Work And Education

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Position Paper primarily aims at exploring and institutionalining the pedagogic role of work in education in the context of building a truly national system of education. In the process a has examined as to how the rich knowledge base, social insights and skidis of the marginalised children (who constitute more than half of the child population) in relation to their lubiar, natural resources and livelihoods can be turned into a source of their dignity and strength in the school system. The paper also addresses the profound problem of growing alienation of the middle-upper class children from their cultural roots and the central role played by the education system in aggravating and accelerating this process. The paper contends that the exclusionary character of Indian education can at least be partly challenged by stilining the knowledge base of the vast productive sections of society as a powerful means to transform the education system. At the same time, this knowledge base is to be subjected to critical scrutiny in order to ensure that its retrogressive and unscientific streaks are identified and rooted out before they find their way into the school curriculum.

The exclusionary character of the education system in India is to a great extem founded on the artificially instituted dichotomy between work and knowledge (also reflected in the widening gap between school and society). Those who work with their hands and produce wealth are denied access to formal education while those who have access to formal education not only denigrate productive manual work but also lack the necessary skills for the same. The socio-economic, religio-cultural, gender and disability-related dimensions of this dichotomy have serious implications for education in India. Over a period of time and through systematic practice, such a notion of education has come to be embedded in the knowledge system, representing the dominant classes/castes/cultures/languages with patriarchy in each of these categories playing a decisive role. The education system has tended to ‘certify this form of knowledge as being the only ‘valid’ form. In the process, the knowledge inherent among the vast productive forces along with the related values and skills has been excluded from the school curriculum. The legacy of colonial education was built upon precisely such a Brahminical concept of ‘certified’ or ‘valid’ knowledge that is alienated from productive work and its social ethos.

The Gandhian proposal of Nai Talim (Basic Education) was a radical departure from this Brahminical-cum-colonial paradigm insofar as it challenged the dichotomy by placing productive manual work at the centre of the school curriculum itself. As per this view, participation in productive work under conditions approximating real-life situations is pedagogically linked to learning and simultaneously becomes the medium of knowledge acquisition, developing values and skill formation. Engagement with work will promote multi-dimensional attributes in the cognitive, affective and psycho-motor domains in a holistic manner, i.e. by integrating ‘head, hand and heart’. Such attributes are admittedly missing in the