Pedagogy of the Gandhian kind

REVAMPING EDUCATION: A 3-member committee has recommended reviving the Buniyadi Vidyalayas

"Craft, art, health and education should all be integrated into one scheme. Nai Talim is a beautiful blend of all the four and covers the whole education of the individual from the time of conception to death. Instead of regarding craft and industry as different from education. I will regard the former as the medium for the latter.''

That was Mahatma Gandhi on his unique system of education. Now two activists for a common school system, who have joined hands with the Bihar government for educational reforms, are seeing to it that various vital elements of basic education are absorbed in the educational system of the state.

Muchkund Dubey and Anil Sadagopal, both at the forefront of a movement for a common school system in the country for the past few years, were invited by the Bihar government to form a commission to recommend reforms in the education system of the state.

The three-member commission, which also included the education secretary to the Bihar government, recently submitted its report and the 391 Buniyadi Vidyalayas figure prominently in it as they are recommended to act as laboratories for the dream system of education so dear to Gandhiji.

According to Muchkund Dubey, the schools were once actually practising the basic education model of multi-disciplinary teaching. Now, the priorities of the government in implementing the report of the commission would be to revive these schools.

Each of these schools has land for horticulture or agriculture envisaged in the style of education propounded in basic education.

Gandhiji arrived in Champaran in 1917. While staying here and fighting for the rights of the indigo farmers, a national convention under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi prepared a blue-print of Nai Talim.

Gandhi Smriti had earlier been trying to revive the Buniyadi Vidyalayas by enrolling about 700 students to these schools.

Dubey said, "The Buniyadi Vidyalayas are a special feature of the Bihar education system. And we want the rest of the schools to be modelled on these. The Buniyadi Vidyalayas will not have much of vocational education though that is also part of Nai Talim."

That aspect has been a failure, and we don't want to try that, says Dubey.

"The idea is to have self-reliant units and teachers as envisaged by Gandhiji and to adopt the pedagogy advocated by Gandhji," says Dubey. The Nai Talim model of teaching was about using multiple disciplines to teach subjects as is endorsed by many modern educational systems.

These will be laboratory schools and a basic education resource cell will coordinate and guide curriculum transformation in the rest of the state. There will be a basic education curriculum development centre, and a basic education think tank within the 391 schools as per the recommendations of the Dubey Commission.

The Commission gives two reasons why it chose these 391 schools to become laboratories for basic education for the rest of the state. There is nothing left of basic education in these schools, says the report.

But they have a moral heritage of the Gandhian philosophy besides the fact that a whole generation has emerged from these schools and many of them live in the surrounding areas. Hence they add to the credit of these schools as pace setting schools founded on Gandhian pedagogy, the report says.