant active apprenticeship in efficiency. It would be rare if a student after completing a course in a vocational school can ever compete in free market with those trained in the traditional apprenticeship but for mandatory requirements of the state, whether it be in more traditional carpentry or more modern automobile maintenance. Thus it failed to gain social acceptance on both counts: in scaling new heights in intellectual development or finding a job in the free market. There is a general perception that a child in a vocational school lacks worthwhile academic intelligence and is labeled as an intellectually disabled child – something that no parent would want. And above all it would be a disaster for the child because of the inferiority complex and loss of self-confidence which would eventually destroy the child’s personality.

For any one that goes through the humiliating scheme, it requires considerable intelligence and an inborn spirited nature to fight of falling into the inferiority complex. But an innocent soul with a hurt sense of natural justice, aided by an inborn fighting spirit, would be a fertile breeding ground for criminal thoughts and actions.

Gandhiji's ideas about education were not isolated from the larger political, social, and economic struggles of the British rule in India. Hence, for better understanding of the Gandhian philosophy of education, a larger framework of his ideas on social-economic-political transformation, his vision of progress and development, and value system needs to be understood, else there remains a threat of limiting the Nai Talim to a mere proponent of the vocational education system (Henry Fagg: A study of Gandhi’s Basic Education, National Book Trust, 2002).

However analyzing the present socio-economic situation it must be emphasized that Gandhian philosophy and Gandhiji’s ideals of education provide a solution for imparting education and training to the rural youth, and improving the village economy through empowerment of the rural communities. Nai Talim envisaged combining education with work, where school children would be engaged in some productive activities that would not just impart education to them but also enable them to acquire a skill in due course of time. It laid emphasis on practical ways of acquiring knowledge.

A new strategy for Nai Talim

Productive activities as experiments or examples to teach some concepts in the existing main stream school curriculum.

Established in 1988, Haritha Ecological Institute (Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh), is an example that demonstrates the implementation of Gandhian vision of Basic Education or Nai Talim and its all-round benefits by involving the students and teachers in productive activities that are performed as experiments to teach concepts from the existing main-stream school curriculum. The active participation of both the students and the teachers, in the operation of a unit generates interest in the students making the learning process easier and enjoyable.

The unique feature of Haritha is that the productive activities are designed in such a way that they fall within the framework of the school curriculum. These activities are taken up only during school hours. Each productive activity is meticulously designed such that one or more of the different steps within the activity become an experiment for one or more concepts in the main stream school education in all the subjects including the languages.

Since hands-on work of the students in the unit becomes experiments for learning specific concepts, the quality of education improves and learning becomes enjoyable. As the queries of a child get answered through activity and experimentation, his interest in the learning process remains intact. This in turn lowers the drop out rates in the school which is one of the serious challenges faced by the Government.

This strategy followed in Haritha increases the child’s quest to do things on his own. It encourages the child to learn and discover the principles behind processes and activities. The child is not subjected to forceful learning that rely mostly on rote bookish memories where a child feels suffocated under the pressure of reproducing an answer to a question even after repeated readings and writings. Instead, the different steps of the productive activity get repeated time and again. This way the child is able to repeat his experiments many times in an academic year. It eventually makes him proficient and clears all his doubts. Further when the children are asked to write about their experiments and their experiences and observations, the comprehension of the students improves and this makes the students more interested in education.

Example activity unit - Bicycle Grinder

The “Bicycle Grinder” which was designed at Haritha is an innovative grinder that grinds food as we pedal a bicycle. It illustrates how a new technology gadget combines a productive activity with the experiments for the students of grades 1^st to 10^th. Students at Haritha use the Bicycle Grinder to make idly batter and chutney and in turn get earned for it. For the students in standard 1^st to 3^rd this activity is used to teach counting through the number of turns the pedal makes. Counting is done in different languages - English, Hindi and Telugu. For the students of 4^th to 6^th standard, the bicycle grinder provides a medium to learn the gear ratio of turns of pedal, rear wheel and the turntable. For the 7^th and 8^th class student, it is an enjoyable experiment to learn concepts in physics such as time period of revolution, angular velocity, and frequency of rotation. And for the students of 9^th and 10^th class, it explains concepts like viscous drag and friction.

Productive activities using a renewable resource - Bamboo

The practice of learning by experimentation at Haritha lead students to perform an innovative experiment of building a bow out of Bamboo to bear weights. The extension of the experiments done at Haritha has led to the ongoing research at IITD on the potential of Bamboo as a load bearing element to be used for house construction purposes. This in turn could lead to active involvement of the rural community, providing them a source of livelihood, boosting their self confidence and making them empowered. It has also laid the foundation of the dream vision of greening wasteland of our country with Bamboo plantation.

Haritha aims to illustrate important concepts in school curriculum through the Bamboo products. It envisages setting up of a Bamboo nursery, and a unit for production and marketing of Bamboo related products within the school premises. The Bamboo products planned include raw incense sticks, Bamboo furniture, Teaching and Learning Material(TLM) with Bamboo and Bamboo housing elements such as bow beams and columns. The technology needed has been mainly developed at the school itself over the past fifteen years and has recently been validated by IIT Delhi.

The on going R&D includes bamboo beams and columns with no or minimal steel, panels for walls and roofs and cost effective test equipments including the hydraulic based state of the art Universal Testing Machines(UTMs).

Productive activities in cooking and gardening:

Cooking and gardening are some of the most versatile and simple productive activities that have abundant scope to be used as experiments for illustrating different concepts in main stream school teaching.

Activities in cooking can start with estimating the different ingredients by quantity and cost in making a meal for a given number of persons. The estimate of the nutritional content of the meal would be an interesting study in exploring the concepts in health and nutrition while the simple arithmetics involved could be a good exercise for primary and high school students in understanding ratio and proportion. Maximizing the nutrients for a given cost can be a challenging optimization exercise giving enormous scope for exploring the beauty of traditional practices in food and cuisine. Deciding on a common menu to the satisfaction of one and all itself would be a great experiment in understanding democratic values and practices that can lead to a healthy respect for dissent. Cooking itself can be a set of experiments in understanding heat transfer in physics and effects of heat in the chemistry of cooking, including the ill effects of over cooking and excessive frying.

Activities in gardening like wise offer immense scope for understanding the secrets of Mother Nature while enjoying its beauty. Importance of statistics in understanding the diversity of even simple plants, be it of vegetables or flowers can be greatly appreciated in many ways: the time for germination of seeds, the growth of different plants readied and processed in apparently identical conditions, and its practice for recording and analyzing the yields can be developed into a set of very useful experiments. Drawing parallels with the beauty in natural diversity to social front can lead to the understanding that a dissent is not necessarily bad and in fact may be actually be welcome, the basic foundation of democratic life. In yet another angle, a simple question like “What is the most optimum combination of plants in a garden?” may baffle the mostly deterministic engineering sciences as there is not just one but many possible solutions and any search for the most appropriate one becomes futile and would be soon recognized as useless. On the other hand, in social context, this may help one to appreciate that there may not be just 'one most optimum' solution to any of the pressing and complex problems of sustainable development for the society in general and masses in particular. One has to necessarily explore several possible solutions and in the process may find a way to satisfy the aspirations of one and all in a healthy democratic manner.

School as a hub for technology development, demonstration,dissemination and community development

In the light of the above experiences we present a new strategy of a school being a hub for technology demonstration, dissemination and development belong with community involvement and development and not just a place where in the information is fed in to the minds of the students. Moreover, it should be a living entity which continuously interacts with the local people around. What follows is the vision of the role of school which can usher in rural development by harnessing the dormant local talents.

School to recognize the local talent

There is a need to have a change in the role of school. The school should act as a platform where the creative and innovative ideas of not only the school students but also of the local people get a firm support.Innovations not a prerogative of high end research institutes.

The Shodh Yatra – a search for creativity and innovations at the grass root level organized by Prof. Anil Gupta of IIM Ahmedabad, scouted hundreds of innovations in various parts of the country. Patents are to be applied for some of the innovations recorded at the Shodh Yatra. Our own experience at Haritha Ecological Institute in Khamam District, Andra Pradesh, India attests the fact that innovative ideas can be evolved from rural school students and local people. ‘The Bicycle grinder’, ‘The Mobile Bullock cart generator’ and ‘The Bamboo Bow’ are the three innovative gadgets which have evolved with the help of the local people and the school students. This leads to the conclusion that there is lot of talent dormant in the minds of the rural youth. The scientific creativity of these school students and the local people has the potential to address the local problems thereby improving the efficiency and productivity of the community.

Excellence in education through technology development

A watchful and alert teacher can use the teaching problems that may accompany the new gadgets and processes to challenge the creativity and awaken the enormous innovative abilities dormant in every child irrespective of their social strata. Their thinking processes would be ignited. These ignited minds would then excel not only in their academic career but also in life. The present education system compels them to mug up the facts and vomit them in the exams thereby curbing the thinking process. On the contrary when the students are a part of the team for ‘technology development’ they land into a positive feed-back loop of ‘innovating and studying more’ and ‘studying and innovating more’ thereby autographing excellence in their academic career. This concept of learning through productive activities requires a serious attention from the academic researchers.

Entrepreneurship skills in the students

The ideas generated at the school through the students and the local people would be raw. The journey of transforming an idea to commercially viable product is very long. It is this journey which would offer challenge to the school children.

After the gaining the expertise with the products/processes, the students can try being entrepreneurs. If a group of students and teachers in a rural school can run a new technology gadget/process successfully then there would be enthusiasm for replicating it for economic gain.

Conclusion

No development is complete without the development of the human resource. Productive activities in education which is the key concept of Basic education or Nai Talim has not yet been realized by educationalists and decision makers in our country. Productive activities, work or work experience and uses are usually only treated as co-curricular or extra-curricular activities for education or limited to vocational education. We present a new strategy. Our strategy is to use productive activities as experiments or examples to teach some concepts in the existing main stream school curriculum and thereby transforming the school from a mere teaching(memorizing) shop to a hub for technology development , demonstration, dissemination and community development.

It would go a long way in awakening the dormant capabilities of the students and making the entire exercise of education more enjoyable and fruitful. On the other front, with the involvement of school students, teachers and the local people in the operation of new products/processes, the grass-root problems get addressed that too within the constraints of the local resources. With this strategy, the students would be introduced to the pleasure and excitement which one gets while innovating and creating something, and the holistic development of the child, the community and the entire environment would stand a better chance of success.

* Corresponding Author:SatyaTeertha

Research Scholar, Acharya Nagarjuna University and

Managing Trustee, Haritha Eco Trust, A.P.harithavaranam@gmail.com