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The Rediff Special/ Purshottam Das Chitlangia

The education that doesn't create the moral fabric of a nation based on its cultural heritage is no education

The way out is to liberate education system from the hold of the western system and to adopt an indigenous model of education based on the thoughts of Swami Vivekananda, Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Dayanand, Krishnamurthy, Gandhiji and many others who are silently evolving cost effective indigenous model of basic education.

The model of providing a school and teachers in the ratio of one teacher for each group of 40 children may have to be replaced by a gurukul type of system in which members from the community take the responsibility of providing basic education to their children. The community allows the premises of its places of worship or some other common area for imparting learning to its children.

The concept and also the activities of Friends of Tribals Society, which I represent, are based on these ideas. The name of the society itself suggest that it is engaged in the tribal areas for the upliftment of the tribal population. We have chosen primary education with all round development as the focussed area. It is a pity that the level of literacy today in the tribal areas is below the literacy level of India at the time of Independence.

The concept of one teacher-one village school as evolved by us is simple. After a thorough survey, we first identify the villages where one or two educated persons who have studied at least till VIII standard are available. We then seek to ascertain the willingness of such persons to become teachers in our non-formal schools in their village. At the same time, we seek to motivate the villagers to form village committee to oversee the schools.

Having identified the teachers' willingness to take part in our scheme, we train them for a period of 30 days on modalities of providing basic education to the children. For this, training centres are established.

Motivation is a strong part of our training curriculum. The teachers are motivated to spare 3 to 4 hours a day to run the schools every day while carrying on their normal livelihood activities. We pay only Rs 200 to Rs 300 per teacher per month as honorarium. It is my strong conviction that for the effective spread of primary education, teachers should be inducted from the grassroot, ie, villages. It is only then the teaching imbibes the basic tenets of deep personal involvement of the gurus with the ethos of local aspirations. The emphasis in our curriculum is on contextual leaning, ability to handle real life problems involving basic arithmetical operations, reading and writing and all-round development, giving equal priority to yoga, sports, character building etc.

For every 10 such schools run by us, we have one trained supervisor, for a cluster of 30 such schools we have a senior supervisor, and for every 100 such schools there is one in-charge. In our model, the teaching-learning takes place under a tree or in some space belonging to the community. It should, therefore not be surprising that our recurring cost per year for a group of 30 children is about Rs 10,000. The cost of providing education per child in our model is about Rs 350, as the capital investment is negligible. I have already pointed out that the recurring cost of educating a child in a formal school has to be about Rs 2,500 per annum, if the teacher to pupil ratio is to be 1:40.

The society was founded in the year 1989 and, till this year, we have set up and run 1,300 schools based on gurukul principles in different tribal areas based on one teacher-one village concept. Our aim is to start 5,000 similar schools in different tribal areas in the coming three years.

I strongly feel that our one teacher-one village school concept should not only cover the tribal areas, but non-tribal rural areas of the country too. Our village size is small in terms of habitant population. If each village has one such school functioning with the participation of the community, this will undoubtedly benefit spread of literacy. These schools should be, as we had planned, for the age group of 5-11 years and embrace students up to class III. Then the students may go to formal upper primary school and one such school be provided for every eight to ten villages. The upper primary school curriculum should provide education up to class VIII beginning from class IV. A student, after completing the elementary education, may join craft-cum-vocational school for learning skills for agriculture, horticulture etc.

The most glaring observation is the lopsided growth of higher education compared to the growth of primary education. Between 1951 and 1995 the compound growth of primary schools was only about 2.6 per cent, of higher-secondary schools was 5.9 per cent, of the colleges was 5.7 per cent. At the universities it increased at the rate of 4 per cent. This imbalance reflects the neglect of primary education.

The higher education remains largely a misconceived status symbol. The effect of this educated unemployed and even graduates end up working as chaprasis (peons) and waiters. I submit that only the highly meritorious students should pursue higher studies and that for acquiring employable skills. I find that the cost of completing education per student in the IITs comes to Rs 700,000-800,000 and the whole cost is almost borne by the government. To my utter dismay, I find that 80 to 90 per cent of students who come out of these institutions migrate to the affluent western countries. This is a great national loss in terms of money and braindrain. Higher education should be self-financed as is the practice all over the world.

I would like to draw your attention to the important role played by the private institutions in providing training in information technology skills. Young persons avail training in computer skills by paying amounts several times more than the fee they pay to colleges. I have mentioned this to support my argument that if the higher education is made functional leading to skills, students will find it attractive and will agree to pay for it. Thus reducing the burden on the State.

Ladies and gentlemen, it may not be entirely relevant to the tenor of my presentation, but it is painful to find the growing state of value degeneration in all walks of our social life. The education that does not seek to create the moral fabric of a nation in keeping with its cultural heritage is no education in the true sense. Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore and Gandhiji throughout their life endeavoured to make education as the instrument for moral rearmament. Students need to be elevated to become more committed to the community and family, and more faithful to the values of life. The Gita, Ramayan, Granth Sahib, Bible and the Koran are not purely religious books, but are the storehouses of values. Let our education system be guided by these values at all levels of education.

Friends, I have shared with you a cost-effective model of education, which has been successfully tried by us. I hope, our modest effort will be picked up by voluntary groups who are also interested like us in the development of our great country by ensuring that each child gets a good quality primary education.

In conclusion, I would like to remind all of us what Swami Vivekananda, the greatest son of India born in the 19th century, said to his gurubhais in 1893. He exhorted them to span out to villages and spread literacy. He said that if the mountain cannot go to Mohammad, let Mohammad go to the mountain.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen for giving me a patient hearing.

Purshottam Das Chitlangia is the president of the Friends of Tribals Society. This is the text of his undelivered speech, which had non-BJP politicians booing him out of the recent education conference.

The Chitlangia interview

The Rediff Specials

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