Srikanth Voorakaranam
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself -- Galileo
The expansion of elementary education in India has often not been supported by the development of teaching material and methodology that can make learning enjoyable and fun. Rigid adherence to a 'lecture' approach in teaching has failed to recognize the fact that as important as what is taught, is how this information/knowledge is presented.
Poor quality of instruction is one of the main reasons for high rates of dropout and low achievement levels of learning even at the primary stage, as the findings by the Public Report on Basic Education (PROBE) in India vividly demonstrate.
As Vinoba Bhave, one of India's greatest teachers, noted: "When a student has been subjected to such an educational system for ten or fifteen years, his whole interest in knowledge withers away. His powers of initiative are weakened. You can see for yourselves that when children go to school, their bright eyes grow dull, their strong bodies become weak and the vigour of the minds is dimmed."
"For thousands of years, there have been in India the teacher and the taught, but it did not occur to anyone to arrange for a long holiday in the schools. Holidays entered the education system only with the coming of the English system. Nowadays, however, the schools are open only for six or seven months in the year; but since these schools have become little better than prisons, we ought not to complain about that, for it is clear that the children need a holiday from them! ".
Asha for Education is an action group working for basic education for underprivileged children in India. With over 35 chapters all over the world, Asha supports and works with NGOs and government schools in India in the education sphere, and has supported over 300 projects during the last 10 years.
Many of these projects deal with education in the conventional sense. A few of them, on the other hand, have taken a more critical look at the mainstream methodology of schooling and attempted to come up with alternate models that challenge the standard philosophy that children won't learn if they are not forced. The assumption in these alternate models is that children, by nature, want to learn.
If they learn the way they want to and not necessarily how the adults typically expect them to, they will learn much better and faster. In the regular approach, which tries to force the knowledge down the children's throat, most of the effort is spent on overcoming the opposition of the children while the alternate models rely on a more participatory approach with full co-operation from children in the classroom activity.
AVEHI, Audio Visual Education Resource Center is one such voluntary, non-profit organization in Mumbai which was born out of a belief that knowledge empowers, and that the media must be used for widening horizons, for creating awareness to promote secularism, equality, social justice and communal harmony. Abacus is a project undertaken by AVEHI.
Much of what follows has been gathered from the writings and reports of Asha volunteer, Shanmuga Subramaniam and Simantini Dhuru, the coordinator for AVEHI.
Even though Abacus came to existence only in 1990, things began much earlier. In 1952, when Ms. Shanta Gandhi, founder of AVEHI, started teaching a mixed group of Adivasi and non-Adivasi children in Nikorah village, south Gujarat, the atmosphere was totally informal with no pre-planned curriculum. A dancer by training, she had gone there to research on Adivasi dance forms.
Later, the effort continued in an experimental school attached to the B.M. Institute of Child Psychology and Development in Ahmedabad. After a long interval, the program was taken up in a non-formal situation at Bal Bhavan, Delhi in the 1970s. Because of government policy changes, the process of preparing an integrated curriculum that had begun there never saw the light of day.
In 1990, with Ms. Gandhi as the director, the work began in the formal setting of Mumbai Municipal Schools. Thus, as the program evolved from an informal to a non-formal to a formal setting, the program was modified to enrich rather than replace the existing school curriculum.
With the consent of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Bombay, Abacus started testing out its curriculum in a Hindi-medium municipal school in 1991. It continued working with the same group of children who progressed from class III to class VII in 1995. Abacus also conducted teacher-training workshops to enable schoolteachers to use the learning package in their schools.
Based on this experience and its evaluation, Abacus developed a modified curriculum that is being used in 25 Bombay Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools, two private schools and 35 non-formal education centers. This curriculum has been in use during the current phase of work from 1996 to 2000.
In the formal system, it works as a five-year foundation course for classes III-VII children, and in the non-formal system, it serves as a post-literacy program for children between the ages of 8 and 12 years. In both contexts, the goal is to develop the children's skills of thinking, analyzing and making choices. The emphasis is on values that will help them live and work together in a spirit of understanding and harmony.
Abacus attempts to provide the children with a way of looking at and interpreting the world and to help the child to see the linkages between
The emphasis is on acquainting the children with the sources of information available all over and to equip them to use this information to solve the problems that they face.
The program begins with a game in which children identify the basic human needs in the simulated situation of a bazaar. Each of these needs -- food, clothing, shelter, air, water, health, education, work and leisure -- is then explored in detail in subsequent sections in classes III to IV. In class V, the emphasis is on the resources of the earth -- on how these resources make life possible and link all life-forms in an inextricable web, on the changing relationships between human beings and the environment and among human beings themselves.
The subject of discussion in class VI is the inevitability of change in all aspects of our lives, a critique of the idea of progress, as well as the search for alternative ways of living. In class VII, the focus shifts to the individual; the areas of exploration include the recognition of each individual's identity within the context of numerous groups that he or she is part of, and the need to arrive at some norms that will help a variety of groups to exist in harmony.
The day's topic is introduced by a story or discussion of everyday experience or by some practical demonstration. Following this, any necessary information relevant to the topic is covered with the help of a variety of media-flash cards, flip charts, posters, puppets etc. These visual aids make the abstract concepts more tangible and topics more interesting for the children.
After this, a discussion in the nature of an exchange of impressions leads to a related activity. The discussions are meant to explore the different dimensions of a topic and not to instruct the children in 'right' or 'wrong' opinions.
Creation of the visual aids involves quite a lot of work. Roughly, the storyline of the session is prepared first; then the design is made, followed by sketches. From this, the artists of AVEHI sketch and paint the final version. Changes to the visual aids are made after field-testing. Copies are made using color photocopying.
Deepa Balsavar who leads the design effort points out, "Even though the visual aids get the most attention, it is the session writing that is most time consuming. A lot of background study needs to be done. Our team is composed of people with a variety of backgrounds and that helps. Also translation to Hindi and Marathi is an important work."
After the discussions, the child gets an opportunity to express himself/herself creatively through his/her preferred medium of expression-painting, paper-folding, clay-modeling, story-telling, singing, dancing, dramatics and writing. Finally, the facilitator sums up the main points of the session. Care is taken to see that no group or individual is unfavorably compared with another.
The teacher, even acting as a guide, is an equal participant in the discussions. Group activity to promote teamwork and reduce a child's self-centeredness by inculcating co-operative habits is an essential component of the methodology.
Shanmuga Subramaniam, a volunteer with Asha-India, visited some of the schools where the Abacus program is being used and found that the use of the AVEHI-Abacus program in BMC schools has been seen as a useful intervention. During the current expansion phase, while facilitating Abacus sessions, BMC teachers have been relating to the issues discussed in the Abacus curriculum and noting the relevance of Abacus material in teaching their regular school curriculum.
There have been changes in information, knowledge, values, attitudes and habits. Talking about his conversation with children in the 7th standard, Shanmuga notes, "After the initial shyness faded, they were literally jumping on top of each other to tell stories of what they had learnt from Abacus. A certain awareness of environmental degradation was definitely there."
The need to 'modernize' both the curriculum and teaching methodology is widely accepted today. There is general agreement on the fact that the rapidly expanding frontiers of knowledge must find reflection in our school curriculum. This understanding has resulted in more progressive policies that emphasize the need for education to be child-centered and relevant to the child's reality.
However, there is a major difficulty in implementing such policies in the classroom. The teacher -- who is an essential part of the learning process, is not adequately equipped with the attitudes and skills emphasized in the progressive policies. The teacher's role is crucial in making classroom teaching and learning more meaningful. Teachers need to be empowered with the skills and attitudes that are critical in implementing progressive educational policies.
Abacus works with two pre-service teacher-training colleges and is now testing out its prototype on a foundation course to empower teachers with the skills and attitudes that are critical in implementing progressive education policies. It seeks to make the teacher an active partner not just in the educational process but also in the larger process of social change.
The curriculum for the teacher-training course explores the following themes:
Even in conventional teacher-training colleges, teaching methodology is lecture-oriented, allowing little scope for the learners -- the teacher-trainees in this case, to be active participants in the learning process. It is therefore not surprising that the trainee does not internalize the values underlying the 'participatory methodology' when s/he becomes a full-fledged teacher. S/he sees the learners -- children -- as passive recipients of information.
Attitudes of thinking about and questioning the information presented in the classroom are not only, not encouraged, but are seen as signs of disrespect and indiscipline. At AVEHI, the training methodology of the teachers is primarily experiential. The trainees are exposed to a variety of participatory methods so that these are internalized and find reflection in their work as teachers. Group work and discussion help to enhance their communication skills and to express their views on complex social and political issues and to see the link between these issues and what is taught in school.
One of the main reasons for the failure of the mainstream education system is the demarcation of the curriculum in terms of specific subject areas and a compartmentalization of the realms of knowledge and everyday life. The process of teaching is not mere transmission of knowledge.
It is the means to shape attitudes and build values; it is a fundamental part of the larger process of social change. The education system has to have a more fruitful purpose in the society than just keeping a handful of people in jobs.
As Malcom Forbes said, "the purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one." Somewhere over the years, we have lost sight of this fundamental aspect, and efforts by organizations such as AVEHI can be considered as the first steps in re-discovering this aspect, with the larger goal of working with government schoolteachers to improve their teaching and to make their classrooms freer and more child-friendly.
This will hopefully lead to a more healthy society, where intellectual satisfaction is provided to all and a viable program of living where mutually beneficial relationships are established with other human beings, groups of people and with nature.