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FROM THE EDITOR Knowledge and work are saving electricity consumption in their school after not separate from each serious and scientific audit. The learning they other – creative thinking gained thereby was significant and, most is encouraged by making importantly, lifelong. and doing. From lessons There is also an account from a teacher who has of life, of equity, justice, spoken of her experience both as a student first and creating a peaceful and now as a teacher in a school run on the Nai Talim sustainable society and tenets. The school was a second home to her, as it world to personally now is to her students, with house parents taking as experiencing what the much interest in the students as the biological textbooks say – work as parents. Community lunches, treasure hunts to a means of meaningful education, one that name just two, made for a safe, warm atmosphere culminates in learning for life from life experiences in which children could explore their world within is now coming into focus once more. This process implicitly stated boundaries. In the same school, continues through life. older children took the place of siblings who showed The starting point of this Issue is Mahatma Gandhi’s the way to younger ones. Nai Talim which he envisaged over many years and One of the focus articles is a detailed exposition of made available in 1937. Over the years, it may have Gandhiji’s rationale in propounding Nai Talim. This been forgotten, but in an India undergoing such vast article considers its relevance in the almost suicidal changes in trying to make her educational system situation that the world in general and India in relevant to her society especially in the 21st century, particular faces unless we halt the course we are on it has regained its pertinence: indeed, Nai Talim has and replace it with a more sustainable approach. become basic to any discussion on education which This Issue, then, has attempted to take a long, hard culminates in creating the complete picture – of look at the relevance that Nai Talim, first head, heart and hand. This aim may have different propounded in 1937, has in the India of today, implications today from what Gandhiji’s times, but nearly eight decades later. The explorations are on is as vital. Children learn by making and doing and it the idea of Nai Talim and the overall visions of a is by relating these two to the larger context that ‘good society’, rethinking Nai Talim in the light of the the understanding of the whole picture is obtained. National Curriculum Framework (NCF) of 2005, as It is this larger picture that this issue has tried its best well as in the present context. This has been done to present. There is a spread of articles that have against the background of experiments with recreated, from across the country, the many present day ideas of education and work. Keeping schools that have taken upon themselves the all this in mind, the way forward is for us, as an responsibility of the principles of Nai Talim. The emerging society, to draw lessons that help us to authors are all actively engaged in establishing the create knowledge with an emphasis on values that importance of work as a tool of true knowledge, sustain and are in turn sustainable. unhampered by the burden of marks, ranks, Your feedback is very important to the success of textbooks and syllabi etc., though we cannot our magazine and we prize it greatly and look entirely get away from set routines and assessment forward to receiving it. methodologies. One article for example is by a writer who, having himself been educated in a Our deepest thanks for this special Issue go to gurukul run on Nai Talim lines, demonstrates how Sujit Sinha and his Work and Education team. botany, geography and soil geology can all be taught Without their backing, support and invaluable and learned through cotton cultivation, as he did in inputs, we would not have been able to bring it out. his school. The article describes also how stress as a physical force is learnt, while spinning the cotton into cloth on a charkha illustrated both the principle of the pulley as well as the concept of friction. Prema Raghunath Yet another article describes how Class 9 students Editor, Learning Curve took on the daunting task of creating methods of [email protected] C O N T E N T S SECTION A PERSPECTIVES Nai Talim Today: Some Issues and Possibilities 02 Sujit Sinha Some thoughts from Dr Krishna Kumar 07 The Essence of Basic Education 12 Hriday Kant Dewan Learning Outdoors through Action and Reflection 18 Ardhendu Sekhar Chatterjee Nai Talim: Learning Through Productive Work: a Reflection 28 Pradip Dasgupta SECTION B FROM THE FIELD Where Children Construct Knowledge 33 Amit Bhatnagar Work and Education-Thulir's Experiences and Reflections 37 Anu and Krishna In Search of Teacher-ness (Shikshatva ki Khoj) 41 Binduben Our Land, Our Life (Hamari Dharti, Hamara Jeevan) 44 Diwan Singh Nagarkoti Creating a Society that Cares 49 Meenakshi Umesh Learning Life-long 59 Prema Rangachary Exploring Energy in our Daily Life - Unearthing Connections 62 Radha Gopalan Education Through Work (Mushroom Production) 67 and Its Relation to Other subjects Sahabuddin Ansari Learning While Helping 72 Suresh Kumar Sahu, Rakesh Teta and Gulshan Yadav A Powerful Means of Integrated Holistic Learning 75 Sushama Sharma Aiming for Work-centred Education: 80 Introduction to Basic Technology (IBT) program in secondary schools in Maharashtra Yogesh Kulkarni SECTION C SOME LARGE SCALE EFFORTS Learning to Live Sustainably Reflections based on the 85 Paryavaran Mitra programme Pramod Sharma and Annie Gregory Earthian Program - Through the Lens of Work and Education 89 Shaheen Shasa and Sreekanth Sreedharan Green Schools Program: An Out-of-classroom Experience 92 Sumita Dasgupta Some Useful Resources 96 SECTION A Perspectives Nai Talim Today: Some Issues and Possibilities Sujit Sinha School and Society Communism, or some magical mixture of both, would do the trick. To understand Gandhi’s educational ideas one has to explicitly keep Dewey’s following quote in mind In a simplified manner one can state the basic “We will know what type of education to provide, if tendencies of Industrialism as: most people will live we know what type of society we want”. in cities and towns, work in large factories and offices, either owned by huge corporates or Here is how one could state Gandhi’s vision of ideal governments. There will inevitably be large society: most people will live in small villages, work differences in status of work and positions. in agriculture or cottage industries, either family Everything will be connected with everything: owned or owned and managed cooperatively. All goods and services will be distributed and marketed kinds of work will have equal status. There will be over large distances through massive use of high degree of village and regional economic self- transportation. Most decisions will be taken by sufficiency with low amount of goods being nation-states through representative democracy. transported over large distances. Villages will be Continuous upward economic mobility, ever politically autonomous, able to take most decisions increasing material wealth, greed and envy will be themselves through participatory, face- to- face, the main human motivating forces. Therefore, to democracy. There will be large degree of equity and dominate nature and extract as much as possible all kinds of domination-discrimination will be and as quickly as possible will be the main task of reduced. Everyone will be eco-literate, practice the human knowledge and political-economic systems. 4Rs (reduce-reuse-recycle-regenerate) and live as per the Gandhian dictum of ‘there is sufficiency in This was accomplished with the help of a the world for man’s need, but not for man’s greed’ standardised schooling system whose ‘not so and it is only with such limits to wealth along with hidden curriculum’ was to drill into everyone the equity that envy and conflict will be reduced, aspiration of upward mobility and unlimited leading to peace and truth, the two supreme material wealth so as to accelerate the onward Gandhian ideals. march of Industrialism. This schooling has pretty much spread all over the world and in one sense it Nai Talim or New Education, with hands-on has been quite successful. Even those whose school productive work as the central pedagogic tool, was achievements are visibly quite low or incomplete one of Gandhi’s chief instruments to realize this and those who do not have proper access to this above vision. And as per the vision stated above --- schooling have fully imbibed its above stated core grappling with equity, justice, sustainability had to aim. Readers should see how wonderfully Shri be one of the main concerns of its curriculum. Narayan Desai says this in his introduction to Anil Would any progressive person in the 1940s to 1970s Sadgopal‘s Nai Talim lectures in Gujarat Vidyapith in have believed in such ‘backward’ looking ideals? Dec 2011. Most believed exactly the opposite and India as well (www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_rgDaARGgk) as the world enthusiastically mounted the horse of "From the 1980s it is becoming clearer to more and Industrialism. Almost all progressive thought was on more people that this horse of Industrialism on how to make this horse run faster and faster. The which we are mounted has gone out of control, dominant discourse was whether Capitalism with a endangering the very survival of (human) life. We human face, or some variant of Socialism- Section A 02 don’t seem to be able to turn it any way, we cannot of the issues, a few possible features, and challenges slow it down and we are unable to dismount.

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