In this document, I have articulated my dream of setting up a school and the philosophy which will underlie the school. The school will be built in Darekasa, a village in the Gondia District of Maharashtra situated on the border of Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh. First let me describe briefly about the place and the people living there. Darekasa comes under Salekasa Taluka which is covered by dense forests and mountainous terrains. The major population of this Taluka consists of the people from Gond community who are generally referred to as Adivasis. The main occupation of this community is agriculture and during the month of May-June, these people go to the forests for plucking Tendu Patta which is used to roll tobacco for making beedis. Mahuwa flower is also plucked which is used to make country liquor called Mahuwa, a popular drink among the tribal men and women. These constitute the major sources of income for this community. Mostly women and children are involved in these activities while men sell these products to the traders.
However, there is one component of their lives which cannot go unnoticed-Naxal infestation in the woods. The tribal people always become the dupes of the conflicts between State and the Naxalites. Earlier the Naxalites supported the tribal people in getting a fair amount for the Tendu Patta and Muhuwa flowers from the contractors, but often they exploit them for the same reason. There is also lack of proper health facilities and awareness which are extremely significant for the tribe keeping in mind the dangers of such a work culture. Malaria, high infant and maternal mortality rates have been the prominent health issues of this area over the years.
Thus, children of this particular community are not merely deprived of quality education and health care, but also have to encounter the rough reality of society they live in. Having seen this condition of the tribal children closely for many years, I am determined to establish an elementary school in this village which will cater for girls and boys of the Gond community. The main purpose of the school is to make the tribal children aware of their rights so that they can avail education and health services to lead a dignified and quality life like any other child in the society.
Following are the aims that I want to achieve:
- To provide elementary education relevant to their socio-cultural milieu.
- To enable them to make their livelihood using local handicraft skills.
- To spread health and hygiene awareness.
- To prepare them for higher education.
- To encourage them to develop their community resources.
- To facilitate informal adult education.
I have written the aims in order of priority that I have given to each starting from the most important. Here, I have been forced to prioritize the aims since limited funds restrain me from giving equal weight to all of them. I do not want the school to be under control of the Government in any circumstances not because of any other reason but to avoid outside interference in achieving the same aims which the Government somehow failed to accomplish. The State curriculum, methods of teaching, the prejudices of the people involved in planning and teaching, etc. are some of the grounds on which the failure in educating the tribal communities occurs. As Gandhiji also stated that the success of these endeavors depends on self-help and not the Government (Sykes, 1988), I believe that setting up the school as a Non-governmental Organization will be more beneficial to the cause. This further limits the source of funds for the school. Therefore, in this document, I will mainly talk about the goals which can be achieved with the help of the available funds while others have to be sidelined initially. Following are my arguments for having the outline of the objectives mentioned above.
Taking a naturalist approach, I will have the school infrastructure in the most natural setting in the village environment. Children will explore and learn from the environment and gain hands on experience of things around them. The teacher will not always interfere and let the child construct knowledge about the world itself. Comfort of the children will be taken care of so that they get ample light, air and space to be safe and still free to study in the school.
I have stressed on the relevance of social-cultural milieu because the existing schools and the curriculum they follow do not encourage the tribes to join the school. They do not find any relation between the texts and their life. This is unfair to them as the language and culture they follow find no place in the curriculum resulting in becoming a barrier between them and their right to education. Even though the Constitution of India in its Article 350A says: “It shall be the endeavor of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups…” (The Constitution of India, 2007, p. 216), this has not been implemented successfully and thus tribal children continue to suffer.
In this school, I will provide their mother-tongue (Gondi) as the medium of instruction in the first 4 years, i.e. primary school so that it is easier for them to grasp the basic knowledge of all subjects. In the early years of schooling, subjects like science, history and art will be emphasized because the curious and exploratory nature of children can be utilized to its best with these subjects (Ghose, 1910, cited in Ghose, 2003). The historical background of the tribal community and how it evolved into its present position will form the basis of history as a subject and thorough research will be carried out to make the content strong and complete. The community people will be the primary source of the information about both history and literature of the tribe. The poems and stories originally written in the Gondi language, the festivals of the community, the problems it faces, i.e., all the concepts which can be termed as folkloristic (Gramsci, 1996, p. 30) will be included in the literature so that children can relate to it and learn about their own culture. Here, the aspect of including the specific problem of the community is derived from what Rogoff (1990, p. 116) says that children learn to solve and react to situations as they learn from the adults and their actions to that situation. Drawing is one of the most essential parts of childhood since it enables the child to express its imagination and view of the world. Therefore, it will be one of the compulsory subjects in primary school.
I agree completely with the constructivist approach of teaching and learning science. Children build their knowledge with the help of existing information, hands-on-experience and applying it to real-world situations. This is how science will be taught where teachers will take into consideration the child’s prior understanding and guide him/her to make sense of it by experimenting, observing and questioning. All the teaching and learning material will be developed in the mother-tongue. Here it is also important to note the role of teachers. I will first approach experienced teachers from nearby towns who have retired from their service, to come and teach the children, assuming that these teachers will not expect much salary and will be willing to serve the tribal community selflessly. I will also persuade fresh batch of qualified teachers to join the school as interns to have an experience of various difficulties in teaching and train them to learn the tribal dialect. This will serve the purpose of using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction.
In the upper primary school, Hindi will be used in addition to Gondi as medium of instruction. Pupils will have the option to choose either Hindi or Gondi while all the material will be bilingual, i.e., Hindi with Gondi. The reason why I prefer Hindi over Marathi which is the state language is that people of this community can understand and talk a little bit of Hindi but do not understand Marathi. So, Marathi will be included as the third compulsory language subject after Hindi and English because knowing the state language is also essential for the children if they go out to work. Hindi being the national language has an important place in political, religious and commercial activities of India (Gandhi, n.d., cited in NCTE, 1998). So, I believe Hindi as a medium of instruction will be beneficial to the children in the long run. I still have doubts regarding English to be used in instruction because learning 3 languages all of a sudden is difficult for children and especially for tribal children who have no access to any material or people who use these foreign languages. Therefore, it will be taught as a language subject since having the basic knowledge of verbal and written English is important if not sufficient condition for surviving in higher education.
The content of all the subjects will now move from the local to the state, national and global context. The children will be acquainted with information about the science and technology, rich literature of our nation, current affairs of the world, sports and arts around the globe, etc. I consider the naturalist approach of teaching and learning mathematics appropriate for children who live in close terms with the different aspects of nature. As Tagore (1933) insisted that things which we learn from our own experience count as education and not the second-hand experience in the form of oral instructions by teachers or written texts. Thus, mathematics will be taught in a way that children learn it on their own, by dealing with day-to-day activities like to count while playing with stones, to learn ratio and proportion while cooking, to understand the concept of volume while filling buckets, etc. In all, the play way method of teaching-learning where the textbooks are given less emphasis while learning from doing is stressed upon (Goncalves, 2013) will be prominent in the school. The environment will be the first teacher and teachers will be the guides and stimulators for the pupils to explore the nature and their abilities.
The second aim is to enable them to make their livelihood using local handicraft skills. This can be misinterpreted in a way that the school intends to make the children work while studying. The main purpose behind this aim is to make them self-reliant for their education. The school will not charge them any fees; the market cost of the products that they will make will act as a fee (Gandhi, 1937, cited in Sykes, 1988). There are many aspects of looking at it-first, they will acquire skills of making the handicrafts which belong to their culture. This will indirectly preserve the heritage of the community. Second, they will learn how to work with people with different abilities and to take responsibility for failures too on a group task.
Last but not the least, there is a high possibility that the tribal people will not agree to send their children to school because they want the children to assist them in work in the forests as mentioned earlier. This method will provide the children with an alternative to support their family financially. They will not have to go to the forests and miss school; rather school will become an indirect source of income as they will gain expertise in the craft and can use it to make and sell the products. I will first try to find out the optimum worth of that product in the market so the children realize that the art and craft is not only improving their skills but also appreciated by the world outside. Keeping in mind the financial condition of the tribal community, it is not fair to restrict the children from helping their families, but it is fair enough to empower them with constructive and artistic skill which complies with their requirements.
The third objective of the school is to spread awareness about health and hygiene. This is one of the primary aims because the high maternal and infant mortality rates in this community are a matter of concern. Since the tribal women and children spend 40-45 days in the forests, the cases of Falciparum Malaria and consequent death emerge every year. Thus, in this context, they will be given information about how they can protect themselves using proper preventive measures. Also, because of lack of health care facilities and sometimes their ignorance about the available facilities, they are not aware of the precautions to be taken during pregnancy, infant care and the need of a hygienic environment for the health of the complete family.
It is also important in today’s scenario to make the children aware of HIV/AIDS and other risks involved in unsafe sex. The adolescents have the right to know about aspects of sexuality so that they do not find themselves in crisis later. This community does not have access to media such as TV and radio through which they can gain information about all this. Thus, sex education will be an indispensable component of the upper primary school. I will approach the private medical professionals and the Government health workers from nearby towns to intervene so that the tribal children as well as the adults receive the desirable information and clarify any doubts they have. But this may not be possible in the initial years, first because it will take some time to convince the community for this and secondly, funds which might be required to invite people from outside. So I will put it in the secondary phase of this aim.
Before moving on to the next aim, I find it significant to address the question of retention of tribal children in the school. It is particularly difficult for tribal (and poor) girls being regular in school because they are given the responsibility of taking care of their younger siblings by the working parents. The village does not have pucca-roads and during the rainy season they get washed away becoming a hindrance in travelling. Since it is surrounded by forests, it is not safe to roam around after it gets dark, especially for children who will come from distant villages. All these matters led me to think of the following steps which will be taken in order to get the school accessible to the students in any situation:
- To provide a crèche or day-care center facility adjoining the school so that girl children are relieved of the responsibility of sibling-care.
- To build a hostel (initially for boys) so that they do not miss school due to rains or because of the distance of home from school.
- To provide a nutritious afternoon meal in school for all the pupils. This will act like an incentive to bring the children to school.
I said hostel for boys because to convince the tribes for keeping their girl child in hostel in itself is a difficult task and perfectly so as they are not only vulnerable but also handle daily chores at home. Secondly, to take the responsibility of the girls, I will first need to employ a trustworthy woman caretaker who will be ready to stay in the village which I assume will not be a problem with a male caretaker. The above steps can be implemented only after I have sufficient funds. But, I will put them as sub-goals because they are important and will be gradually achieved for attaining the primary aims.
The next aim to prepare them for higher education has a deeper meaning than meets the eye. The last year of the elementary school will create the structure on the basis of which the pupils can strongly move out of their comfort zone and step into the specific fields of their interest. This structure consists of self-discipline and moral independence. This need not necessarily be a preceding step to higher secondary school, but even for practical work that they will practice after school. The school will prepare them as per the State educational system (board exams, term exams, etc.) which will not be the same in this school, so that if the children are able to go out for studying further, they do not find it difficult to cope with the new system. I will try to get scholarships for the students who perform well, but this is not possible for the organization initially so Government can be approached for this. I will like to term the last phase of school as creative as suggested by Gramsci (1996, p. 32) because of the autonomy it gives to the child for thinking and acting as he/she wants to.
The last two aims of providing informal adult education and encouraging the students to develop their community resources are the secondary aims. The reason is that if the children are unable to go for higher education, they can be employed for a few years in the community itself until they are matured enough to go out for work. They can be given the responsibility of looking after the cleanliness and hygiene of the environment and planting trees. The children can form bodies which produce handicrafts and commercialize them through local dealers and they can even exhibit and sell them in the annual fair which is organized in the village during Navaratri. The school will act as a mock environment so that they know how to deal with the real world.
Informal adult education seems like a distant dream as of now, but the purpose is to empower the adults of the Gond community so that they can stand against any injustice be it from the State or any other interference. I have stated earlier that there is Naxal infestation nearby the village, but till now they have never made any direct harm to the community and have not interfered in their affairs. They may look at adult education as a threat to their interests since the community has often given the Naxalites access to the resources thinking of them as their supporters in hard times whereas possibly they just took disadvantage of their ignorance. Hence, this design will need thorough reconsideration and interaction with the community and State for their safety.
Having explained all the aims of the school, there is nevertheless a thought which disturbs me. It is very easy for me, who has all the privileges of attaining quality education, good food, clothes and other necessities, to sit here and think that educating the minority community will improve their condition and be helpful for their progress. But the truth is that unless the tribal people have access to the basic necessities of human life, nothing will be able to upgrade their standard of living. If children do not get nutritious food and proper health care, how are they going to study anything with concentration? If the financial condition of the family forces both mother and father to work outside, will the child be happy coming to school leaving his/her younger sibling alone at home? Even after receiving an elementary education if they are unable to afford a decent higher education, leaving lesser scope for them to go outside their village, does that education really make a big difference to their lives? All these questions do not have a yes or no answer, but the common element of all the answers will be a stable economic condition which will enable every child to dream big and achieve his/her aims in life. Thus, it is also our responsibility and not just the State’s to provide these tribal communities with employment, so that their children get equal opportunities to succeed in life with dignity.
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