NOTES, COMMENTS. . . (CHILD, FAMILY, COMMUNITY)

Special UPEL Issue No. 2

Gandhian Basic Education as a Programme

of Interdisciplinary Instruction at the Elementary Stage:

Some Lessons of Experience

By Veda Prakasha Unesco Consultant

Unit for Co-operation with UNICEF and WFP

UNIT FOR CO-OPERATION WITH UNICEF AND WFP UNESCO, PARIS

ED-85/WS/28

C O N T E N T S

Chapter Page

I Introduction 1

II The Meaning of Correlation 6

III Interdisciplinarity 16

IV Teacher Preparation and Interdisciplinary

Teaching 41

V Seven Guiding Principles for Replication

or Adaptation of the Gandhian Concept 51

VI The Future Outlook for Gandhian Inter­

disciplinary Teaching 67

Appendix A

72

73

80

Detailed Syllabus

Spinning and Weaving

Gardening and Agriculture

Appendix B 90

GANDHIAN BASIC EDUCATION

AS A PROGRAMME OF INTERDISCIPLINARY INSTRUCTION .

AT THE ELEMENTARY STAGE: SOME LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE'

Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

One main reason for the.growing popularity of the two terms

'interdisciplinarity' and multidisçiplinarity' in our times is the

growing conviction of scientists and research workers, social planners

and development administrators that the conventional discipline-based

approach to many of the urgent and pressing problems facing man at the

national and international levels today — poverty and disease,

environmental degradation, rising population pressures, inter-group

rivalries and conflicts, erosion of moral values,-nuclear war, etc. —

is totally incapable of delivering the goods, and that the only, way to

come to grips effectively with such problems is to overhaul the overall

strategy in favour of a more interdisciplinary approach. It is no

cause for surprise, therefore, that many universities and institutions

of higher learning the world over should now be interested in developing

interdisciplinary courses of study,and training programmes, particularly

at the undergraduate level. In fact, some of them have already been

engaged in doing so for some years now! There is a growing awareness

that something has got to be done to meet the student demand for

'relevance': the conventional programmes are only of marginal

significance to the great issues and needs of the world in which the

youth of today is to assume its citizenship responsibilities tomorrow.

But the issue of interdisciplinarity is as important in school

education as for university. The traditional discipline based approach

to school curriculum for instance, does not take much into consideration •

a child's present and future learning needs; nor does it show sufficient

regard to his interests and level of maturity. By failing to recognize

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that a child learns essentially through activity and experience, it

inevitably encourages memorization, forgetting that memorization

alone does not enable the learner to understand and apply the

information he has memorized; nor does it serve to facilitate the

acquisition by him of skills and attitudes, considered essential

for his intellectual and moral development.

Of course this is not to gainsay that academic disciplines have

been and continue to be of tremendous value as logical structures or

systems synthesizing and ordering man's knowledge and experience. In

fact with the rapid explosion of knowledge and information in many

fields in recent decades, there is a demand — every now and then that

school work should be reorganized so as to carry children further

into different fields of knowledge than ever before. Such considerations

notwithstanding, most psychologists, educators and behavioural

scientists are in close agreement today that the structures of the

disciplines should never be the starting point in education; and

that the level of the structure to be taught at any stage must have

relevance to the experience and background of the child and that it

must suit his level of maturity.

Correlated Teaching in Gandhian Basic Education

Gandhi saw this more clearly than most people of his day in India 2/

or elsewhere. The current idea behind Basic education — is that the

education of a child should essentially centre round the teaching of

a practical craft which is relevant and useful in the child's particular

surroundings, such as spinning and weaving, gardening and agriculture,

1/ The strength of this demand for the teaching of school science and mathematics of a higher standard in the U.S.A. and in some other parts of the world during the years immediately following the Sputnik is very much part of the living memory.

2/ The scheme of elementary education of 7 or 8 years associated with the name of Gandhi. Its two other popular names in India have been: Nai Talim (Hindustani for new education) and Buniyadi Shiksha (Hindi for Basic education).

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cardboard modelling or woodwork; and that while there could be little

room found in such a scheme for the teaching of traditional school

subjects as such, it should have enough scope for correlating

purposefully the more useful and educative parts of the knowledge

represented by the different disciplines. But there is a stipulation

for such correlation. The stipulation is that the extent and manner

of correlation should be determined entirely by the naturalness of

the opportunities offered by the programme to explain rationally and

meaningfully to the child the different aspects and processes,of the

craft or industry he is engaged in learning; and by the contribution

such subject-based information is expected to make to the child's

progressive mastery of the craft and to the development of his other

mental faculties.

In spite of his other preoccupations — political, social, economic,

religious, and these were many — Gandhi's interest in education had

always been deep and abiding. When he first presented his ideas on

Basic education to a select gathering of educationalists at Wardha in

October 1937, he had already been thinking about , and experimenting

with, education for nearly 35 years! The Wardha group responded to his

exposition by adopting the following four resolutions:

'i) That in the opinion of this Conference free and compulsory education be provided for seven years on a nationwide, scale.

ii) That the medium of instruction be the mother tongue.

iii) That the Conference endorses the proposal made by Mahatma Gandhi that the process of education through­out this period should centre round some form of manual productive work, and that all the other abilities to be developed or training to be given should, as far as possible, be integrally related to the central handicraft chosen with due regard to the environment of the child.

iv) That the Conference expects that this system of education will be gradually able to cover the remuneration of the teachers.'

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With the announcement of these resolutions in the press,

Basic education became overnight, as it were, priority item on the

national agenda for educational reconstruction. In seven provinces

where the Congress was in power,- the Provincial Governments became

interested in the idea of Basic education and started establishing

Basic schools on an experimental basis. In October 1939, that is

soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Congress

Ministries resigned with the result that except in two states,— the

experiment in Basic education had to be abandoned. On the advice of

the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), which advises the

Government of India on educational problems, Basic education again

became the accepted national policy in elementary education in 1946

and remained so until at least 1956 when, on the advice of the

Education Commission (1964-1966), the Government seems to have decided

not to identify any one stage of education as Basic education.

The circumstances leading to the acceptance of Basic education

as the national policy for elementary education could not have been

more propitious. Gandhi's name as the tallest and the greatest

political leader of India lent prestige to the concept, and its

acceptance by the Central and State Governments as national policy

gave it overnight the status of a national programme. The concept

was hailed by many as being in the same line of original contributions

to education as the progressive theories of Rousseau, Pestalotzzi,

Froebel, Decroly, Dewey and others. Radhakrishnan and his team felt

that 'At this fateful moment in our history, we have the extreme good

fortune to have had presented to us a pattern and philosophy of

education of such universal and fundamental worth that it may well

serve as the type of bringing into being the new India which is the 2/

desire of many of us...' — And that '...the concept is one of the 3/

world's greatest contributions to education.' — Gandhi himself

entertained great hopes of Basic education and had even styled it as the

'spearhead of a silent social revolution.'

1/ Bihar and Bombay

2/ The Report of the University Education Commission, Government of India Press, 1950, p.557.

3/ Ibid.

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Scope of the Paper

The focus of this.short article is on evaluating the Indian

experience of the concept and technique of correlation as an integral

part of the Gandhian Basic education. The five major questions to be

addressed are:

1. What is the meaning, scope and purpose of this

interdisciplinary methodology of instruction called

'correlation'? What place does it accord to formal

instruction and to the teaching of conventional subjects

in the school curriculum?

2. How did the method of correlating the different school

subjects to some craft activity fare in practice? What

generalizations and issues, if any, did it give rise to?

How did it affect the academic achievements and personality

development of children?

3. Did the teachers as a whole find correlation a more

stimulating and rewarding experience than the conventional

subject-based teaching? If, as was hinted above, that

has not been the case, is it possible, in retrospect, to

identify some of the problems to which greater attention

should have been given to make the ordinary teacher a

more confident, skilled and motivated user of the methodology?

4. Are there any other more general lessons of experience that

could be drawn.with advantage to avoid the pitfalls, should

a similar programme of educational expansion and

reconstruction be embarked upon again in India or elsewhere?

5. What is the future outlook for.'correlation' as an

interdisciplinary educational technique?

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Chapter II

THE MEANING OF CORRELATION

As a point of departure we might as well begin by having a look

at the curriculum suggested by the Zakir Hussain Committee. — A

seven-year Basic school was expected to organize its teaching and 2/

other activities according to the following scheme : —

1. Craft:

a) Spinning and weaving.

b) Gardening leading to agriculture.

c) Book craft including paper and cardboard work leading

to wood and metal work.'

d) Leather work.

e) Clay work and pottery.

f) Fisheries. ' -

g) Home craft .

2. Mother tongue.

3. Social studies.

4. Mathematics.

5. General science.

6. Art, including drawing, music and aesthetics generally.

7. Hindi.

8. Games and physical activities.

1/ The Zakir Hussain Committee was appointed by the Wardha Conference in October 1937 and had the mandate to prepare a detailed syllabus for the seven years of Basic schooling. The report of the Committee was approved by Gandhi and accepted by the Indian National Congress at its Haripura session in March 1938. As was expected, for many years this report served for all practical purposes as the Bible for Basic educators.

2/ Syllabus for Basic schools, Ministry of Education, Government of — India, 1950, p.7.

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Now the essential point of the Basic education theory is that

throughout this period of seven years, the teaching of school subjects

(2 to 8 above) should, as far as possible, be integrally related to

the chosen central craft (one from amongst those listed in 1 above).

The idea of correlating the school subjects to a central activity is

of course not new or original. Herbart, Kilpatrick, Dewey and many

other influential educators have consistently emphasized the need for

'correlation' in school studies with the object of creating unity and

consistency in the child's mental life. But this is not the only

advantage; there are others — social, economic and educational.

As the Zakir Hussain Committee puts it:

'Psychologically, it is desirable because it relieves the child from the tyranny of a purely academic and theoretical instruction against which its active nature is always making a healthy protest. It balances the intellectual and practical elements of experience, and may be made an instrument of educating the body and the mind in co-ordination. The child acquires not the superficial literacy which implies, often without warrant, a capacity to read the printed page, but the far more important capacity of using the hand and intelligence for some constructive purpose. This, if we may be permitted to use the expression, is the literacy of the whole personality.

Socially considered, the introduction of such practical productive work in education, to be participated in by all the children of the nation, will tend to break down the existing barriers of prejudice between manual and intellectual workers, harmful alike for both. It will also cultivate in the only possible way a true sense of the dignity of labour and of human solidarity — an ethical and moral gain of incalculable significance.'

Economically considered, if the scheme is carried out intelligently and efficiently, it will increase the productive capacity of our workers and also enable them to utilise their leisure advantageously.

From the strictly educational point of view, greater concrete-ness and reality can be given to the knowledge acquired by children by making some significant craft the basis of education. Knowledge will thus become related to life, and its various aspects will be correlated with one another.' 1/

1/ As quoted in Handbook for Teachers of Basic Schools, Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1956, p. 17.

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The central idea behind correlation is that unlike the teaching

of different subjects separately by alloting separate periods to them

in the daily school timetable, as is customary in most school systems

the world over even today, such teaching must be integrated with the

teaching of the craft activity (or some other activity like school

cleaning which is part of the school curriculum). While learning

carpentry, for instance, the child could learn something about the

various kinds of timber, the places it comes from, thus acquiring some

knowledge of geography. In learning to make a wooden tray, the child

will have several opportunities to learn some mathematics — to

understand the underlying concepts — and to acquire the ability to

make calculations about measurements of length, area and volume. The

preparation of simple plans and designs in woodwork will offer

opportunities to understand, in practice, some of the elementary

principles of drawing. If, while engaged in spinning, the child finds

the yarn is continually breaking, this would be an excellent situation

in which to explain its relationship with the hot weather. The

discussion of different aspects of weather could easily introduce

meaningful related concepts of elementary science. Likewise, while

cleaning the classroom or the school compound, the child could

effortlessly learn about the basic principles of hygiene and civic

responsibility. "The principal idea1 of correlation according to

Gandhi, 'is to impart the whole education of the body and the mind

and the soul through the handicraft that is taught to the children.

You have to draw out all that is in the child through teaching all

the processes of the handicraft, and all your lessons in history,

geography, arithmetic will be related to the craft.' 1/

1/ Gandhi, M.K., Basic Education, Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1956, p.10.

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Spinning - the craft favoured by Gandhi

Gandhi's partiality for spinning as the most suitable craft for

schools in India is well known. in one of his best known elucidations

on the subject he says:

'The old idea was to àdd a handicraft to the ordinary curriculum of education followed in the schools. That is to say, the craft was to be taken in hand wholly separately from education. To me that seems a fatal mistake. The teacher must learn the craft and correlate his knowledge to the craft, so that he will impart all that knowledge to his pupils through the medium of the particular craft that he chooses.

Take the instance of spinning. Unless I know arithmetic I cannot report how many yards of yarn I have produced on the takli- ,1/ or how many standard rounds it will make or what is the count of the yarn that I have spun. I must learn figures to be able to do so, and I also must learn addition and subtraction and multiplication and division. In dealing with complicated sums I shall have to use symbols and so get my algebra. Even here I would insist on the use of Hindustani letters instead of Roman.

Take geometry next. What can be a better demonstration of a circle than the disc of the takli.? I can teach. all about the circle in this way, without even mentioning the name of Euclid.

Again, you may ask how I can teach my child geography and history through spinning. Some time ago, I came across a book called Cotton - The Story of Mankind. It thrilled me. It read like a romance. It began with the history of ancient times, how and when cotton was first grown, the stages of its development, 'the cotton trade between the different countries and so on. As I mention the different countries to the child, I shall naturally tell him something about the history and geography of these countries. Under whose reign the different commercial treaties were signed during the different periods? Why has cotton to be imported by some countries and cloth by others? Why can every country not grow the cotton it requires? That will lead me into economics and elements of agriculture. I shall teach him to know the different varieties of

1/ Hindustani for Spindle

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cotton, in what kind of soil they grow, how to grow them, from where to get them, and so on. Thus Takli. spinning leads me into the whole history of the East India Company, what brought them here, how they destroyed our spinning industry, how the economic motive that brought them to India led them later to entertain political aspirations, how it became a causative factor in the downfall of the Moghuls and the Marathas, in the establishment of the English Raj, and then again in the.awakening of the masses in our times. There is thus no end to the educative possibilities of this new scheme. And how much quicker the child will learn all that, without putting an unnecessary tax on his mind and memory.

Let me further elaborate the idea. Just as a biologist, in order to become a good biologist must learn many other sciences besides biology, Basic education, if it is treated as a science, takes us into interminable channels of learning. To extend the example of the takli-, a pupil teacher, who rivets his attention not merely on the mechanical process of spinning, which of course he must master, but on the spirit of the thing, will concentrate on the takli. and its various aspects. He will ask him­self why the täkli is made out of a brass disc and has a steel spindle. The original takli had its disc made anyhow. The still more primitive takli consisted of a wooden spindle with a disc of slate or clay. The takli has been developed scientifically, and there is a reason for making the disc out of brass and the spindle out of steel. He must find out that reason. Then, the teacher must ask himself why the disc has that particular diameter, not more and not less. When he has solved these questions satisfactorily and has gone into the mathematics of the thing, your pupil becomes a good engineer. The takli becomes his kamadhenu — the 'cow of plenty'. There is no limit to the possibilities of knowledge that can be imparted through this medium.

I am elaborating the instance of spinning because 1 know it. If I were a carpenter, I would teach my child all these things through carpentry, or through cardboard work if I were a worker in cardboard.' 1/

1/ Gandhi, U.K., Ibid. p.73.

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Similarity to the Project Method

In its emphasis on activity and the interdisciplinarity of

situations and opportunities it offers to facilitate the child's

learning, the correlation technique is strongly reminiscent of the

Project Method associated with the names of Kilpatrick, Dewey and

others. A project is defined as 'a significant practical unit of

activity having educational value and aimed at one or more definite

goals of understanding.' It involves investigation and solution of

problems and frequently also the use and manipulation of physical

materials. Furthermore, a project is expected to be planned and

carried to completion by the pupils and teachers in a natural,

'real-life' manner. The Method is in fact a device to subordinate

the process of learning or acquiring knowledge and information to

the carrying out of selected activities often of a practical but

educative kind. In order to carry out a project — such as the

'Bank', the 'Post Office' or a house building project, for

instance — children will need a considerable amount of knowledge

pertaining to different disciplines — history, geography, science,

arithmetic, etc. — which makes learning for them highly motivated

and purposeful. By relating the activities directly to the main

theme of the Project, everything becomes for children so much more,

coherent and meaningful than in the typical classroom situation.

Of course, Gandhi had never heard of the Project Method, and

when this was mentioned to him, his reaction was that there was a

very important difference between the method of Basic education

and the Project approach. The difference was that while in Basic

education the child was learning a real craft and acquiring know­

ledge relevant to the why's and wherefore's of the different craft

processes, in the other (Project) method, the situation was

essentially a 'contrived' one and the child was not dealing with

real objects and activities that could be made use of directly.

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Correlated Teaching vis-a-vis the Teaching of School Subjects

But in so far as the acquisition of knowledge is concerned,

isn't there a major weakness in. which both the methods, Basic

education and Project., seem to share? It is well known that to

try to cover the whole syllabus for a class through projects

makes knowledge essentially incidental and as such results in gaps

and discontinuities which cannot be filled except through a

supplementary programme of more formal instruction. Doesn't making

a craft, regardless of its educational potential and relevance to

the socio-economic environment of the child, the main vehicle of a

child's education also leave the practice open to the same change?

Every discipline, language or grammar, number or geometry, history

or geography, physics or chemistry, has its own logical structure,

content and methodology. Without providing for some formal and

systematic instruction in these, will not the child's education

and preparation remain incomplete and spotty?

Fully aware of the problem, Gandhi was humble enough to admit

that while he thought he knew clearly enough what was to be done,

he did not quite know how it should be done. This made him conscious

of the very heavy responsibility which the first generation

practitioners of Basic education bore in regard to the development

of correlation as an effective educational technique. He

particularly emphasized in this context the need for teachers of

Basic education to be resourceful and to be experimental in their

attitude towards 'correlation'. Equally important he went on to

point out, were their need to keep records of schoolwork properly

and on a scientific basic, and their need for co-operation among

teachers for mutual exchange of experiences.

On the issue of whether or not correlation can or should try

to cover as much of the content of formal school subjects as

possible, Gandhi's thinking on the whole seemed to be that the

Basic school curriculum should be so organized that it respects

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the unity and coherence of the human mind and does not disrupt it by

the introduction of unrelated and irrelevant topics and bits of

information. He was more aware than anyone else that the conventional

school curriculum lays undue stress on the teaching of too many

subjects — in neat watertight compartments- —"with little reference

to one another or to life and reality as experienced by the child.

He knew it as much as anyone else that a large part of the trouble,

arose from the attitude of the specialist who, in complete disregard

of the needs and interests of the child and the dismay of its parents,

always considered his own speciality to be more important than any­

thing else and insisted on its accommodation in the school programme.

Small wonder then that Gandhi's advice to the teachers, was that they

should not worry too much about things they could not accommodate

naturally through correlation.

1 If you come across something that you cannot correlate with the craft, do not fret over it and get disheartened. Leave it, and go ahead with the subjects that you can correlate. Maybe another teacher will hit upon the right way and show how it can be correlated. And when you have pooled the experience of many, you will-have books to guide you, so that the work of those who follow you will become easier.

How long, you will ask, are we to go on with this process of exclusion. My reply is, for the whole life-time. At the end you will find that you have included many things that you.have excluded at first, that practically all that was worth including has been included, and whatever you have been obliged to exclude till the end was something very superficial that deserved exclusion. This has been my experience of life. I would not have been able to do many things that I have done if I had not excluded an equal number.' 1/

Vinoba Bhave, the foremost Gandhian disciple, who later became

famous as the founder of the Bhoodan (land gift) movement was even

more forthright in his views on the subject:

1/ Gandhi, M.K., Ibid. p.72

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'Äs regards correlation, one hears it said now-a-days that the knowledge that we must give to the children should 'as far as possible' be correlated to craft-work and to the life of the children. This, 'as far as possible' is a wrong approach. What we ought to say is rather that knowledge which cannot be correlated to craft-work or to the children's life should be left out of the educational programme altogether. It is not necessary for us to acquire all the knowledge in creation. The old Rishi said: 'We have need of knowledge and of ignorance both.1

Ignorance of unnecessary knowledge is necessary for life. We should give our students only that basic knowledge which will enable them to acquire for themselves what­ever knowledge is necessary for them. In other words, we have to give the children not knowledge, but the power to acquire knowledge.' 1/

Gandhi Favours Extension of Correlated Teaching to Other Levels

Gandhi's conviction that the approach of Basic education

through a 'correlating craft' was the best educational approach for

India, not only at the elementary stage, but at all other, stages

before and after, was total. 'In his first meeting with the members

of the Talimi Sangh in 1944, after his release from detention,

Gandhi had explained that a stage had been reached, when the scope

of Basic education should be extended. They would have to take

post-basic and pre-basic training within their compass. Basic 2/

education must become literally education for "life...' — He said

he 'knew their difficulties. It was not easy for those who had been

brought up in the old tradition, to break away from it at a stroke.

If he were in the Ministerial chair, said Gandhi, he would issue

broad instructions that hereafter all educational activity of the

Government should be on Basic education lines. Adult education

drives had been launched in several provinces. If he had his way,

he would conduct them also through a basic craft...'

1/ Report of the Fifth All-India Basic Education Conference Perianaickenpalayam, May 7-9, 1949, Hindustani Talim Sangh, Sevagram, Wardha, p.9.

2/ Gandhi, M.K. op. cit. p.105. The reference is to a Conference of Education Ministers of Congress Provinces held at Poona under the chairmanship of Shri B.G. Kher on 29th and 30th July 1946.

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What he had said about adult education applied equally to

university education. 'It must be organically related to the Indian

scene. It must therefore be an extension and continuation of the

Basic education course. That was the central point. If they did

not see eye to eye with him on that point, he was afraid they

would have little use for his advice. If, on the other hand, they

agreed with him that the present university education did not fit

them for independence but only enslaved them, they would be as

impatient as he was to completely overhaul and scrap that system

and remodel it on new lines consonant with the national requirement.' —

1/ Gandhi, M. K., Ibid. p. 106.

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Chapter III

INTERDISCIPLINARY

Correlation with Physical and Social Environment

The Zakir Hussain Committee, when called upon in 1938 to prepare a

detailed syllabus of studies for Basic schools had realized in the very

beginning that it would altogether be too narrow a view of correlation

to limit it to the craft only, and took the stand that in addition to

craft activity, there should be two other centres of correlation, viz

the social environment of the child and his physical environment.

1 In order to work out an effective and natural co-ordination of the various subjects and to make the syllabus a means of adjusting the child intelligently and actively to his environments, we have chosen three centres intrinsically inter-connected, as the foci for the curriculum, i.e. the physical environment, the social environment, and craft work, which is their natural meeting point since it utilizes the resources of the former for the purposes of the latter...It is essential for all teachers and educational workers to note that we have really attempted to draft an »activity curriculum« which implies that our schools must be places of work, experimentation and discovery, not of passive absorption of information imparted at second-hand. So far as the curriculum is concerned, we have stressed this principle by advocating that all teaching should be carried out through concrete life-situations relating to craft or to social and physical environment, so that whatever the child learns is assimilated into his growing activity.' 1/

Examples of activities relevant to the social environment that

could be conveniently utilized to 'correlate' would be: school sanitation

programme, celebration of national festivals and birthdays of national

heroes, students assembly to discuss school affairs on parliamentary

lines, school court, games and sports competitions, educational

excursions, annual school exhibition, village cleaning programme,

1/ As quoted by T. S. Avinashilingam in his Foreword to The Technique of Correlation in Basic Education by Solanki, A.B., Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad,1958, p.xiii.

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organization of school mid-day meals, social service activities

during epidemics, floods, earthquakes and fires, collection of funds

or some other charity approved by the school. Similarly, some of the

activities relevant to the use of the physical environment for

correlation could be: planned excursions and outdoor trips, to observe -

plants, trees, birds, animals and insects, examination of local soil,

rock and minerals, visits to vegetable, fruit and flower gardens,

growing plants and planting trees, keeping pets, watching the flow of

water in a river and observing the movement and behaviour of floating

objects and animals, watching the skies and the movement of the heavenly

bodies, health, hygiene and cleanliness activities and games and sports.

It seems the object the Zakir Hussain Committee had in view in

recognizing the physical and social environments of the child as

additional centres of correlation was not achieved to any great extent.

In most Basic schools correlation remained limited to craft, and the

idea to use the two new centres of correlation really never caught on

— perhaps a consequence partly of the unique importance given to

craft by Gandhi and partly of the inadequacy of training and

orientation of teachers in this regard. In 1956, that is a good 18

years after the Zakir Hussain group had first made the suggestion, the

Assessment Committee on Basic Education had this to say on the matter:

'...far too much effort is made to correlate subjects with the,craft only, while-correlation with the natural and the social environments is very inadequate Unless teachers learn to draw as many lessons as possible in various subjects from a study of the natural and social environments, the children would be missing a very large area of necessary knowledge. Basic schools should specially earmark time for the study and understanding of the environments. As it is, the timetable hardly provides for this.' 1/

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee on Basic Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1956, p.12.

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The use of the social and physical environments as centres of

correlation was expected to come in handy particularly in the teaching

of social studies and general science. But that did not happen

either. Not only that, the practice of teaching history, geography

and civics, or physics, chemistry and the-life sciences as.separate

subjects with little integration remained widespread.

'We came across a number of instances where such subjects, as Geography, History and Civics were taught systematically from separate texts. Even in some Basic Training schools, we saw this separatist emphasis on the training of teachers to teach these subjects. We think great care should be taken about this matter as a whole and that the integration of subjects should be as much stressed as the correlation of productive work etc. with subjects of study.' 1/

Correlation with Craft

But how did correlation to craft itself work in practice? It

goes without saying that its quality and effectiveness as an interdiscip­

linary technique, would depend among other things, on the resourcefulness

and enthusiasm of the teacher, on his proficiency in the craft on the one

hand and in different school subjects on the other, on the educational

suitability of the craft and the standard of craftwork, and on the

overall satisfactoriness of the other facilities and organizational

conditions in the school. As for the teacher factor, we shall, in view

of its critical importance for the entire programme of Basic education

have a closer look at the matter in the following section; our main

interest in this part of the presentation will be to look at some of

the broader aspects of the day-to-day practice of craft-centred

correlation in Basic schools with particular reference to the academic

performance and personality development of children.

In order to assist in the choice of a suitable craft for the school

curriculum, Gandhi had suggested a two-fold criterion:

1/ Ibid, p.15.

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'I should lay down no hard and fast rule. Experience in such matters would be the best guide. The capacity of various crafts to become popular, their ability to draw out the faculties of the student, should be studied. The idea is that whatever craft you choose, it should draw out the faculties of the child fully and equally. It should be a village craft and it should be useful. ' 1/

This meant really that a good craft for Basic education must suit

the social and cultural environment of the child and must have good

educational potential for correlation. But what is this educational

potential of a craft relevant to correlated teaching? How is this to

be assessed? Ramachandran offers the following elaboration:

'We are making a mistake when we think that any craft is good for a Basic school. We should select such crafts as should be good from an educational point of view. The craft should provide continuous processes. It should not only be a medium of teaching but it should be such as should be born in the school, it should be made to grow from stage to stage, along with the growth of the children and must offer continuous processes. Judging the craft on these bases, spinning is a very suitable craft because it is a multi-process craft.. It can be started right from the earliest class and its processes can be carried out till the end of the 8th year of education. It offers many processes like picking, ginning, etc.'1 2/

Gandhi was equally insistent that to meet effectively the needs

of Basic education including correlation, craft work must be of a high

standard consistent with the age and level of maturity of children.

One powerful device suggested by him to facilitate this was his idea

of 'self-support'. What he meant was that if craft work is good, its

sale proceeds^ should be adequate to meet the running costs of the

school including the salaries of teachers. The idea of self-support

was a non-starter and in the sense'in which Gandhi had put forward

the proposition, it had to be given up before long; but to him

1/ Harijan: 18.9.1937, as quoted by Solanki, op.cit.p.58.

2/ Administration of Basic Education, proceedings of the first short -term training course held during November-December 1958, National Institute of Basic Education, Ministry of.Education, Government of India, 1960, p.47. ...

- 20 -

it was the 'acid' test.

'The core of my suggestion is that handicrafts are to be taught, not merely for productive works, but for developing the intellect of the pupils. Surely, if the State takes charge of the children between seven and fourteen, and trains their bodies and minds through productive labour, the public schools must be frauds and teachers idiots, if they cannot become self-supporting.' 1/

Gandhi's espousal of the idea of self-support did not mean, how­

ever, that he was willing to subordinate the educational aspect of

schooling to its financial aspect. Far from it. He was clear that

it was the educational side which was the reason d'être of the whole

thing and that under no circumstances, was it to be treated as some­

thing of secondary or lesser importance. While he had no doubt that

Basic education as he had conceived it could

'be self-supporting. But the test of success is not its self-supporting character, but that the whole man has been drawn out through the teaching of the handicraft in a scientific manner. In fact I would reject a teacher who would promise to make it self-supporting under any circumstances. The self-supporting part will be the logical corollary of the fact that the pupil has learnt the use of every one of his faculties. If a boy who works at a handicraft for three hours a day will surely earn his keep, how much more a boy who adds to the work of develop­ment of his mind and soul!1 2/

With self-support for all practical purposes out of the picture, and

no alternative 'Quality-control' device to take its place, the standards

of craft work started caving in. Budgetary insufficiencies, inadequate

preparation of teachers to handle craft work with confidence,

inexperience of craft instructors wherever they were employed, to teach

and to establish linkages and counterlinkages with other subjects,

combined with a number of other organizational problems to compound the

situation and to make it more and more unfavourable for both productive

work and correlated instruction. Some of the commonest bottlenecks

turned out to be: lack of proper accommodation for craft and practical

work, failure to provide regular supplies of good raw materials, delays

1/ Gandhi, M.K., op.cit.p.36. 2/ Gandhi, M.K., Ibid. p.52.

- 21 -

in the supply of essential equipment and craft implements, unsatisfactory-

arrangements for disposal of craft products, inflexibility of school

timetable, and lack of guidance from the school and departmental

authorities.

The conditions in some of the schools were so bad that a new policy

had to be laid down for converting ordinary schools, into Basic schools.

The policy made the following four stipulations:

'1. It should provide an integrated coursé of seven or eight years of Basic education. (Junior schools of four or five years should necessarily be feeders to a Senior Basic school in the vacinity). .

2. All teachers should receive Basic training.

3. There should be proper provisions, i.e. at least one basic craft and one or more allied subsidiary crafts, for organization of some suitable and socially useful productive craft as an integral part of the educational programme.

4. Adequate quantities of raw materials and craft equipment should be supplied in time.]> 1/ -

It was not surprising that in the prevailing conditions,' even in

the very best of Basic schools, the use of: correlation was far from

effective and its role was often limited to the transmission of

information, pure and simple, from different subjects-without much

intellectual stimulation or contribution to the practical skills of

the learner.

'An illustration will make the point clear. A pupil-teacher made children spin on a takli (craft); subsequently he made them count the rounds of yarn spun by them (arithmetic); then he tried to teach a poem about a takli (language); children prepared slivers for spinning cotton, and the pupil-teacher tried to give information regarding the cotton-growing areas of Gujarat (geography); then he tried to describe

1/ Education in India, Ministry of Education, Government of India, Vol. I, 1962-1963, p.56.

- 22 -

'varieties of takli and gave the history of the evolution of takli (history)-, and then he made pupils draw a picture of a cotton plan and a takli (drawing).' 1/

The Assessment Committee had noted that there is 'quite a good

bit of fantastic and unreal correlation going on.' 2/ Recalling his

visit to an actual class in a well known Basic school, Ramanathan

shares this experience:

•It was the Fifth Standard in a Primary School, consisting of, in the main, boys and girls aged nine and ten. The first half

• hour in the morning was spent in spinning on the Kisan spinning wheel popularized by Gandhiji. The next item in the day's schedule began with a dialogue between the teacher and the class which, translated into English, may be reproduced as follows :

What have you been doing? Spinning.

What instrument have you been using? Charkha.

What is the Charkha made of? Wood.

What kind of wood? (no response).

It is called teak wood. Say that. Teak wood.

Do you know where teak wood grows? No.

It grows in Kerala. Say that. Kerala.

We shall today learn the history of kerala.

There then followed an ordinary history lesson on the traditional lecture pattern. The history of several centuries was condensed into a half-hour lesson! And correlated with the craft of spinning ! J/

In many Basic schools, the ordinary teacher, because of his lack of

confidence, inadequate preparation, and many discouraging circumstances

mentioned above, felt little motivation to practise correlation seriously,

and often tended to fall back upon »conventional« textbook-based teaching

as the only sure way to make children learn.

1/ Solanki, A. B., op. cit. p.74.

2/ Report of the Assessment Committee on Basic. Education, op.cit.p.22.

3/ Ramanathan, G., Education from Dewey to Gandhi, Asia Publishing House, London, p.232.

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Some Lessons

While the practice of correlated teaching by the first generation

teachers of Basic schools left much to be desired, and while its

standard and effectiveness varied from State to State, and within each

State from institution to institution, its practice in thousands of

Basic schools* all over the country for 20 to 30 years easily permits

the distillation of at least a few broad conclusions and generalizations.

1. Preparing a Suggestive Interdisciplinary Syllabus on the Basis

of Activity-Units

A major problem faced-by the typical Basic school teacher, whose

own academic background was far from solid, whose proficiency in the

school craft was marginal, and who had never seriously practised or

experienced any teaching method other than the one based exclusively

on the use of the prescribed textbook, was the lack of a properly worked

out activity-based syllabus. While many of the syllabi prescribed by

the State Governments only listed items of knowledge under different

subjects in a conventional way, and then went on to list separately the

details for different crafts, the teacher's need was rather for an

integrated syllabus dividing the subject contents into long-term and

short-term teachable units, suitable to the needs and levels of maturity

of children in different grades, and linking such units integrally to

appropriate craft processes and activities like community health,

personal hygiene, garden work, spinning, woodwork, school assembly,

games and sports, celebration of festivals, excursions and so on.

(Alternatively such a syllabus could start off by suggesting a realistic

list of activities — productive, creative, social, cultural and

physical — in which children of a given age are expected to be

interested, and then go on to indicate with regard to each of them

the appropriate learning experiences under different subjects that the

school work should aim at providing.)

* In 1965-66 there were 85,584 Junior Basic schools (5 grades), 18,999 Senior Basic schools (8 grades), and 48 Post-Basic schools (10 or 11 grades), a total of 104,631 Basic schools in the country.

- 24 -

True, besides the efforts made by the Hindustani Talimi Sangh at

Wardha, by the Union Ministry of Education at New Delhi, and by a number

of State Governments at their respective headquarters, this particular

problem of working out a 'correlated' syllabus was discussed from time

to time, and recommendations made regarding the preparation of lesson

plans and their formats at a number of conferences of teachers,

teacher-educators and administrators at the national and provincial

levels. But for want of proper follow-up and supportive field work

and research, the ordinary teacher functioned, most of the time, with­

out any effective guidance and access to useful curricular materials in

the language or medium of the school. In fact, as some of the

contemporary surveys revealed, teachers were often working without

having set their eyes even on the prescribed State syllabus!

In an activity-centred programme, such as Basic education, which

seeks to strike at(the very foundation of an existing curriculum which

is narrow, bookish, theoretical, over-crowded and irrelevant to the

present and future needs of the learners, the priority of the need to

develop a detailed graded scheme of work-and-learning units which the

existing teacher corps, with all the limitations of its own educational

background and professional preparation, can meaningfully carry out, and

of the need continually to improve upon such a scheme in the light of

critical judgement and field experience, cannot be over-stressed.

2. Planning of an Activity

Any activity or process, regardless of whether it relates to some

craft, physical surroundings or the social environment of the child, to

be of educational significance for the learner, will need proper planning.

But much of the practical work and other activities in Basic schools

failed to meet this test, as these were often haphazard, unco-ordinated

and lacking in pupil motivation. An experienced (Basic) teacher

'educator's simple words of advice in this regard are these:

- 25 -

'What may be regarded as the most important thing in carrying on any activity is that it must be exploited to a maximum for educational ends. That is, it must stimulate thinking and learning on the part of children. In order to achieve this objective, it is essential that first, children must feel a need for this; secondly, they should be guided and helped to plan it in minutest details; thirdly, they should try"to execute the plan as far as possible. If at this stage it is felt that in order to accomplish the activity the plan needs some modification, it should be effected accordingly. The fourth and the last stage of the activity should consist in making an assessment of the whole procedure in terms of its adequacy for the end in view. Unless all these four stages are consciously gone through, the activity cannot be expected to yield the desired result. An activity performed mechanically loses its educational purpose; and it is not good even for correlated teaching.' 1/

3. Interdisciplinary Teaching Must Correspond Meaningfully to the

Age and Level of Maturity of the child

As a Basic school child learns the same craft or crafts over a

number of years (5 or 8) and explores the same physical and social

environment, the opportunities for correlation in one grade will look

similar to those in any other grade. It will be a great mistake to

think that the knowledge and materials for correlation could, therefore,

remain invariate. While there must be some essential continuity, of

course, the complexity and richness of detail in correlation must all

the time be adjusted suitably to the child's previous experience and

stage of development. Unless this is done, correlation could lose all

its educational,significance and such teaching becomes a boring

infliction and a complete waste of the child's time. The caution is

necessary because many a visitor and supervisor has reported that

children from grade 1 to grade 5 were 'being taught the same lesson on

History of Paper Making or Paper Manufacturing Factories in India,

after they had done some work in Paper Cutting and Pasting or Cardboard

Modelling, similarly, the lessons on Cotton Production in India or

History of Textiles are delivered indiscriminately to children of all

grades.'2/

1/ Salamatullah, Thoughts on Basic Education, Asia Publishing House, Bombay 1963, p.39.

2/ Ibid. p.40.

- 26 -

4. Drill and Review work as vital as a First Exposure to a Concept

or its Application

To master the three R's, the child needs frequent and considerable

doses of drill and practice. Without such work, his communication and

numerical skills will not develop properly. Many a Basic school teacher

forgot this simple truth and spent most of his teaching time in arranging

craft and other activities and in introducing academic topics and bits of

information from other disciplines only incidentally. He was unmindful

that:

'In subjects like arithmetic, geometry, grammar, science, geography, etc., children are "required to find out their principles by inductive processes and to form generalizations and to apply the truth thus found out to actual life situations. In other subjects, different abilities like those of reading, writing, counting, understanding, appreciatinq etc. are to be developed through systematic literary training wherein indueive as well as deductive processes of educational practice are essential. This requires drill-work, revision and review work to make learning purposeful, systematic and effective. Unfortunately, the teacher did not practise drill and review work owing to a misconception regarding the interpretation of correlated teaching. Generally, drill work and review work are of a formal nature and the teacher found it very difficult to show any reference or presence of activity in that type of work, hence he refrained from practising this type of work, lest his teaching might be interpreted as formal. Secondly he was keen to prove that the process of teaching was correlated, rather than to examine critically the effects of his teaching methods on the actual process of learning of children.' 1/

Regardless of its underlying assumptions and ideological orientations,

and of the manner in which the school curriculum is actually arranged,

the key importance of drill and review work in any scheme of curricular

reform must be fully recognized. When it comes to laying a firm

foundation to the child's intellectual development, and in particular

in his acquisition of language, number and related skills, there is

no alternative.

1/ Solanki, A.B., op.cit.p.94

- 27 -

A seminar group meeting in Delhi in 1958 had. the following

specific suggestions to make:

'Correlation should come in a natural way and should not be

forced. There will be three types of lessons in a Basic school.

(a) Activity lessons to be characterized by three stages of

work: (i) planning (ii) execution (iii) assessment.

(b) Correlated knowledge lessons based upon activity: These

lessons should give all the knowledge for which the

activity provides natural occasions. The knowledge thus

given should not be divided into different subjects. It

should be imparted as one coherent piece of knowledge.

(c) Supplementary lessons to fix the subject-matter in the

mind of the child and to avoid any gaps in his knowledge.

These lessons may be of various types, like drill and

fixation lessons; revision and review lessons; filling

in gaps or systematization lessons to systematize the

knowledge which might have been scrappily given in

random bits in correlated knowledge lessons; grammar

lessons; lessons on appreciation of poetry, reading,

memorizing, application lessons applying the knowledge

given through correlated lessons.' 1/

5. The Psychological Moment; and the Sequencing of the Daily

School Activities

For many years after the launching of Basic education, a burning

question concerning 'correlated teaching' that used to agitate the

minds of teachers and teacher educators alike was: 'When should knowledge

1/ Administration of Basic Education, op.cit.p.72.

- 28 -

be imparted — before starting the activity, during the activity itself,

or after completing the activity?' The only answer that emerged from

discussions and from experience was: 'At the right psychological

moment, that is, when the child is ready to receive it.' There could

be no other rule, and whether or not the answer made a difference to

a particular teacher's teaching habits would depend not a little on

his personal judgement and the effort he made to place himself in the

situation of the learner. But to facilitate the task of the teacher

it would be useful to have a clearer idea, if possible, of how the

concept of 'correlated teaching' was supposed to work in practice.

One attempt to respond to this question follows :

'... In his daily teaching programme, the teacher takes two or

three periods ranging roughly from one and a half to two hours

during which he attempts the direct type of correlation in the

course of the activity itself, that is," he helps children to

acquire all the information that is absolutely necessary for

the continuance of the_activity.

For example, the students, engaged in gardening should be

informed of the ratio in which clay and manure should be mixed

while sowing seeds in flowerpots. They should also be told, how

deep the seeds are to be sown and whether the flower pot is to

be placed in the open air or in the shade.

In woodwork similarly, the students should know how to

distinguish between seasoned and unseasoned wood, as also between

various kinds of timber. A sketch plan is to be made, measurements

taken and arithmetical calculations done for the timber required.

These are some of the types of correlation which the teacher

attempts while a particular activity is in progress. He utilizes

every opportunity in teaching his students 'the why and wherefore'

of the actual processes involved in an activity. The students are

- 29 -

also required to make a note of the quantity of the raw. material

. consumed and the rate of progress made in the form of graphs

and charts.

The work periods are then followed by periods earmarked in

the timetable for the mother-tongue, art, arithmetic, social

studies and general science. The problems that may have arisen

are dealt with by the teacher in the relevant periods. In the

arithmetic period, the cost of articles prepared and other

allied problems may be worked out. In the geography period the

teacher may discuss-the sources of the raw materials used in

the activity. For example, in grade (vi) where the basic craft

is weaving, the students may be profitably tauaht the history of

weaving and point out that weaving as a craft has been practised

in our country from time immemorial. The cultivation of cotton

in various parts of the country may be studied. The amount of

yarn needed for weaving cloth of a given size may be calculated.'

The following daily schedule provides another concrete illustration of how the various activities in a Basic school could be purposefully sequenced:

08.00 a.m. to 08.45 a.m. Community prayer, assembly, safai and

other daily routine activities.

08.45 a.m. to 10.00 a.m. Craft and/or other environmental activities.

10.00 a.m. to 10.10 a.m. Recess

10.10 a.m. to 11.30 a.m. Integrated knowledge arising out of the

activities or environments of the child.

11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. Break.

2.30 p.m. to 3.00 p.m. Community spinning.

3.00 p.m. to 4.20 p.m. Drill, review-work, exprèssional work of

. children, etc.

4.20 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. Supervision of self-study of children.

5.00 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. Physical education. 2/ 1/ Handbook for Teachers of Basic Schools, Ministry of Education,

Government of India, 1956, p.22. 2/ Solanki, op.cit.p.160.

- 30 -

The basic rule is for interest and activity to lead and for

information and knowledge to follow.

6. Everything Knowable Cannot Be Correlated to a Given Craft or Environmental Activity

When all is said and done, not only should review and

supplementary work periods on the school timetable provide for some

formal treatment of. the topics introduced during the 'activity'

lessons, there will also be topics of cultural and intellectual

significance from different disciplines which can by no stretching

of the correlation principle be properly covered through 'correlated

teaching', and for which, therefore, separate instruction becomes

indispensable. A study in Andhra Pradesh revealed that a large

number of teachers of Basic schools were unable to employ the

correlated technique in the teaching of 'poetry, songs, grammar,

number, vowels, consonants, vibhaktis, and increasing vocabulary

in languages of Telugu, Hindi and English, ratio, proportions

interest in Arithmetic; Food, revolutions of the earth, matter and

its forms in General Science; eclipses, Mogul history, Sivaji and

Krishna Deva Raya of'Vijayanagar, biographical details of kings

and rain fall in Social Studies; and Music and Fine Arts.' 1/

The Kher Committee.of the CABE had as early as 1938-39 foreseen

this very clearly in one of its many conclusions regarding the

adoption of Basic education ás the national pattern of elementary

education in the country. 'Certain elements of cultural subjects,

which cannot be correlated with the basic craft, must be taught

independently.' Explaining the concept of Basic education, an

official release of the Ministry of Education in 1956 went on to

reiterate and clarify further: 'It should also be realized, however,

that there may be certain items in the syllabus which cannot be

easily correlated directly with any of the three above centres.

1/ Subba Rao, C.S., Gandhian Experiment in Primary Education, NCERT, 1975, p.164.

- 31 -

In such cases, which should occur only infrequently, there should

be no objection to these being taught according to the methods of

teaching adopted in any good school. This means that even in the

case of such lessons, the principle of interest and motivation and

the value of exprèssion-work will be utilized. In any case, forced

and mechanical 'associations' which pass for correlation in many

schools should be carefully avoided.' 1/ •

Before concluding this section, attention may be drawn parent­

hetically to two educational issues which remained largely unsettled

throughout the implementation of the scheme of Basic education from

1937 to 1966. One of these concerns the suitability Qf the teaching

of craft in general, and of spinning in particular in grades 1 and 2

of the primary school; and the other regarding the extent to which

a child's interest ought to be taken into consideration in deciding

upon the : choice of the school craft for him.

Craft Suitability in the First Two Primary Grades

Gandhi had no doubt that the teaching of craft as a productive

activity and as a centre of correlation should start from Grade 1;

in fact, according to his concept of Basic education, craft instruction

could start even earlier, that is, from the pre-Basic stage itself.

But a very large number of teachers, educationalists and curriculum

planners did not see eye to eye with him on this matter. One of the

groups of the first short-term training course.held at New Delhi in

1958 reported, for instance, that 'The craft of spinning and weaving

has not been.found suitable for introduction in the lowest two

classes; the children at this stage are too young to make any use­

ful article out of the very crude yarn spun and very soon they lose

all interest in it and the whole thing becomes a mechanical,

drudgery type of affair.'2/

1/ The Concept of Basic Education, Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1956, p.5.

2/ Administration of Basic Education, op.cit. p.82.

- 32 -

In Andhra Pradesh, the seven-year integrated scheme of

elementary education "... suggested the introduction of activities

and simple craft work from third grade onwards and it was a

departure from the accepted policy of starting systematic craft work

from the first grade;' 1_/ In fact, 'The consensus of opinion of

the Basic schools', according to the Andhra Pradesh study referred

to earlier, 'representing both the majority and the maximum appears

to be that craft work should be introduced in the fifth grade.' 2/

It is hardly necessary to recall that the Kher Committee appointed

by the CABE in 1938-39, while fully endorsing the principle of

'learning by doing' of Basic education had also found it necessary

to differ from Gandhi, and clarify that 'This activity should be

of many kinds in the lower classes and later should lead to a -

basic craft...' The clarification was later accepted by the Board.3/

But all this did not seem to affect'very much the concept of

Basic education or its practice. In most places craft continued to

feature, at any rate in .theory, as an integral part of the Grade I

curriculum in Basic schools.

Child's Interest as a Determinant of the Craft Choice

The Zakir Hussain Committee and the CABE Committee of 1947 set

up to prepare a curriculum for the Basic schools had suggested seven

possible crafts for the Basic schools; in practice, however,

spinning (sometimes spinning and weaving) continued throughout to be

the commonest craft in Junior and Senior Basic schools — 70 to 80%

of the schools in the country provided for no other craft activity.

1/,2/ Subba Rao, C.S., op.cit.pp.180 and 181, respectively.

3/ Post-War Educational Development in India, Report of the Central advisory Board of Education,Government of India, 1944, p.8.

- 33 -

Gardening and agriculture was a far more popular craft, 1/ no doubt,

but not many schools could afford the land and the cost of its

implements and other requirements. Consequently in many quarters,

there was a sharp criticism of Basic education for its failure to take

any note of the children ' s interests and apti-tudes in craft instruction.

The Delhi training group had found that the introduction of one craft

only in the lower classes is unable to sustain the interest of a child

for long, and was therefore, of the opinion '...that equipment and

material connected with at least 2 crafts be provided in every school.

If funds do not permit, one of these be the main.craft while the other

a subsidiary craft.' 2/

Gandhi was not unaware of the problem. On several occasions, he

conceded in principle that other things being equal, a child should, as

far as possible, be taught only that craft which accorded best with his

interests and aptitude. But he thought — as he never tired of pointing

out — that in India, because of its unfavourable economic and other

conditions, options other than spinning and weaving were hardly

practicable.1 On one occasion he is reported to have said 'Takli was

not the only thing, but that was the only thing which could be

universalized. There was paper-making, gur-making from palms, and so

on. It would be the function of the Ministers to find out what handi­

craft would suit what school best.' 3/

1/ In 'An Investigation into the Attitude Towards Crafts of Boys in Senior Basic Schools of Delhi,' S. L. Gajwani studied the questionnaire responses of 800 schoolboys in. 1959 and concluded their order of preference to be: (1) agriculture and gardening; (2) woodwork; and (3) spinning and weaving. (Delhi University

: M.E.D. Dissertation). For detailed syllabus for (1). spinning and weaving and for (2) gardening, and agriculture as prepared by the Syllabus Committee of the CABE in 1949, please see Appendix A.

2/ Administration of Basic Education, op.cit., p.113.

3/ Gandhi, M.K., op.cit., p.25.

- 34 -

On another occasion, he was asked:

'But as you have been mainly thinking of spinning and weaving, evidently you are thinking of making of these schools so many weaving schools. A child may have no aptitude for weaving and may have it for something else.'

'Quite so. Then we will teach him some other craft. But you must know that one school will not teach many crafts. The idea is that we should have one teacher for twenty-five boys, and you may have as many classes or schools of twenty-five boys as you have teachers available, and have each of these schools specializing in a separate craft — carpentry, smithy, tanning or shoe-making. Only you must bear in mind the fact that you develop the child's mind through each of these crafts.' 1/

Yet on another occasion he compared the educational merits of

agriculture with spinning as a basic craft.

'Some people ask me why agriculture could not be a basic craft. The answer is that, it has not the educational potentialities ,of spinning. It cannot, for example, develop deftness as in spinning. The function of Nai Talim is not merely to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man.' 2/

Academic Performance and Personality Development of Basic School

Children

Numerous official and unofficial reports from different parts of

the country presented at the All-India Educational Conferences and

forums throughout the implementation of Basic education from 1939 to

1966 were agreed that despite its many deficiencies, in so far as

overall personality development is concerned, Basic education was

substantially achieving its educational objectives, and that in this

regard children from Basic schools were distinctly superior to their

1/ Ibid, p.38.

2/ Ibid, p.39.

- 35 -

counterparts in ordinary schools.

A few examples will convey the trend of such impressionistic

comparisons. Referring to"the many expectations which people had

entertained of Basic education, the Government of Bihar, which was

one of the first Provincial Governments to take up seriously the

implementation of the new programme on an experimental basis, had

among other things this to say in a press note released in 1940-1941:

'The second result should be the development of a sense of discipline through work as opposed to discipline superimposed. In this respect too, one could directly feel that the children had achieved some degree of self-discipline. We had occasion to observe them not only in the class but in the play-field and in meetings and gatherings and their general behaviour as well as the complete absence of any noise and scramble for places, jostlings and pushing which are not unusually witnessed in gatherings of 'children gave undoubted proof of the children in the Basic schools acquiring a sense of self-discipline....

The fourth expected result of formation of active and alert habits had also been achieved considerably. Children showed distinct signs of shedding the proverbially lethargic habits and listlessness" of the Champaran district. They were found to be active and energetic mentally and physically

The ninth expected result, that of growth of spirit and co-operation and service was noticably marked by co-operation amongst children, with teachers, outside the class. There were clear indications to show that value of co-operative endeavour and need of serving one another was realised by the children....

As for personal cleanliness and sense of tidiness, the children were found to be cleaner than those in other ordinary schools, though not to a perfect standard....

And finally the total effect of Basic education, as envisaged by the framers of the scheme, should be the development of the whole personality of the child. It is too early to pronounce a definite opinion in the matter, but we feel that the results so far achieved in various directions mark notable advance towards the goal.' 1/

1/ Hindustani Talim Sangh, Seven.Teats . of Work, p.' 2Q-22,

- 36 -

The Third All-India Conference on Basic education held at Sevagram

in January 1945 reviewed the working of Basic education in the light of

the provincial reports presented on the occasion and was satisfied

'that despite the adverse circumstances, Basic education had made a

headway and its influence had been marked by the development of the

child's personality. People had recognized its worth. The development

of citizenship was. so marked from the review of the reports that it was

considered to be the strongest point in favour of the-scheme and

provision of it on a very large scale was contemplated.' 1/

In its appraisal of Basic education in 1956, the Assessment Committee

had every justification for coming to the conclusion:

'There is unanimous testimony that Basic school children are more alert, more full of question and more eager to know, more resourceful, more responsible and more concerned with their surroundings. They also exhibit more powers of expression and more of the qualities of an integrated developing personality. Intellectually also they show more keenness to analyze, under­stand and piece together whatever knowledge is gained. All these are undoubtedly 'educational gains. But as we have stated, the whole of Basic education is yet only in the making and much more effort and care will have to go into the work before Basic schools can give us the real picture of their possibilities.' 2/

But what about academic attainments? Did the. scholastic performance

of Basic school children also compare favourably with that of children

in the non-Basic institutions?

It must be recalled that from the day Basic.education was put forward

by Gandhi as the only workable solution to the massive problem of

universal primary education in India suiting the genius, culture and needs

of her people, the question of whether or not children in the new type of

school would perform academically as well as children in the non-Basic

1/ Kanasara, L.: A Survey of Basic Education during the Past Thirty years and its Effect on Education in General and Society in Particular; Ph.D. Thesis, Bombay University, 1977, p.265.

2/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op.cit. p.54.

- 37 -

schools was throughout at the centre of a running controversy. The

parents clamoured for an assurance that the academic interests of children

under the new educational dispensation'would not suffer. Every now and

then they were joined by the educationalists or technocrats who insisted

that:

'Skill in crafts was not the end. The students of Basic system should.be ensured of their fundamental right of being able to avail themselves of the opportunities of public service which students of the non-Basic system enjoyed. Basic education should provide wider.knowledge in general education subjects.' 1/

A number of studies were conducted in different parts of the country

from time to time to determine how exactly the academic attainments of

Basic school children in different subjects compared with the achievements

of children from non-Basic schools. But their findings were so much at

variance all the time, that no clear picture emerged.

Broadly, the studies fall into three categories: (a) those that on

the whole, favour the performance of Basic school children; (b) those

that on the whole favour the performance of non-Basic school children;

and (c) those that on the whole reported no significant differences in

the performance of the two groups.

In the (a) category are the investigations of researchers like

Chatterjee and Hiremath. Using his own battery of achievement,tests in

mother-tongue, arithmetic, social studies, general science and hygiene,

Chatterjee compared the performance of 213 primary school children

(Classes III and IV) with the performance of 181 children from

corresponding classes of Basic schools in Bihar. His conclusion:

1/ From the address of Mr. N. D. Sumdaravadivelu, former Director of Public Instruction, Madras,, as published by The Hindu in its Editorial of 20th April 1957 (quoted by Subba Rao, C S . op.cit.p.15) . This criticism is strongly reminiscent of the criticism the movement of Progressive Education had to face in America during the 50's..: Many critics of Progressive Education had regarded the movement as anti-intellectual, and because of their faith in the traditional academic disciplines had felt that a curriculum developed around the interests and activities of children, whatever its other merits, was likely to deprive the children of a considerable amount of general knowledge.

- 38 -

'Thus my study makes it clear that the achievements made by the Basic school children, during the period of four years are superior to those made by the children of ordinary primary schools of the locality in the same time, the superiority being highly marked in oral reading, elementary science, hygiene and social studies, but not so in other subjects.' 1/

Hiremath conducted an experimental study in Bombay to throw light

on the same problem. He found that while the Basic school children

were as good as the children of other schools in dictation and written

comprehension, they were definitely superior in social studies, general

knowledge, mechanical reading and arithmetic. 2/

Typical of the studies in category (b) are those of Mohsin and

Bhatt. Mohsin made an experimental study of the average attainments

of grades V and VII of Basic and non-Basic schools in Bihar. His

findings showed that the children of Grade V of traditional schools

made significantly higher scores in Hindi, history and geography. In

mathematics also they performed better, but the difference was not

statistically significant. Likewise the performance of non-Basic school

children of Grade VII was definitely superior to that of the Basic school

children in geography. On the other hand, the Basic school children,

despite a lower 'aspirational level1 ranked higher in attitude towards

work, self-confidence, emotional maturity and thruthfulness. 3/

Bhatt made his study in the schools of Saurashtra which now forms

part of the State of Gujarat. He found that the traditional school

children were definitely superior in language, social studies and

general science. 4/

1/ Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Sixth Annual Report, 1938-44, pp.52-57.

2/ Salamatullah, Research in Basic Education, Silver Jubilee Volume, Udaipur, Vidya Bhawan Society, 1960, pp. 77-91.

3/ Salamatullah, Ibid.

4/ Survey of Research in Education, CASE, M.S. University of Baroda, 1974, p. 416.

- 39 -

Typical of the comparisons in category (c) is the investigation

made in 1959 by Shukla and Tutoo to compare the academic attainments

of Grade VI children of the Basic school attached to the Central

Institute of Education (now part of the Delhi University) with those of

the children from the same grade of non-Basic schools, The study found

no evidence for any definite trend, either way. 1/ This was broadly in

line with the findings of Kamat who after studying the achievements in

different subjects of Grade III and IV children of Basic and non-Basic

schools from certain districts of Bombay came to the conclusion that no

significant differences existed in the performance of the two groups. 2/

Considering the fact that in several of these and other studies,

hardly any significant matching of the two groups of school children,

Basic and non-Basic, in respect of general ability and social and home

background was done, and that the tests improvised to sample performance

were without any proper standardization, and thus could in many cases be

almost certainly presumed to have had low reliability coefficients,

the issue of whether or not Basic education worked to the disadvantage

of children in different school subjects, must be treated as being a

widely open one.

Perhaps the popular apprehension that Basic schools were not paying

enough attention to academic learning arose, at least initially, from

the considerable time devoted to craft, absence of set textbooks, and

the neglect of drill and review work. Mention may be made here of a

study made by Dr. G. F. Lakhani and Dr. E. A. Pires of selected schools

in Bihar and Bombay to ascertain whether, the time devoted to craft in

Basic schools was having an adverse effect on academic standards. This

two-man committee was appointed by the Ministry of Education in 1952 in

response to a recommendation of the CABE. Contrary to the popular belief,

the committee reported that inclusion of craft work in the school

curriculum had a favourable impact on scholastic achievement, and offered

a number of concrete suggestions to make craft work more productive.

1/ Survey of Research in Education, Ibid. p.328.

2/ Salamatullah, op.cit.

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But there is a more fundamental question which neither these nor any

other studies addressed. What is the true test of knowledge? Its

memorization and reproducibility in a written examination, or its

actual applicability in a concrete situation to which it has relevance?

Ramachandran and his team are certain that many of such comparative

studies designed to produce artificial answers to,artificial questions

miss the whole point of Basic education.

'Let us take the subject of nutrition. A child's knowledge of nutrition can be tested in different ways. The boy and girl may be asked to explain what is nutrition and what are. the principles and rules of nutrition. The boy or girl may give back in answer a lot of information and knowledge it has memorized from the textbook or from dictated notes. But if you ask the same boy or girl how a balanced diet should be compounded in practice out of vegetables, greens, pulses, grains, etc., available in the environment, the response will be very unsatisfactory. Therefore, one method of test may bring forth very satisfactory written or oral answers and . another method of test would show.up complete failure. It is possible that a well-taught boy or "girl in an ordinary school

•- may give the first kind of answer satisfactorily and yet fail, if the second test -is offered. It is equally possible that a boy or a girl in a Basic school may not fare as satisfactorily in the case of the first test and may at the same time fare satisfactorily in the second test. The ultimate test, however, is that the pupil who has learnt nutrition should have his food according to what he has learnt. ' 1/

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op.cit.p.53.

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Chapter IV

TEACHER PREPARATION AND INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING

'The proper training of teachers is perhaps the most important condition for the success of this scheme. Even in normal circumstances the quality of the teachers generally determines the quality of the education imparted. When a radical reconstruction of the entire educational system is contemplated, the importance of the teachers who work out these changes is greatly accentuated.

It is, therefore, essential that these teachers should have an understanding of the new educational and social ideology inspiring the scheme combined with enthusiasm for working it out..

Since they are to teach not only certain academic subjects, but also crafts, their training should include a reasonably thorough mastery of the processes and techniques of certain basic crafts.

Their methods of teaching and approach to subject-matter will be different. They will deal with the various subjects, riot as isolated and mutually exclusive branches of knowledge, but as inter-related aspects of a growing and developing activity which provides the focus of their correlation. For

"this purpose, it-is essential that teachers should have some training in formulating projects and schemes of correlated studies, and thus link up life, learning and activity.

They must have an intelligent interest in the life and activities of their human environment and a thorough grasp of the intimate relationship between school and society.' 1/

In keeping with this awareness of the importance of teacher

preparation in Basic education, State Governments made every effort

to rise to the occasion by establishing new and expanding existing

teacher training facilities. Within the space of 10 years or so, by

the time of the Third Five Year Plan (1961-1966), almost all the

primary training institutes in the country, of which there' were in

all a little less than a thousand, had been converted into Basic Training

1/ Report of the Zakir Hussain Committee, pp. 28, 29 as quoted by Solanki, op.cit. p.114.

- 42 -

establishments. Quantitatively speaking this conversion must rank as

one of the more successful aspects of Basic education during this

period. Apart from training fresh recruits on basic lines, Basic

Training institutions also started offering short — three to five

month — orientation courses to existing non-Basic trained teachers

with the result that the absolute number as well as the proportion of

Basic trained teachers in Basic schools began to rise perceptibly.

But all this hardly seems to have made any difference to the

indifferent quality of 'correlated teaching1 in Basic schools. As

mentioned already, there was hardly any correlation with the physical

and the social environment in most schools; and as with craft, the

correlations were not always natural and on many occasions contributed

little either to skill formation or to acquisition of knowledge. Even

the integration of Subjects like history, geography and civics into

social studies, and of physics, chemistry and life sciences which had

become rather familiar and well established in Basic education in the

initial years of the Programme had lost ground. 'We came, across a

number of instances where such subjects, as Geography, History and

Civics were taught systematically from separate texts. Even in some

Basic Training schools, we saw this separatist emphasis on the

training of teachers to teach these subjects.1 1/ Over the years many

a teacher gave up the practice of correlating completely and went back

to conventional teaching; with others it became something of a ritual

to be indulged on special occasions such as the visit of an inspector

or some other important dignitary.

Why did all this happen? Where did things go wrong? Was not the

training curriculum sufficiently responsive to the needs of correlated

teaching? Was not the 'practice teaching' part of the training good

enough? What was the general quality of teacher preparation like?

Were there any other impediments that had not been reckoned with? Space

will not permit a detailed exploration of these and other related

questions, but some discussion is clearly indicated.

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op.cit.p.15.

- 43 - .

Apart from a good knowledge of different subjects and the ability

to integrate subjects with one another, a competent Basic school teacher

is expected to be skilful both in the practice of the craft he teaches,

and in correlating different disciplines to the craft activity on the

one hand, and the child's social and physical environment on the other.

How well did the average Basic school teachers' training prepare him-

for these two roles?

The Training Syllabus

In most training institutions in different States Basic Training

was a two-year programme with its syllabus patterned broadly on the

one drawn up (1952) and later revised (1954) by the Hindustani Talimi

Sangh, Savagram. The practical part of the training consisted generally

of two crafts — one main and the other subsidiary — such as spinning

and weaving, gardening andi agriculture, 1/ woodwork, including elements

of cardboard modelling and metalwork, pottery, leatherwork, etc.health

and hygiene, community training and cultural activities and work in a

practising school-._2_/ The course of- theoretical studies generally

included principles of Basic education and school administration,

educational psychology and child study, and methods of teaching —

general and special. (Theoretical courses were expected to be taught

in close correlation with the work and activities in the practical

part of the syllabus).

Craft Training

Considering that the idea of a separate craft teacher never fitted

into the scheme of Basic education, suspicion was strong throughout that

1/ Spinning and weaving and gardening and agriculture were by far the commonest crafts in Basic Training institutions.

2/ In many training institutions community activities and those aimed at promoting a corporate life — such as student self-government, kitchen work, institutional cleanliness, village sanitation, celebration of festivals, educational tours, social service activities and games and sports — were reasonably effective, and made a distinct contribution to the development in trainees of qualities such as discipline, industry, team spirit, leadership, co-operation, sense of responsibility, self-reliance, dignity of manual labour, care of school and community property, etc.

- 44 -

the Basic training courses were not succeeding in imparting to the

intending teachers the requisite mastery in craft work. The problem

resulted principally from the unsatisfactoriness of arrangements for

craft training both in regard to the time allotted 1/ for this purpose

and the numerical strength, practical competence and instructional

adequacy of the craft instructors. The fact that in many training

institutions the heads of the institutions and other senior staff

members had no craft competencies themselves and sometimes had had no

training even in Basic education compounded the situation. The

Assessment Committee also drew attention, and rightly so, to the

seriousness of the problem that arose from the 'mutilated or incomplete'

aspect of craft training.

•In the majority of Basic Training schools, the craft adopted is spinning-weaving plus agriculture. Ginning, carding and spinning go fairly well. But at the stage of weaving, the craft becomes weak or breaks down. -Now weaving is the most fruitful part of the whole craft andrwhen that is weak, what goes on is only a mutilated craft. In some places, there is no ginning at all and this also gives an incomplete craft. A mutilated or incomplete craft is not only bad craft but is not good enough to be the centre of correlated teaching. Weaving is an elaborate and artistic craft and is the crown of what may be called the »Cotton.Craft«.' 2/

This was inevitable because:

'Weaving teachers in Basic Training schools are generally persons who, after completing the Higher Elementary or Secondary schools, undergo training in weaving in Technical institutions. Most of them do not possess enough skill to be able to earn their living by weaving. Generally speaking they have no experience in weaving hand spun yarn. Khadi weaving is a technique by itself. Naturally, therefore, such teachers succeed only in frustrating the cotton craft, when it reaches its most important process.' 3/

1/ The problem was particularly acute in most places in the case of existing trained teachers (non-Basic) who were deputed for basic reorientation to short training programmes of 3-6 months duration. During such a short period it was practically impossible even under the best conditions for any of them to acquire any proficiency in craft worth the name. As teachers in this category were in a preponderant majority everywhere, the quality of craft and instruc­tional work particularly in regard to correlation remained inescapably poor.

2/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op.cit. p.11.'

3/ Ibid.

- 45 -

It was in order to meet the problem of poor craft work and instruction

both in Basic Training schools and Basic schools that the committee was

prompted to make the following two unconventional suggestions, which on

account of the many practical difficulties involved, however, could not

be implemented to any great extent: :; v/.:'.. •

(a) Suggestions for Training Institutions

'The remedy is to waive the existing rules and to appoint good traditional Khadi weavers even if they do not possess Technical Diplomas or School Certificates. One of the trained Basic, teachers may be associated with such a weaving-teacher all the time. This holds good in the case of other craft teachers also, like carpenters, black-smiths, potters, etc. Unless the really skilled traditional craftsmen who are capable of making their living from their own work are brought into the Basic Training schools, craft training in these institutions will not be efficient or productive enough and pupil-teachers will go out after their training as half-baked craft teachers who will hand over their own inefficiency in craft to the boys and girls in the Basic schools. This would be fatal to Basic education.* 1/

(b). Suggestions for Basic Schools

'There is the legitimate demand that a variety of suitable crafts should be introduced in Basic school in different parts of the country. The spinning-weaving craft and agriculture are already spreading in many Basic schools. Other suitable crafts will be wood-craft, cardboard craft, metalwork, black-smithy, pottery, etc. Traditional craftsmen engaged in these crafts and earning their livelihood through them are persons with undoubted skills in these crafts. No one can do better as teachers of crafts in Basic schools than these craftsmen. . There are two ways of associating such craftsmen with Basic schools. One way is to induce them to come to Basic schools for an hour or so every day or for a day or two every week to teach their craft in the schools under the supervision of one of the trained Basic teachers of the school. This will mean putting up workshops in Basic schools. The other way would be to send Basic school children for some time every day or for two or three days every week to the work­shop of these craftsmen in the villages, under the supervision of the Basic trained teacher. In this case children will not only learn crafts, but gain knowledge of various situations in the village affecting craftsmen who form the backbone of the village. It would be social studies in practice.'2/

1/ Ibid.

2/ Ibid. p.23

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Correlation with Environment

We made a reference earlier (p.23) to the Basic school teacher's

.unmet need for a correlated syllabus on the basis of suitably prepared

activity-units. We had also hinted earlier (p.17) to the fact that one

possible reason why ordinary teachers in Basic schools failed to correlate

naturally and meaningfully the teaching of different subjects to their

social and physical surroundings, was the inadequacy in this regard of

the training they had received. The Ramachandran group came to an

identical conclusion. Their assessment of the problem in their own words:

'Many critics asked how all the subjects in the syllabus can be taught in correlation to craftwork alone. One answer was that correlation was not only with craft work, but with the natural environment and the social environment of the school. Having given this answer, we naturally investigated further, and inquired if the pupil teachers were trained in surveying, understanding and discussing the natural and the social environments with a view to drawing innumerable lessons from them. We, then, discovered that this was not being done in a sufficiently scientific or adequate measure. You cannot correlate with the natural environment unless you study it carefully. Equally you cannot correlate with the social environment unless you study the social environment care­fully and fully. Whatever study and survey of the natural and the social environments is going on, they are only casual and very insufficient. Is it any wonder then that the whole area of correlation remains insufficient and unsatisfactory? The urgent need, therefore, is to give as much importance to the survey and study of the natural and the social environments as to crafts.' 1/

Needless to add such environmental studies and their integration with the

work and training in Basic Training institutions remained largely an

untapped idea.

Practice Teaching in Interdisciplinary Instruction

¿ The Achilles' heel of teacher preparation has always been the part

called 'practice teaching' or by some other similar name. Typical of the

problems one encounters, regardless of the type or level of training, are

those to which Radhakrishnan drew attention more than 30 years ago...."

1/ Ibid. p.13

- 47 -

'Our main criticism of the existing courses (but we repeat .. that it does not apply to them all) is that too little time is given to school practice, too little weight is given to practice in assessing the student's performance, and conditions of school practice are often unsatisfactory, some­times quite grossly unsatisfactory. In some places a student is required to give only five lessons during the whole of his. course! We ascertained that in fact students were never failed on their practical test, and we enquired what happened if his five lessons were not deemed satisfactory. We were told that in that case the student gave another lesson, or even another, till he gave one that passed muster! It is not surprising that under these conditions the schools do not •. \, :> regard the possession, of the B. T. Degree as.the slightest real guarantee that its holder can either teach or control a class..' 1/

Basic teacher training proved no exception. Not that the problems

were new or that those responsible for designing and running such courses

were not aware of the many difficulties that bedevilled this part of their

work. Not at all. Basic teacher preparation had indeed been a favourite

subject of discussion and comment for many years, and in some places

serious innovative work of one kind or another was attempted from time

to time to set things right. But due to various reasons, not the least

being the pace of expansion of Basic teacher training facilities that far

outstripped the capacity of such institutions to be manned by competent

and enthusiastic teacher educators capable of high grade innovative work,

and lack of supportive research and sufficient attention to difficulties

of correlation experienced by the teachers in their day-to-day work and

other problems from the field, many of the major weaknesses of teacher

training programmes remained unremedied till the very end.

One such weakness arose from the haphazard manner in which correlated

lessons were prepared and delivered by the trainees as part of practice

teaching. How uneducational and unrewarding were some of these exercises

in correlated teaching and how unfavourable generally was the attitude of

teachers and pupils in practising schools to these has already been hinted at

in Part II. There was only one practical way to overcome the problem,

1/ Report of the University Education Commission, op. cit. p.213.

- 48 -

namely for the staff of the training institution and the teachers of

the practising school concerned to get into the habit of sitting to­

gether in the beginning of the year to plan co-operatively for the

whole year the details of the proposed correlated teaching programme.

This would have enabled the programme of correlated educational units

to be developed systematically and in a graded manner in which the

class teacher.and the teacher under training would be responsible for

carrying it out according to a pre-determined and purposeful division

of labour. If the following suggestions of the Hindustani Talimi Sangh

\ had been carried out in letter and in spirit by the Basic Training

institutions in different parts of the country, the story of correlated

teaching would have possibly been a very different one.

' (1)....

(2) The very nature of the educational programme of Nai Talim is such as to exclude the old practice of observing or teaching »set» lessons on fixed subjects for fixed and limited periods. In order to share in any real way in . the life of the school, whether as an observer or an assistant, the student-teacher must be with the class throughout the school day, sharing in all its activities, noting the opportunities for correlated teaching as they arise, and the manner in which the teacher uses them, and maintaining a record of the educational situation as. a whole.

(3) In the course of a year's training the student-teacher should spend 3 or 4 periods of about one week each in such school practice and observation, working alongside the class teacher or under his direction. -

(4) When a, training centre is in touch with a 'compact area1 of village Basic schools, the student-teacher may arrange to live, during these periods of intensive observation and practice, in the village to which they are allocated. They will thus be able to study in school its actual setting and see its work in relation to the needs of the village as a , -

""'" whole. ' 1 /

Another problem arose from the lack of suitable facilities for

practice teaching in Basis schools. In many places, not only the

training institutions had no Basic schools of their own in which to do

'practice teaching', the schools attached to them were not even Basic I

1/ Hindustani Talimi Sangh: Revised Syllabus for the Training of the Teachers, p.78 as quoted by Solanki, op.cit. p.121.

- 49 -

This happened sometimes in the case of even the better known training

institutions in the country. In such a situation when the co-operation

between the school and the training institution tended to be minimal,

the trainee hardly saw any opportunity or felt any motivation to prepare

his lessons carefully and evaluate his teaching experience. The fact

that many of the teacher educators responsible for the supervision of the

work of their trainees in practising schools themselves had had no back­

ground of Basic education and had had no direct experience of successful

correlated teaching served to make practice teaching perfunctory and casual.

The Single-Teacher School

A particular mention has to be made here of the predicament in which

the teacher of a single-teacher school found himself. In India some 37%

of the total number of primary schools in the country are of the single

-teacher variety— more than 150,000 schools in absolute terms.

Despite suggestions from time to time to. do something about it, the

training institutions as a whole had not shown much interest in recognizing

and pursuing the problem of correlated and multiple-class teaching faced

by the single-teacher school teacher. In fact there were many who had

begun to. think and feel that to expect correlated teaching to become a

reality in the single-teacher school was to ask for the moon! 1/ And yet

there is no good reason why some tailor-made orientation on a short-term

basis from time to time and development of graded instructional materials

based on correlated syllabus units could not have helped him materially

in making his work come closer to the principles of Basic education.

Educational Psychology

The last point in this autopsy might well be addressed to the

teaching of educational psychology and child study as part of teacher

training. In professional training courses for teachers, the world over,

this is a subject of very special theoretical and practical importance.

1/ Some State Governments have recently decided to do away with the single-teacher school; but there is little question that this institution will survive as part of the national system of elementary education for a very very long time to come, if not for ever.

- 50 -

For historical reasons, and as in other disciplines and areas of scholar­

ship, the main contents and inspiration for educational psychology in

teacher training programmes in India have come mostly from books written

by foreign authors or in a few cases from books by Indian teachers, but

nevertheless based largely on foreign sources.. This has had the effect

of severely limiting the practical utility of this subject. There is

no doubt that a course in educational psychology based essentially on

research and study of the behavioural, developmental and learning problems

of Indian children growing up in their natural homes and going to school

in India would have made a world of difference to the trainees' under­

standing of and capability to deal with such problems. But little was

done in this direction. This is certainly not an original suggestion;

nor one whose validity is limited to any particular time or place. But

in the context of Basic education, the first big effort to create a

national system of education suiting the cultural and economic needs of

the Indian people, the urgency of the need for indigenous research in

this department of teacher preparation could have hardly been exaggerated.

For one concrete wording of the message, we turn once again to the .

Hindustani Talimi Sangh:

'His (teacher's) professional training will centre around his observation of the work of the children, and all theoretical studies regarding child-psychology, educational psychology, methodology, school administration and organization should develop out of the problems arising from actual work with the pupils.' 1/

And further:

'The study of educational psychology must be based upon actual problems arising in the community life of the college, and upon definite, guided observation of the children in the school; an abstract bookish approach must be avoided. The student's knowledge of the subject will be measured by .their ability to understand and handle problems of individual and community behaviour from the psychological standpoint.' 2/

1/ and 2/ As quoted by Solanki, op. cit. p.131.

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Chapter V

SEVEN GUIDING PRINCIPLES

FOR REPLICATION OR ADAPTATION OF THE GANDÍAN CONCEPT

If we were asked to conceptualize a repetition of the Basic

education programme with a view to making the application and use of.,

the technique of correlation more effective, what could, in hindsight,

be some of the important elements of such a conceptualization? . To a :

hypothetical question, such as this, the simplest answer would be:

avoid as much as possible the many pitfalls and weaknesses — discussed

earlier in.Parts II and III — which rendered correlation teaching so

very ineffective in practice. But the suggestion, in this particular

form looks rather naive because avoiding these pitfalls was neither

very easy in the past, nor is it going to be easy in the future. The

fundamental issue really is: are there any major considerations that

should have so guided the planning and execution of the entire Basic

education programme as to prevent these problems and difficulties from

defeating or compromising seriously the correlational aspect of the

educational reform? In other words, were there any 'missing links' as

it were, that could have made all the difference? This section will

speak to this particular question.

Our first principle is going to be: the experimental phase of a

new educational programme is its most important phase. Watch its

behaviour with utmost care and as long as necessary; and please do

not try to rush or telescope it unduly. This is precisely the rule

that was most flagrantly violated in Basic education.

It should be recalled that when some of the Provincial Governments

had decided to go in for Basic education in 1937, they had done so

purely as an exploration, or as some of them had put it, on an experimental

basis. This was necessary because Gandhi's own faith and convictions

not-withstanding, nobody knew how craft and manual work were going to

work in practice as the medium of the child's primary education. Nobody

knew how and from where the nation was going to get all the qualified and

- 52 -

committed teachers it needed for such a 'revolutionary' programme.

Nobody knew whether the idea of 'self-support' was going to be in the

larger interest of the quality.of education, as Gandhi believed, or

whether it was going to prove detrimental to its effectiveness. And

there were a hundred and one other questions everywhere, in every single

State, to which no one knew the answers. But when independence came, the

country and its leaders were in no mood to wait. The Government at the

centre and the States seemed to have chosen to implement Basic education

•overnight as it were. The following extract from the address of Maulana

Abul Kalam Azad, the first Union Education Minister of Free India, to

the CABE in 1947 reflects correctly the mood and thinking at that time:

'The first and foremost task of the National Government is the provision of universal free and compulsory Basic education for all. In your last meeting, you stressed its urgency. This was reiterated by the All-India Education Conference which met immediately thereafter. You will remember that I pointed out to the Conference that the programme of 40 years laid down in the Report of the Central Advisory Board seemed too long and should be reduced. I also suggested that its programme of construction of school houses required fresh scrutiny in order to bring the expenditure within the limits of our financial capacity. I am glad to say that the Conference accepted both the suggestions and recommended that an Expert Committee should be appointed to go into the question in order to suggest ways and means for reducing the period and the cost of buildings Accordingly a Committee of Experts under the Chairmanship of the Hon'ble B. G. Kher was appointed and it has submitted its interim report. According to this report, universal compulsory Basic education can be introduced within a period of 16 years by two five-years and one,six-year plans. The first five-year plan will aim at bringing such education to a major portion of the children of the country within the age group of 6-11. The second five-year plan will extend compulsion to the remaining children of the same age group so that at the end of ten.years all children between the ages of 6-11 will be under compulsory instruction. The six-year plan will then extend the scope of compulsion to 14 so that at the end of 16 years the programme of 8 years Easic education for children between 6-14 will be completely realized.' 1/

As if this drastic telescoping of 40 years into 16 was not enough,

the Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, further added to the pressures

for expansion of Basic education by suggesting that the State should

1/ As quoted by D. M. Desai : Universal, Compulsory and Free Primary Education in India, Indian Institute of Education, Bombay, 1953, p.283.

- 53 -

endeavour to universalize elementary education within a period of ten

years I The States were already vying with one another in establishing

and expanding the new system. One State Government decided one fine

morning to call all its elementary schools 'Basic' without any other

change in their structure, personnel, curriculum and material conditions.

The tragedy is that no one had been more insistent on respecting

the experimental character of Basic education in those early years

than Gandhi himself. This is what he said about Basic education on one

occasion:

'I admit that my proposal is novel. But novelty is no crime. I admit that it has not much,experience behind it. But what experience my associates and I have encourages me to think that the plan> if worked faithfully, will succeed. The nation can lose nothing by trying the experiment even if it fails. And the gain will be immense if the experiment succeeds even partially.' 1/

On another occasion:

'...he warned them against accepting anything out of their regard for him. He was near death's door and would not dream of thrusting anything down people's throats. The scheme must be accepted after full and mature consideration so that it may not have to be given up in a little while.' 2/

He repeated similar advice a little later in still humbler terms:

'...I have for the moment lost self-confidence. I would therefore ask you not to accept anything from me implicitly. Accept only what carries conviction to you. But I am sure that if we could conduct even two schools on the right lines I should dance with joy.' 3/

Our second guiding principle in the present exercise should read:

Investment of time, energy and money in research and study, particularly

when a programme is in the initial stages of its conceptualization and

1/ Gandhi, M. K., op. cit. p.43.

2/ Ibid. p.25.

3/ Ibid. p.56.

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development, is one of the most productive investments a nation can

make; in fact there.is no substitute for it. . ,•:'

A clarification is necessary at the outset. Research is often­

times highly time consuming, and as such it would be most unrealistic

to expect politicians and policy makers to wait until research has

produced all the answers and guidelines needed by them. The keenness,

bordering on recklessness, if one is permitted to use the term, with

which the Central and State Governments got busy in pursuing the

expansionary goals of Basic education immediately after independence,

is, therefore, entirely understandable. In all likelihood, in a similar

situation in any other country too, the story would perhaps have been

the same: quantity triumphing at the expense of quality. And yet the

need for some essential research concurrently to look into some of the

problems of practical import, particularly from the field, when there is

neither experience nor precedent to guide, could have never been greater.

The supporters and critics of'Basic education realized this alike and

were continually clamouring for it. There was hardly an All-India or

State-level forum discussing Basic education which in its press releases

did not come out openly on the side of research. But regrettably not

much happened.. Probably because meaningful research in an unexplored

area calls for a very high concentration of effort and skill and is

never the easiest of things to arrange.

Four things were needed to meet the requirements of the situation:

1. A careful identification of the major research needs in curriculum

development and correlated teaching;

2. Identification of the agency, or agencies, to do research;

3. Assumption by a suitable organization of the responsibility to

farm out studies, to monitor their progress and to co-ordinate; and

4. Arrangements for the effective diffusion of results of research

especially among Basic school teachers and their supervisors.

- 55 -

There was growing realization that some of the weakest areas in

Basic education needing research were curriculum development, syllabus

making, craft training, correlated teaching, comparative studies of

costs and performance of Basic and non-Basic school children. There was

also no dearth as such of agencies to be associated with research.

Apart from nearly 1000 Basic Training institutions one of whose avowed

functions was research,a number of post-graduate Basic Training colleges

had also come into being during the 50's. They were generally set up by

the State Governments with support from the Central Ministry of Education. There

were also of course several teacher training colleges and education *

departments of universities, mostly preparing teachers for secondary

schools that could have contributed to research in Basic education.

Unfortunately there has never been any strong or well-established tradition

of research in these institutions with the result that their considerable

potential for research otherwise, was at best but marginally exploited.

It was in these circumstances that the Central Ministry of Education

discovered itself, effortlessly, as it were, in the,natural role of a

leader and co-ordinator. Apart from extending financial support (of a

limited kind) to willing institutions interested in research in Basic

education, one of the most significant things it did to remedy the

situation was to establish in 1956 a National Centre for Research in

Basic education to promote research and to co-ordinate to the extent

possible the research efforts of the States. The Centre, later called

the National Institute of Basic Education, started off by organizing

research in such areas as Basic schools curriculum, problems of teaching,

correlation, time to be allotted to craft in the school timetable, choice

of suitable crafts for urban Basic schools and so on. It offered short

orientation programmes in Basic education for educational administrators,

and brought out a number of pamphlets on different aspects of Basic

education. It also launched a periodical called Basic Education Quarterly.

After 1966 the Institute stopped functioning independently and

became a part of the National Council of Educational Research and Training

(NCERT) where its special identity as the apex research organization of

the country in Basic education soon came to an end. With a larger

allocation of resources, greater collaboration with the research

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institutions in different parts of the country, and a more pointed and

better organized interest in conveying in the regional languages the

research findings to the Basic school teachers and administrators at

the grassroots level, the Institute might have well found itself in a

unique position to assist in making a reality of the idea of correlated

teaching, but that was not to be.

One serious bottleneck in the way of the popularization and a more

effective application of the correlation technique was the dearth of

relevant teacher guides and other literature in different regional

languages., The situation was really bad. Some sporadic efforts had no

doubt been made here and there to generate such literature. For instance,

in some of the post-graduate Basic Training colleges, each trainee was

required compulsorily to prepare two papers on correlated teaching, one

for the Basic school children and the other for the teachers. In some

Basic Training schools 1/ also a teacher here or a teacher there took

initiative to write something on how to correlate on the basis of his

own work and experience. The Second All-India Conference on Basic

education,had foreseen the great need for such literature as early as

1941 and expressed the hope that the diaries of competent and outstanding

teachers, if published, would be very useful to the rank and file of

Basic school teachers. But no one took any initiative to evaluate such

efforts systematically and bring them out in one. or more regional

languages. The Ramachandran study team, while examining this particular

problem in 1956, had to restate the recommendation, but not enough was

done to implement it.

'We were glad to find that a considerable quantity of good literature in regard to Basic education has been produced in several Basic Training institutions we visited. We spent some time looking into this body of accumulated literature. The literature so available relates to innumerable aspects of

. Basic education and includes valuable manuscripts containing illustrated lessons and schemes of correlated teaching. Some of the literature we saw in a few of the Training schools in Madras was of high quality. We found similar good literature in some of the Basic Training colleges of the Karnatak area in Bombay State. We found from enquiry that there was similar accumulation of literature in many other Basic Training institutions as well. All this literature is of course in different languages. But if a serious attempt could be made

1/ Typical of such attempts is the list of 17 documents in Appendix B prepared by the Basic Training school teachers of Andhra Pradesh.

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to get such literature properly studied and edited, first on a language basis and then on all-India basis, we are sure that some very useful guide books will become avail­able to Basic school teachers....High level Standing . . . • Committees for producing Basic education literature, both for teachers and the children, should be set up without '•"•'' any more delay and adequate funds made available for such Committees."V

Whether one likes it or not, our third guiding principle in the

present context is going to concern itself with textbooks and may well

read: When your teachers are not in a position or qualified to prepare

their own instructional materials, or are otherwise not properly

equipped to carry out a new curriculum reform involving the use of

unfamiliar teaching techniques, it will be a mistake of the gravest

kind not to give priority to the production of suitable graded text­

books in line with the main thrust of the reform and based on the new

instructional techniques.

Despite all the criticism to which the conventional school textbook

has been subjected in recent years and its replacement by a variety of

instructional materials in some of the industrialized countries, we must

remember that in so far as the less developed nations are concerned, a

good textbook is still by far the best and in fact the only aid to

learning they can offer to school children. In the early stages of

Basic education there was an outcry against the use of textbooks as

these were seen as an integral part of formal academic instruction, and

the teachers were authorized to prepare their own teaching materials for

correlated teaching. But the advice proved to be rather costly as not

many teachers were able to rise to the challenge and produce their own

materials. In the absence of proper textbooks, the teachers started

giving upgraded information to children, or simply reverted to the

use of traditional school books, defeating thereby the very purpose of

the new reform. One of the earlier reports on the working of Basic

schools in Bombay, having a bearing on this subject made this point:

'Due to lack of textbooks the children do not get the same amount of

practice as is available through readers in ordinary schools and hence

though children are satisfactorily fluent in reading unfamiliar material,

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op. cit. p.17.

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they impress a little unfavourably with children of other schools.1 1/

With the passage of time the demand for graded textbooks based on

correlated knowledge and information about the child's environment grew

more insistent. But as it remained largely unmet, the quality of Basic

education and correlated teaching went down steeply.

This could have been avoided. It seems not unlikely that resistance

to the textbook idea in Basic education quarters came in part at least

from Gandhi's own unfavourable attitude. He was no great believer in

textbooks, and is known to have used hardly any in his teaching

experiments with young children both in South Africa and India. His own

experience had convinced him that young children learn much more and

with less effort through their ears than through their eyes (reading).

In a discussion with some of his Sevagram Ashramites on the use of

takli in Basic education in 1939, he had made his position very clear:

'What we need is educationalists with originality, fired with true zeal;, who will think out from day to day what they are going to teach their pupils. The teacher cannot get this knowledge through musty volumes. He has to use his own faculties of observation and thinking and impart his knowledge to the children through his lips, with the help of a craft. '. 2/

How one wishes the typical Basic school teacher had even a fraction.of

the qualities Gandhi expected him to embody!

The next four guidelines relate to certain aspects of the management

of Basic education — the need for decentralization of authority, teacher

morale, effective supervision, and co-ordination — to be precise.

The fourth principle can read: In a programme of educational

development which hinges on the co-operation of the local community in

very many ways, and which places productive work having relevance to the

. needs and aspirations of the local community, and the" study of the local

environment at the very.centre of things, decentralization

of administration to the point of making the head of the local school a

key figure in decision making having adequate financial authority, can

be decisive in determining the final outcomes of the programme.

1/ Hindustani Talimi Sangh: Sixth Annual Report, 1938-44, p.30, as quoted by Kansara, L., op. cit. p.218.

2/ Gandhi, M.K. op. cit. p.75.

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Gandhi's faith in decentralization as the only true principle on

which all government and social development should proceed was total.

His picture of the new social order to which Basic education was but a

means, was essentially a picture of small self-sufficient non-violent

communities, organized co-operatively and without any human exploitation.

But our reasons for recognizing decentralization as an important aspect

of educational administration here are more mundane. The headmaster is

the key person in creating an attractive school atmosphere which promotes

a sense of belonging among teachers, pupils, guardians and the local

community. His success in creating such an atmosphere will depend upon

the co-operation of his staff and the local community, no doubt, but

he will not be able to go very far in this if for everything, small and

large, he has to wait all the time for orders and clarifications from

above. If the curriculum is not what is stated on paper, but what

actually happens in a school, the need for some simplification and

relaxation of the rules and procedures governing the supply of craft

equipment, purchase of raw materials from funds provided in the budget

and remittances of sale proceeds to the treasury, for instance, had

never been in doubt, but the bureaucratic inertia never yielded. Even

the provision of a revolving capital of say Rs.300 for a Junior Basic

school, Rs.500 for a Senior Basic school and Rs.1500 for a Post-Basic,

or Training school, as was actually done in one of the States, 1/ might

have gone some way in alleviating some of the financial problems of Basic

schools, but the strong tradition of centralization was invaribly in the

way.'

The Assessment Committee had been forthright in stating that 'Without

decentralization, the reality of local support will remain only a dream,'2/

and had made the following two simple suggestions:

'(i) The local unit of control and supervision may be a Committee or Council consisting of the staff of the Basic Training school, the local Inspector of Schools and some chosen . Headmasters of Basic schools in the area. The Headmaster of the Training school may be the Chairman and the local Inspector the Convenor.

1/ Bihar.

2/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op. cit. p.32.

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(ii) This Council should be vested with powers to incur necessary expenditure for minor repairs of buildings and repair of equipment, for purchasing raw materials and equipment, etc. It should also be authorized to sell school products and to receive payment. This

"~: . procedure should be applicable to both agricultural and craft work.' 1/

But nobody was prepared to bother. It was in these circumstances

that the. impression became widespread that the private Basic schools —

very few in number though — w i t h all the limitations of resources and

their controlling bodies, consistently performed better.than the

Government schools.

The fifth guideline on teacher motivation and morale could be

succinctly phrased thus: Not all the resources of heaven and earth will

make the slightest difference to the quality of instruction, and the

work of a school, if the teacher's-heart is not in it.. And it is a sad

fact that the Basic school teacher's heart was not in it. Of course

there were honourable exceptions in every State, but these.only went to

prove the rule. Gandhi himself knew this very well, and that is perhaps

one reason why in his addresses and exchanges he.was constantly appealing

to the faith and idealism of the teacher. Here is an example of that:

'Up till now you have been guided by inspectors' reports. You wanted to do what the inspector might like so that you might get more money yet for your institutions or higher salaries for yourselves. But the new teacher will not care for all that. He will say, 'I have done my duty by my pupil if I have made him a better man and in doing so I have used all my resources. That is enough for me.-' .2/ .

During the period under review many headmasters of Basic schools

are reported to have felt that their teachers were not co-operating with

them in making a serious job of Basic.education, the two most frequently

mentioned causes being: (i) teacher's lack of enthusiasm and interest and

(ii) the feeling that Basic education was not suited to a technological

age. Often there was a demand that if the attitude of the Basic school

teacher was to be changed and made more favourable, it was necessary to

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op. cit. p.32.

2/ Gandhi, M.K. op. cit. p.76.

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improve his service conditions by providing positive incentives such

as the following:

(a) Providing free education at all stages for the children

of elementary school teachers.

(b) Providing free housing accommodations.

(c) Travel concessions.

(d) Medical concessions.

(e) Pension-cum-provident schemes.

(f) Compulsory insurance.

Other suggestions to boost the morale of the teacher included award of

accelerated increments and merit certificates to outstanding teachers,

and the reservation of a certain proportion of senior positions in

educational administration for them.

There is nothing to suggest that, if implemented, such suggestions

would have really made much of a difference to the teacher's morale or

his performance. From the moment of its birth, and in spite of total

unqualified support later both from the Central and the State Governments,

Basic education had been surrounded by a climate of apathy and indifference,

suspicion and antagonism among politicians and administrators, parents and

the people at large. Whatever the initiatives the State Departments of

Education might have taken to change the situation, it is far from clear

whether as a class, the teachers could have ever remained immune from its

unfavourable effects. It seems the disciplines of business management

and public administration have not yet advanced to the point of being

able to cope effectively with a problem of this nature, but the moral is

clear: If the teacher's morale is not high, do not be in a hurry to

embark upon a new programme of radical dimensions in curriculum development;

efforts must first be directed towards building up and securing a minimum of

teacher's confidence and interest in the planned change..

We now come to supervision. The sixth missing link of this analysis

might be set out as follows: It is of the highest importance that each of

your supervisors, whether he is an inspector of schools, or the head-

master of the school itself, measure up to the fourfold criterion of

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(i) knowing and understanding the new instructional technique very well;

(ii) ability to practice and demonstrate it confidently before a group of

real learners; (iii) willingness to extend every professional guidance to

the practising classroom teacher to acquire mastery over it; (iv) initiative

to create all those conditions — physical and material, social and human,

technical and professional — that will promote the wider use and

diffusion of the technique.

How many supervisors of Basic schools met this criterion reasonably

well? Hopefully the importance of the supervisor's role had been

realized in the very beginning. The Zakir Hussain Committee, for instance,

had made a clear stipulation that a Basic school supervisor should receive

full '...training as a Basic school teacher, at least two years of

successful teaching, one year's training in supervision and administration

and ability to lead and guide this educational experiment.' 1/ Later

the Assessment Committee recommended that only 'graduates who have had

full training in the principles and methods of Basic education' 2/ should

be considered for appointment as inspectors of Basic schools. 'In the

case of already existing inspecting personnel who have had training in

the older system, their re-training also must be efficient and thorough

and not scrappy or too short as in some States.' 3/

It is a known fact, however, that a very large number of inspectors

who were called upon to supervise the work of Basic school teachers,

were quite ill-suited for the job. They knew neither craft work very

much nor the techniques of correlation. Not only that, many of them

were lacking even in 'confidence or interest in the Basic system of

education and they adopted a passive role as they were convinced that

it was not good. They disliked craft work. They felt frustrated and

helpless at the implementation of this system.' 4/

1/ As mentioned by Subba Rao, C.S., op. cit., p.237.

2/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op. cit. p.29.

3/ Ibid.

4/ Subba Rao, C.S., op. cit., p.254.

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The situation might have still proved retrievable if the average

headmaster of a Basic school had exercised his supervisory functions

regularly during this period. An inspector visits a school once or

twice a year, but the headmaster is always there on the spot in the

overall charge of the school. But for some unknown reason, Indian

headmasters do not, as a rule, look upon supervision as one of their

regular functions. The school complex idea might have also been

considered for strengthening the supervision of Basic schools, but

perhaps this was too novel and unfamiliar an idea to suggest itself

strongly at that time.

The last guideline (seventh) to be distilled from the Indian

experience has to do with co-ordination in the sense of articulation or

dovetailing that should have been done to integrate Basic schools with

the rest of the national system of education. When a new programme

proposing a new curriculum and new teaching techniques at the school

stage is introduced without much thought to the question of what is to

happen to the educational careers and vocational aspirations of students

after they leave school, parents, teachers and students alike, begin to

lose faith in the merits and worthwhileness of schooling whatever its

other attractions or strong points. In their desire to expand Basic

; education, the policy makers and administrators seem to have forgotten

that whatever their own intentions or ideological predilections, parents

value education not because it could possible lead to the creation of a

'new social order' or because it is expected to develop the learners

personality better, or for some other philosophic or mysterious purpose,

but simply because to them education is the only device for social mobility,

the only mechanism of promise for achieving social and economic

advancement in the lives of their children. This really means that under

no circumstances should such schooling handicap a child unduly in

pursuing higher courses of general or vocational significance should

that be of interest to him or to his parents. In Basic education nobody

knew for many years where a child could possibly go to continue his

education after the Senior Basic school (8 years)I In many places, the

ordinary high and higher secondary schools were not interested in him

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as in all likelihood he'had not learnt any English; and as for Post-

Basic schools, the idea was still inchoate and untested, and in any

case these were too few and far between to provide a satisfactory

solution. 'This is a big issue,' recorded the Assessment Committee,

'wherever Basic education has been started. The uncertainties as to what

will happen to children who pass out of Senior Basic schools and who

wish to go up for higher education, are very real and give cause for

profound anxiety., in the minds of parents. ' 1/ Such a situation, full of

strain and uncertainty, as it no doubt was, both for the parents and

the teachers, could have hardly provided a meaningful and stimulating

environment for curriculum development and innovative teaching

techniques.

But there was another startling discovery upon which the Committee

had stumbled:

'In some States Basic education is practically confined to the first five, years, they are called Junior Basic schools and since there are only very few Senior Basic schools, the net result is that Basic education is practically confined .to the Junior Basic schools. In one or two other States, we came up against the amazing spectacle of fully eight-graded Elementary schools in which the first five grades have remained Basic for several years without the upper grades becoming Basic at all. We are inclined to wonder if it is worthwhile giving much consideration to the question of dovetailing Senior Basic school education with higher education in the country, in view of the truncation of Basic education itself as mentioned above. We would like to know if there is any doubt anywhere that Basic education is continuous education for eight years with­out a break. If there are doubts about it, they should be discussed at the highest level and they should be cleared beyond any doubt. We have no doubt in our minds that Basic education should be a continuous process for seven or eight years. We would ourselves certainly prefer eight years. We therefore, think that putting a stop to any truncation of Basic education should be a necessary first step in any programme of dovetailing Basic education with higher education; so long as such truncation goes on and there are not enough Senior Basic schools in any State to discuss further develop­ments in that State would be meaningless.' 2/

1/ Report of the Assessment Committee, op. cit., p.54.

2/ Ibid.

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For all practical purposes the Junior (5 years) and Senior Basic

school had become exotic in their own land!

Yet another example of lack of serious thought to problems of

articulation is provided by the 'Rural Institutes' set up during the

50's and the 60 ' s. In line with some of the recommendations of the

University Education Commission of 1949, some of the theoreticians and

workers of Basic education had been pressing that, the system of higher

education in the rural areas of the country should be developed as a natural

extension of Basic education and should aim at developing courses of

studies and institutional methodologies that are more directly relevant

and sensitive to the social and economic needs of rural people.- Gandhi

had been certain that this was not only possible, but also the only right

thing that should happen. As a result of the labours of a committee 1/

set up by the Government of India in 1956, a number of Rural Institutes 2/

came to be established in different parts of the country. The names of

some of the courses offered by these institutes were: three-year diploma

course in rural services; two-year certificate course for overseers;

two-year certificate course in agricultural science; and two-year

certificate course for rural health workers (women).

Tha main point to be highlighted here is that for. many years the

students joining these courses studied in a climate of anxiety and

indefiniteness both in regard to their acceptability for jobs for which

normally speaking university degrees are part of the essential qualifications,

and eligibility for admission to institutions of higher learning. Within

years a couple of the more influential of these institutions succeeded in

winning for themselves the status of 'deemed universities' under Section

3 of the University Grants Commission Act, but others could survive only

by seeking affiliation to the universities of their respective States and

1/ The Committee was called 'The National Council for Rural Higher Education'.

2/ The names of the first 10 institutes were: 1) Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan; 2) Jamia Millia, Okhla (Delhi); 3) Vidhya Bhavan, Udaipur; 4) Sarvodya Mahavidyalaya, Turki; 5) Gandhigram, Madurai (Madras); 6) B.R.College, Agra; 7) Lok Bharati, Sanosara (Saurashtra); 8) Shivaji Lok Vidyapeeth, Amravati; 9) Ramakrishna Mission, Vidyalaya, Coimbatore; 10) Mouni Vidyapeeth, Gargoti, Kolhapur.

- 66 -

thus becoming an,integrated part of.the existing system of higher

education. In doing so they had to sacrifice a good part of the

distinctly rural character of their original training programmes.

.-...• The formulation of the last principle might, therefore, read as.

follows:

In a free society where the Government chooses to be the prime dispenser

of educational facilities and opportunities for the nation's children,

it cannot run two parallel or independent systems at the school or

college level — one with all the openings and opportunities that life

and education have to offer and the other practically without them. The

least it must do is to provide »bridges« to cross over from one to the

other, and establish 'equivalences' to evaluate the certificates and

credentials of the different systems so that people do not feel that

they have been cheated out of their inherent right to 'equality of

educational opportunity' or that they have been robbed without compen-

sation of a right or consideration they had enjoyed earlier.

- 67 -

Chapter VI

THE FUTURE OUTLOOK

FOR GANDHIAN INTERDISCIPLINARY TEACHING

If a pessimist wanting to bury the idea of Gandhian Basic education

and along with it that of correlation, was looking around for an

appropriate epitaph, my suggestion for the wording would be: 'A great

creative idea that went unexplored.1 But did the idea go, did it

really die? My natural impulse is to say: great creative ideas do not

die; they fuse, they integrate; they influence practice, and in the

process sometimes become invisible, but they do not die. The essential

thinking behind Gandhi's Basic education has not died; only it awaits

a more dedicated and scientific exploration than what happened from

1937 to 1966.

I give three reasons for my position. In the first place, Gandhi

was not alone in suggesting an integration of the school curriculum and

its instructional methodology to productive manual labour. The

importance of such labour for personality and character development,

and as a medium of learning and knowledge, which the learner can not

only understand and appreciate, but also apply usefully in concrete

situations, is so unique that the idea to employ such labour as the

principal means of educating the child, could easily occur as a natural

corollary to anyone interested in developing a concept of meaningful and

relevant education along these lines. Here is an inspired elaboration

of the meaning and significance of manual work for schooling, provided

by Mr. Abott and Mr. Wood who had been invited in 1936-37 from England

to advise the Government of India on certain problems of educational

reorganization and particularly on problems of vocational education.

One of the basic reasons for instituting this enquiry was 'the fact

that a large number of university graduates are not securing employment

of a kind for which their education qualifies them.' )

- 68 -

"We do not mean just carpentry or weaving or any other activity to which definite name can be given. We include any task which makes demand on boys' skill, judgement, sense of observation and power of calculation and combines all or some of these in a constructive effort to achieve an end which he hemself . wishes to achieve. The end may be making something he wishes to possess or to give to others, or it may be working out in concrete materials some principles in maths, science or geography. It is not so much the thing made or done as the integration required in the making or doing which is of educational value. Many boys who have been labelled «dull and backward» have revealed unsuspected executive abilities when emphasis on training has been shifted from learning to doing.' 1/

My second reason for the position I have taken is that Gandhi

was dead right in seeing schooling as an essential part of vocational

training. Education has been slow in admitting its vocational

responsibilities everywhere. His own particular solution through the

medium of 'village crafts', being -somewhat out of step with modern

technology and the mood of the times and not being forward looking

enough in "a manner of speaking, might have not clicked,, but. with

societies in which schools and colleges have simply become factories

for turning out more and more graduates whom the economy cannot absorb,

the issue, of 'relevance' is already a major: life:-and-death issue;, and

in them it is difficult to see much future for an educational reform

which fails to recognize.the centrality of this issue and make some

response to it. : It is for this reason that the Education Commission

(1964-66) recommended work experience to be an integral part of the

curriculum at all stages — from the primary to the university.

Hopefully the Commission also recognized the great merit and

relevance of. 'correlation' and presented its appreciation in these

words :

'In our proposals, correlation which is the second important aspect of Basic education is also extended, to the extent possible throughout the educational system. At the primary stage, the yiew in Basic education has been that the curriculum content should be integrated, as far as practicable,

1/ Quoted by Kansara, L., op. cit. p.181.

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with craft work and with the physical and social environment of the child. Our proposals at the primary stage, are very similar to this. At the secondary, stage, we have suggested that work-experience should be integrated with the curriculum content and that the teaching of subjects should be correlated, as far as possible, with the environment.. In higher education, we have emphasized the provision of qreater elasticity in the choice of subjects, interdisciplinary studies and the need to relate teaching and research to the understanding and solution' of the local, regional, and national problems.' 1/

My third and last reason for suggesting that the concept of

Basic education and correlated teaching deserve a better organized and

more determined exploration arises from the growing appreciation of and

interest in the university quarters everywhere in the greater relevance

of interdisciplinarity to training, research and extension. We noted

earlier the increasing number of structural changes and programmes

that are being developed and tested these days in universities, colleges

and other institutions of Higher education in different parts of the

world in pursuit of the idea of 'interdisciplinarity'. The importance

of this development for the promotion of interdisciplinarity in school

instruction can hardly be exaggerated. Being at the apex of the

educational system, the universities are expected both by tradition

and popular desire to provide the system with its leadership,

particularly during periods of change and uncertainty. Also

experience has revealed that in this particular matter of promotion of

interdisciplinarity, and despite several organizational measures that

have been taken over the years in different parts of the world to

emancipate elementary and secondary schools from the dominant influence

of university work and tradition such as the separation of schools

from the university by placing them under the academic control and

supervision of independent Boards of Secondary Education, the schools

are still very much university-oriented in their culture, values and

approach to the curriculum, and can hardly be expected to go it alone.

It is only by joining hands with the universities that they can have

some real chance to move decisively in this direction.

1/ Report of the Education Commission (1964-66), Government of India, Ministry of Education, New Delhi, 1966, p.208.

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But the task is no easy task, and the odds are heavy in schools

as much as in colleges. Four major obstacles that will frequently come

in the way of a greater interdisciplinary approach to teaching and

research in universities are: (i) lack of resources and facilities;

(ii) rigidity.of institutional structures and departmental organization;

(iii) rigid and inflexible outlook of the professional staff; and

(iv) last but not least the resistance offered by disciplinary frame­

works themselves.

In two of his general conclusions of the seminar on Interdiscip-

linarity in universities, organized by CERI in collaboration with the

French Ministry of Education at the University of Nice (France),

7-12 September 1970, professor Guy Michaud shares his perception of

the problem in the following words:

1 It would be a mere pipedream- to suppose that some law or series of administrative measures taken at the national level — even if they were due to some far reaching protest movement as was the case for the French Orientation Act of 1968 — would suffice to conquer established habits, routines and structures. Interdisciplinarity does, of course, require flexible structures and, as we have seen, it nearly remained a dead letter when the vertical discipline structure were not at least juxtaposed with various types of horizontal structure. It also demands new contents which are no longer limited to juxtaposing disciplines, and it makes them relevant of the real problems and the needs of society. Lastly, it postulates methods that are based less on doling out knowledge than on training people in certail skills and on developing psychological faculties other than memory and pure discursive reasoning.

And above all there is the question of cost. We cannot hide from the fact that introducing true interdisciplinarity represents a very heavy investment, both because of the number of teachers and the amount of training required and because of the technical equipment needed if basic knowledge which must be acquired somehow, is to be learned through programmed teaching. Furthermore, introducing interdiscip­linary structures and content demands exhaustive preliminary research, i.e. prefinancing, if we want to avoid the risk of failure which might throw discredit on this type of experiment.' 1/

1/ Report of the Seminar, OECD, p.286.

- 71 -

Perhaps this is also" the right place to remind outselves,

however, that difficulties mean opportunities; the greater the

challenge, the greater the possibility of a real breakthrough.

- 72 -

Appendix A

(Extracted from Syllabus for Basic Schools, Ministry of Education, Government of.India, 1950> pp. 11-26)

DETAILED SYLLABUS

General Observations on time. - An approximate estimate of the time

to be devoted to the various subjects in a Basic school is given below:

Subject Time

Grades I to III - 2 hrs.a day. Craft Work Grades IV and V - 2/half hrs. a day.

Grades VI to VIII - 3 hrs. a day.

Mother tongue ... ... ... 40 minutes a day. ,

Social Studies and General Science 60 minutes a day.

Mathematics .. ... ... ... 20 minutes a day.

Art ... 40 minutes a day.

Physical Activities 20 minutes a day.

The time shown above need not be daily allotted to the respective

subjects, but this average should be aimed at for the week as a whole.

For instance, for Social Studies and General Science 9 periods a week

(each period of 40 minutes) will give an average of 60 minutes a day.

The time shown for the craft does not mean only the time spent on

actual operations, but also includes planning of the craft by the teachers

and the pupils, the time spent on correlation and other diversionary

elements brought in the craft for educational purposes. The time indicated

for the craft is only a norm to which the teacher should try to conform but

in every case he must be guided by the actual situation in which he finds

himself.

Craft work should not generally be taken up at one stretch, but the

minimum time devoted at one stretch should not be less than 30 minutes.

The children will generally be taught through one craft, but they

should be introduced to other crafts for diversion and as subsidiaries.

For example, simple gardening may be Practised by all the children in

Basic schools, especially when the schools are in villages.

Organized games may be arranged either within or out of school hours

according to circumstances, in addition to the time provided for Physical

Activities which should take into consideration the fatigue factor. Physical

Training should, therefore, generally be in the early hours of the school.

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SPINNING AND WEAVING

Grade I

In areas where cotton can be grown, children can, with the help of

the teacher, learn all the processes from the picking of cotton to the

preliminary processes of weaving with the exception of carding, which

should be done by the teacher or older pupils of the Basic school.

Processes:-

(a) Picking and ginning cotton with fingers and rod and plank.

(b) Where cotton is not gorwn, cleaning and preparing the lint for carding should take the place of picking and ginning.

(c) Making slivers from carded cotton and also from self TUNAI (carding with fingers).

(d) TAKLI spinning.

(e) Twisting of yarn on TAKLI or CHARKHA.

(f) Winding.

(g) Reeling.

Standard of work:-

Working days ... ... ... 200

Average hours of craft work ... 2 per day. A total of 1 hour for

spinning and 1 hr for other processes.

Total hours of work .. ... 400

Average minimum production ... 40 rounds per hour. Production for the year ... 1 2 ^ h^nks (equal to 6 hanks of

twisted yarn) per child.

Quality of yarn required:-

Average count ... 8 to 10

Strength ... 60 percent

Evenness ... 60 percent

Wastage ...... 5 percent

In the first year the child should pay attention to the quality

rather than the quantity of yarn. Special attention should be paid to

the strength and evenness of yarn.

Correlated knowledge required in connection with craft work:-

(a) Acquaintance with all processes connection with production of cloth, from the growing of cotton to the finished cloth.

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(b) Ability to count and add the yarn spun.

(c) Recognition of good TAKLI and preparing TAKLI also from mud and bamboo.

(d) Recognition of good yarn.

Grade II

The programme of work would be, in general, the same as that out­

lined for Grade I. The standard of attainment and the understanding of

the why and wherefore of the different processes should be higher at

this stage.

1. Carding :-

Carding should only be taken up after the child has attained the necessary physical development and not according to his grade or age. If the child has attained the physical standard required, it may be given the small, light bow (i.e. hand bow) towards the latter half of the second grade.

Average standard of work - 1 tola in one hour.

2. Spinning:-

In general, TAKLIS should be used by the children for spinning. Any child who is sufficiently physically developed may be given a CHARKHA towards the latter half of the second year. In this standard TAKLI spinning with the left hand should also be introduced and swift process for TAKLI spinning should be taught in the first term.

Standard of Work:-

Working days ... 200

Average hours of craft work 2 per day

Total hours of work .. ... 400

Average minimum production.. 12V2 hanks or 6 twisted hanks from

TAKLI and 18 3^ hanks or 91& twisted hanks from CHARKHA.

Standard of attainment at the TAKLI ... 80 rounds per hour, end of the year. CHARKHA ... 120 rounds per hour.

Quality of yarn required:-

Average count ... 10 to 12

Minimum strength .. 60 percent

Evenness ... ... 60 percent

Maximum wastage ... 5 percent

Note: The teacher should give his special attention to the evenness and strength of the yarn and an intelligent understanding of the processes. The child should be able to maintain its daily record in craft work from this grade.

- 75 -

Grade III

In areas where cotton is grown all the processes from the picking

of cotton to the preliminary processes of weaving can be intelligently

•practised by the children. In areas where cotton is not grown the craft

work will begin with the preparation of the lint for carding. The

children in this grade can begin carding with small bow, but the guiding

factor should be the physical development of the child and not his grade

placement.

The main instrument for spinning in this grade will be the CHARKHA,

either the local CHARKHA or YERVADA CHARKHA,or DHANUSH TAKLI whichever

is easily available in the locality. The children should maintain their

efficiency on the TAKLI by devoting at least half an hour to the TAKLI.

The children of this grade should also keep their own class records -

daily, weekly and monthly - in craft work. By the end of the year they

should be able to calculate the count of yarn.

Standard of work:-

Working days ... ... ... 200

Average hours of craft work 21/2 per day.

Total hours of work .. ... 500

123/2 hanks on TAKLI Average minimum production.. 50 hanks on CHARKHA.

373/2 hanks on DHANUSH TAKLI

Standard of attainment at Carding ... With the small bow 21/2 the end of the year totals per hour.

Spinning on TAKLI 80 rounds in an hour. Spinning on the CHARKHA ... 160 rounds in an hour. Spinning on the DHANUSH TAKLI ... 120 rounds in an hour.

Quality of yarn required:-

Evenness ... 70 percent.

Minimum strength.. ... 60 percent.

Maximum wastage .. ... 4 percent.

Correlated knowledge required in connection with craft work:-

1. Recognition of properly carded cotton.

2. Calculating the count of the yarn.

3. . The different parts of the CHARKHA and their functions.

4. The different parts of the carding bow and their functions.

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Grade IV

In areas where cotton is grown, all the processes from the picking

of cotton to the preliminary processes of weaving.

1. Ginning:-

(a) With rod and plank.

(b) With the hand gin.

2. Carding :-

With the small bow and the YUDDHA PINJAN or MADHYAM PINJAN.

3. Spinning:-

On local or YERVADA CHARKHA or on the DHANUSH TAKLI whichever is locally available.

Standard of work:-

Working days

Average hours of work

Total hours of work..

Average minimum production.

200

CHARKHA and TAKLI: 1 hour daily. Allied processes such as ginning, carding, fitting equipment and preparing mal: 1V2 hours daily... Total 2Vl hours daily.

500

12̂ /2 hanks or 6 hanks twisted from TAKLI and 62̂ /2 hanks on the CHARKHA.

3V2 tolas per hour on YUDDHA PINJAN. 5 tolas per hour on MADHYAM PINJAN. 640 rounds in 3 hours on CHARKHA.

16 to 20.

60 percent.

80 percent.

Standard of attainment Carding: at the end of the year

Spinning

Quality of yarn required:-

Average count ...

Strength ...

Evenness ... ... ...

Cloth self-sufficiency:-

The children from this grade onwards should be able to spin for their personal needs and stitch their simple garments by hand with the help of the teacher and also mend their clothes.

Correlated knowledge required in connection with craft work:-

(a) Calculating the count of the yarn.

(b) Maintaining daily, weekly and monthly records (individual and class).

(c) Calculating the average speed and average count of the class.

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(d) Preparing graphs of individual and class speed in spinning.

(e) Recognition of the different kinds of cotton and their relation to the quality of the yarn produced.

(f) Elementary geography of cotton in India.

Grade V

In areas where cotton is grown/ all the processes from the

picking of cotton to the weaving:-

1. Picking of cotton.

2. Storing cotton on lint for the year's work.

3. Ginning:-

i) With rod and plank,

ii) With hand-gin.

iii) By the Andhra method,

iv) By the Bihar method.

4. Combing of cotton.

5. Carding, average standard of work being 5 tolas in an hour.

6. Spinning:-

i) On the local or YERVADA CHARKHA or the DHANUSH TAKLI average standard of work.

Speed - 1 hank or 640 rounds in two hours and forty minutes.

Count - 16 to 30.

ii) On the MAGAN CHARKHA.

Average standard of work:-

Speed - 1 hank of 640 rounds in 1 hour.

iii) Fine spinning - by preparing cotton by the Andhra method or by Bihar method.

Average standard of work:-

Speed - 160 rounds an hour.

7. Beginning of weaving.

8. Preparing mal both big and small.

9. Maintenance store of craft-equipment and material for the whole school.

Standard of work:-

Working days 200

Average hours of craft work TAKLI and CHARKHA...lV2 hours. Carding and other processes 1 hour. Total ... ... 21/2. hours daily.

Total hours of work 500

Production for the year 12L¿ hanks on TAKLI and 112V2

hanks on CHARKHA.

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Note: - In schools, where teachers and pupils aim at making themselves self-sufficient in production of adequate clothing about an hour of spinning outside the school hours will give each at least an additional 75 hanks in the year.

Cloth self-sufficiency:-

(a) Preparing estimates of the necessity of cloth for oneself and family.

(b) Spinning for one's own cloth for the year.

(c) Preparing estimates for the necessity of cloth for the village.

(d) Helping in the programme for cloth self-sufficiency in the village.

Correlated knowledge required in connection with craft work:-

(a) Calculation of the count, strength and evenness of yarn.

(b) Maintaining daily, monthly and yearly records for class and school in craft work.

(c) Comparative study of different types of CHARKHA, carding -bow and ginning equipment.

(d) Study of cotton in the State, in India and the world.

(e) Study of the different types of cotton and estimating the amount of yarn which can be produced from each different type of cotton.

(f) Relevant calculations such as percentage of wastage, etc.

(g) Mechanics of ginning, carding and spinning.

(h) Simple calculations of weaving.

(j) History of the textile industry as well as KHADI industry in India from the earliest times to the present day.

Grade VI

In areas where cotton can be grown, pupils with the help of the teacher

should learn all the processes from the picking of cotton to weaving with

the idea of making the family and the village self-sufficient in the supply

of cloth.

Processes:-

(a) Continuation of and practice in the work given for grades I-V. 1/2 hour CHARKHA daily.

(b) classification of yarn.

(c) Twisting.

(d) Winding.

(e) Reeling.

(f) Joining ends.

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(g) Warping - old system, i.e. by walking and drum system.

(h) Spreading and distributing.

(j) Sizing.

(k) Double warp weaving.

(1) Loom fitting.

Standard of work:-

Working days 240

Average hours of craft work 3 hours daily.

Total hours of work 720.

Average minimum production.. 30 hanks in Vl hour per day at 320 rounds per hour.

Production for the year ... 60 yards of double warp - plain.

Speed ... Iy2 yards in 3 hours with filled bobbins.

Grade VII

Continuation of the work in Grade VI.

Standard of work:-

Working days ... Same as Grade VI.

Average hours of craft work Same as Grade VI.

Total hours of work .. . .•. Same as Grade VI.

Average production for the year 80 yards of double warp - plain and designed both.

Speed ... ... 2-^ yards in 3 hours with filled bobbins.

Grade VIII

Continuation of the work in Grade VI and dyeing.

Standard of work:-

Working days Same as Grade VII.

Average hours of craft work Same as Grade VII.

Total hours ... ... ... Same as Grade VII.

Average production for the year 40 yards of single warp - plain and designed and 60 yards of double warp of improved designs.

Speed ... ... ... ... ly 2 yards of single warp in 3 hours. 31/2 yards of double warp in 3 hours.

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GARDENING AND AGRICULTURE

Note:- Observation is to be the main medium of instruction for the first five years and the details given below will apply to all these grades. Observations in the high standards will, however, be of an advanced character.

Grade I

Observation main activity in this grade

Plots supplied ready made for grades I and II

Observation-

Excursions :-

1. Excursions into local surroundings particularly places of interest and beauty:-

(a) to gain love and appreciation of beauty in natural phenomena, and

(b) to observe general .lay-out of countryside, its slopes, movement of soil in rains, etc.

2. Visits to local market:-

(a) to learn which are the important vegetables and crops grown locally and which are imported from outside, and

(b) to learn the different vegetables, fruits, etc. available in the different seasons.

3. Visits to village fields and gardens:-

(a) to observe farmers at work,

(b) to observe vegetables, fruits, flowers, etc. growing in different seasons,

(c) to compare crops growing under different conditions, e.g. difference in amount of water, air, sun, wind, etc. due to location.

(d) to observe weeds and their effect on crop growth, and

(e) to observe birds and insects visiting the crops.

Observation of school plots, etc:-

Observe germination, growth, flowering and fruiting of plants grown in pots and plots in the school:-

(a) to compare growth of plants in different conditions, e.g. amount of water, air, sun, wind, etc.

(b) to observe weeds and their effect on plant trrowth and

(c) to observe birds and insects visiting crops.

Note:- Whenever possible the pupils should visit agricultural demonstration plots and compare methods and results with local village fields and gardens.

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Practical : -

1. Sowing seeds in pots:-

(a) to prepare pots,

(b) to sow, and

(c) to label them.

2. Watering:-

(a) times for watering,

(b) methods of watering, simple process only.

3. Mulching:-

(a) when and how to mulch the soil,

(b) use of mulching.

4. Weeding:-

(a) when and how to weed,

(b) when and how to dispose of weeds (in compost and green manure).

5. Care of tools:-

(a) cleaning tools after work,

(b) general care of tools, keeping tool-sheds tidy, etc.

Theoretical:-

1. Oral reports on observations made and work done.

2. Recognition of different parts of plants - root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit.

3. Stories and songs about animals, birds, plants, etc.

Grade II

Observations : -

As for Grade I, but more detailed observation will be made.

Practical:-

1. Sowing seed in boxes and pots:-

(a) sowing in rows,

(b) telling quality of seed by touch, colour, etc.

(ç) to remove unripe or damaged seeds and impurities from seeds.

2. Manuring: -

(a) applying farmyard manure to plot,

(b) experimenting with manured and unmanured plots, and observing effects in both cases.

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3. Weeding:-

(a) care in removing weeds,

(b) disposal of weeds in manure-pits

(c) study of one or two common.weeds and their methods of spreading

i) seeds.

ii) underground roots.

4. Mulching.

5. Watering.

6. Transplanting.

7. Control crop pests - elementary study of caterpillar as crop pest.

8. Collecting and storing of seeds.

9. Selecting vegetables which are ready for use.

10. General care of garden, tidiness, simple decoration, etc., care of tools, etc.

Theoretical : -

1. Oral reports of all observations made and work done.

2. Elementary study of parts of plants.

3. Some uses of plants for food and clothing.

4. Sources of manure - farmyard manure, cleanings from garden, etc.

Grade III

Observation:-

As before but more detailed.

Practical:-

1. Sowing seeds in nursery beds.

2. Transplanting seedlings:-

(a) handling,

(b) spacing,

(c) planting,

(d) watering,

(e) protection from sun.

3. Weeding:-

(a) recognition of garden weeds,

(b) care in removing weeds.

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4. . Manuring:- -

(a) applying manure to beds,

(b) care of manure-pits, turning and airing, careful removal of manure for use.

5. Watering:-

(a) Watering beds with care for plants and soil,

(b) different methods of watering for different plants and plants at different stages of development.

6. Control of pests:-

Study of Caterpillar - keeping caterpillar in school.

7. Harvesting:- '

Taking vegetables when ready for use.

8. Marketing:-

Packing and preparing and arranging vegetables and fruits for sale.

Theoretical:-

1. Written records of observations made and work done.

2. Elementary study of garden soil and some of its ingredients such as sand, clay, humus.

3. Knowledge of materials used for compost heap-farmyard manure, school and garden waste, etc.

4. Choosing site for nursery beds, taking into consideration water supply, air, suri, shelter, etc.

5. Study of insects - caterpillar, its habits, life-cycle, etc.

Grade IV

Observation:-

As before but more detailed and advanced.

Practica!:-

1. Planning garden beds, paths, flower boarders, etc.

2. Upkeep of garden path, fencing, etc.

3. ' Preparing seed-beds.

4. Sowing flower and vegetable seeds.

5. Care of seedlings:-

(a) watering,

(b) weeding,

"(c) thinning,

(d) transplanting,

(e) protecting from sun by shading, and from insects by dusting with wood-ash, etc.

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6. Propagating by other methods than seeds, e.g. use of cuttings, tubers, sets.

7. Transplanting fruit trees - lemon, orange, papaya and guava.

8. Watering - use of mot or similar simple process.

9. Weeding - different methods of weeding, e.g., Khurpi, hoe, etc. for use for different garden crops.

10. Marketing - weighing and grading articles for sale.

11. Control of pests - simple methods of destroying pests, e.g. picking and killing caterpillars and insects.

Theoretical:-

1. Records in writing of observations made and work done.

2. Measuring plots, finding area to discover amount of manure needed; gravel for path, etc.

3. Study of soil:-

(a) elementary study of formation of soil,

(b) elementary study of different types of soil, e.g. sandy clay,

(c) study of effects of applying manure to soil.

4. Study of weeds:-

(a) weeds damage crops,

(b) proper time for removing weeds, . /

(c) collecting and disposing of weeds to pits.

5. Study of garden pests and simple methods of preventing insects from damaging vegetables, etc.

6. Irrigation:- ,

Study of functioning of moat or simple water haulage apparatus.

7. Marketing:-

Grading quality of vegetables, etc. for sale.

8. Study of plants, more detailed study of parts of plants and their functions.

9. Study of propagation by other means than seeds, e.g. tubers, sets, cutting.

10. Study of tools, their shapes and functions.

Grade V

Observations : -

Observations as before but more detailed and advanced.

Practical :-

1. Laying out plots of different types, for vegetables and flowers -digging, breaking up soil, raking, manuring, making out plots.

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2. Preparing seed beds.

3. Composing manure:-

(a) preparing compost,

(b) preserving farm manure and using urine earth, etc.

(c) applying compost as top dressing.

(d) preparation of liquid manure from dung and urine of cattle.

4. Irrigation:-

(a) working mot or other simple apparatus,

(b) constructing simple water channels leading to plots.

5. Weeding.

6. Protection of crops from pests:-

(a) removing caterpillars and other insects from plants by hand,

(b) picking off and burning diseased parts of plants.

7. Collection of specimens for school museum - different types of soil, seeds, geological specimens, etc.

Theoretical:-

1. Records of observations made and work done.

2. Study of soil:-

(a) soil constituents and their properties, including study of humus and how it forms,

(b) different types of soil and their names.

3. Study of garden implements - Khurpi, hoe, rake, etc; their shapes, functions and proper use.

4. Study of manure and compost - Composition of compost, breaking down of waste matter, etc.

5. Irrigation:-

(a) study of simple methods of water haulage,

(b) study of absorption of water in different soils, under simple irrigation.

6. Control of crop pests - study of common pest, its habits, etc. and how to counteract it.

7. Study of plants - more detailed study of parts of plants and their functions.

8. Arrangement and labelling of specimens in school museum.

Experiment:-

Germinating of various seeds in class-room on cloth or blotting paper to observe growth of plumule and radicle.

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Grade VI

Land already ploughed will be provided for practice in bakharing.

Practical :-

1. Cultivation of a field crop, such as wheat, jowar, cotton or gram:-

(a) manuring,

(b) bakharing,

(c) sowing,

(d) intercultivation and weeding,

(e) harvesting,

(f) threshing.

2. Control of pests - practice in methods of control of insects and disease.

3. Surveying of a field - planning and measuring plots.

4. Cultivation of trees - propagation by 'gooty' and layering.

5. Animal husbandry :-

(a) practice in milking cows,

(b) feeding and housing of animals.

6. Collecting articles for school museum.

7. Marking plants selected for vigour of growth, quality of grain and collecting seeds therefrom.

Theoretical:-

1. Records of all work done. Diagrams of garden, plots, etc.

2. Planning of year's work ahead.

3. Study of soils:-

(a) different types of soil in locality,

(b) physical characters of clay, sand, humus.

4. Study of Bakhar, its parts and their functions.

5. Study of green manure, how it is formed and how it affects the soil (linking with study of humus above).

6. Measuring and finding area of field in connection with amount of manure, seed sown, crop harvested, etc.

7. General principles of feeding, housing and care of animals.

8. Study of foot and mouth disease, how it spreads, its systems, treatment and prevention.

9. Study of plants, in particular pollination by insects, wind, etc.

10. Propagation: Study of the methods that should be applied to different plants.

11. Reading agricultural pamphlets and magazines.

12. Arranging and labelling articles in school museum.

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Experiments :-

1. To show working of stems and veins in carrying water (red ink experiment).

2. To show effect of light on plants by growing some plants in dark and some- in light.

3. Beginning of crop rotation experiments to be carried on in Grades VII and VIII.

Grade VII

Practical:-

1. Cultivation of garden crops on larger scale.

2. Ploughing, observation of ploughing with Monsoon and Deshi ploughs. Practice in dismantling and refitting same.

3. Growing of field crops to conserve soil fertility, e.g., legumes for green manure.

4. Growing of field crops of more than one kind.

5. Care of tools and simple repairs.

6. Preserving fruits and vegetables, e.g., drying, salting, etc.

7. Dairy work:-

(a) Milking and handling milk,

(b) treatment of ordinary ailments of cattle,

(c) housing and feeding of cattle.

8. Pruning of fruit and flower plants, hedges and boarders.

9. Collecting articles for school museum.

10. Growing in trial plots plants from seeds selected in Grade VI. Making further selections of good plants and collecting their s.eeds.

Theoretical : -

1. Redords with diagrams of all work done.

2. Planning of year's-work ahead (rotation, etc.)

3. Keeping simple agricultural records and accounts.

4. Detailed study of chief field or garden crops.

5. Rotation of crops in field and garden.

6. Principles of cattle breeding - study of important local breeds desirable characteristics, etc.

7. Study of plants - in particular, fruits and seeds and disposal of seeds.

8. Surveying, planning plots, measuring, etc.

9. Preservation of fruits and vegetables, e.g., the effects of drying, salting, etc.

10. Common cattle diseases and their treatment.

11. Reading agricultural pamphlets and magazines.

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Experiments :—

Experiments to be made in gardens and fields on the following

items :-

1. rotation of crops,

2. _ use of insecticides and fungicides,

3. preservation of seeds and fruits.

Vvact-icdt:-

1. Raising of field crops on improved lines - ploughing, discing, harrowing, manuring, sowing, irrigation, harvesting, thrashing, winnowing.

2. Marketing, e.g. grading, packing for carting, selling.

3. Dairy work.

(a) Feeding:-

(i) concentrates - bran, oil-cake, cotton-seed, dal chuni, minerals;

(ii) roughage - straw, chaff, grass.

(b) Housing - cleaning of houses.

(c) Treatment of ailments of cattle.

(d) Processing of daily produce, e.g. making of butter, ghee, and curds.

(e) Cleaning daily utensils.

(f) Grazing cattle.

4. Growing in trial plots seeds selected in Grade VII.

5. Marking selected good plants in trial plots and collecting their seeds.

Theoret-Laal :-

1. Keeping of records and accounts as for small farm and garden.

2. Planning year's work ahead.

3. Study of farm and garden as a balanced unit seen as a cycle of cropping, keeping of animals, use of waste, etc.

4. Dairy work:-"

(a) Running of dairy.

(b) Care and improvement of cattle.

(c) Elementary study of cattle breeding.

(d) Plans of simple cattle sheds on improved lines.

5. Study of cultivation in other parts of India and the world. Improved methods, etc. •

6. Study of co-operative marketing.

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7. Study of climate, weather, etc.

Experiments :-

1. Growing plants with different amounts of manure.

2. Irrigation - frequency and amount of watering.

3. Growing selected seeds and studying the results of three years of selection in Grades VI, VII and VIII.

4. Continuation of crop rotation experiments.

Appendix B

List of documents prepared by some of the Basic training school

teachers from Andhra Pradesh (Gandhian Experiment in Primary education

by Subba Rao, CS., NCERT, New Delhi, 1975, p.162).

Name of the teacher Literature developed

1. G. Narasimha Murty Correlation of Social Studies, Arithmetic, Language and Science with gardening and soils.

2. G. Appa Rao Correlation of Language and Science with plantain plantation.

3. V. Subba Rao Correlation of Language, Arithmetic, Science and Geography with watering the plants.

4. Amartaluri Prasada Rao Correlation of Language, Arithmetic, Science, social Studies, drawing and Music with Flag hoistation ceremony.

5. Dandikalla Sreeramulu Correlation of history - Asoka and British rule, Civics and discipline through National Flag and its importance.

6. Nadella Jagannadha Rao Correlation of Arithmetic with cotton craft -From Cotton Plant to Clothes.

'7. K. V. Satyanarayana Samanya Bodhana Vishayamulu (A comprehensive' book- on the correlation technique of teaching, written in Telugu language).

8. S. Ramayya Correlation of Language, Arithmetic, Science with cotton craft and fodder of cattle.

9. Ananta Ram Sastri Germination of seeds: Characteristics and conditions.

10. Subba Rao Arts and Architecture in Vijayanagar Empire

under Shri Krishna Deva Raya.

11. Krishna Murty Nature study through excursions.

12. P. Venkata Reddy Spinning and Ploughing.

13. T. Narasimham Correlation of Counting and addition with

spinning and gardening.

14. T. Krishnayya 'Dandakaranyam' Dramatisation in School Garden.

15. T. Narasayya Germination of seeds.

16. S. Makdoom Ali Correlation of Mathematics through gardening.

17. Agama Raju Correlation of Hygiene, Science and Arithmetic through spinning.