Work Centered Education

The concept of work centered education enunciated in the NCF is basically different from Vocational Education as well as from Gandhiji’s Basic Education. Here the slogan is not ‘learn while you earn’, but ‘learn through doing’. There are not many schools or experiments based on this principle. Tagore started Santhiniketan, with a some what similar idea. However his emphasis was on the aesthetic – cultural – spiritual development of the child and was at logger heads with the commonly held views on development. Same was the case of Gandhiji’s Nai Taleem. It could have produced leaders to build the new society. But that was not what was attempted. It tried to make a universal education model out of it and hence failed.

If work centered education is to be developed as a pedagogically more effective model, those who received such an education have to be superior to others in all the commonly accepted basic parameters of education – in cognitive, psychomotor and affective domains. The children should perform better in public examination, in which ever manner it is held. There should be a large number of points / factors for comparison, to obtain the confidence of the public. It shall not be a ‘stand alone system’ with its own curriculum and evaluation. It should stand the test of a some what hostile public scrutiny.

The pilot experimental project out lined below is conceived, not as a stand alone system, but as one which can be universalized.

Here nature is the biggest text book
  Productive work is an essential ingredient of academic learning
  Theory and practice always go together
  All children in the age group 3 to 17 (-2 to +2) are involved.
  Agricultural fields, diaries poultries, piggery’s agricultural ponds, bazaar, repair shops, factories etc - all function as curricular centres.
  The students and teachers are involved in both physical and intellectual labour.
  Artisans, peasants, fisher folk, mechanics etc to play the role of teachers.
  The children are evaluated, besides internally, externally too and compared with those from schools functioning in the conventional way to prove the point that they are not simply different, but in fact ‘better’.
  The teachers will be trained and retrained to use nature as a text book, productive work as laboratory experiments and peasants, mechanics, artisans etc as resource persons.
  The school will have, on long term lease or on agreement with private owners, cultivable land, ponds, diaries, workshops etc. About 2-3 acres of land for 100 students.
  All the children will be provided with good quality, balanced midday – meals – about 800-1000 Kilo-calories. Those children wanting breakfast and evening Tiffin will be provided with that too.
  This is a programme for the complete development of the child – physical, intellectual and emotional development. Particular care will be taken for the last one – emotional development optimism, tolerance, humanism etc becoming its key words.
  Being a programme for ‘total care’ part of the household expenses will be shifted into education. The over all community expenditure will go up as it should.

This will be a joint project of the gram / block panchayat and the School Management Committee. Instead of establishing a new set of schools for this, existing schools with enthusiastic and a committed management committee can take up this. A higher secondary school (class 9 – 12), and feeding elementary schools (class 6-8), primary schools (class1-5) and pre-primary schools / anganwadis (age 3 to 5) can form a complex. Such a complex can have any where between 1000 – 3000 children in it. The different stages could be in one location or in the proximity. There will be combined school / complex management committee which will oversee all the aspects of the project. The system will have

1. 20 - 25 acres of land on long lease (10-15 years) or on long term agreement based on detailed MOU with private cultivators. 3-4 acres of this land will be wet land – paddy. Rest irrigable dry land for pulses, banana, tapioca or potato and vegetables. 2. A diary of 25 cows – 16 milking and 9 dry 3. It will have a pond of at least ½ acre as part of wet land or as irrigation + pisci-culture pond at the highest point in the dry land, which also act as rain water harvest. 4. It will have piggery and poultry units. 5. A work shop 6. A 10KW gassifier based generating set to supply electricity to the school and neighbouring house holds. 7. It will have arrangements with a number of shop owners selling grocery, vegetable, stationary medicines, cloth, shoe, furniture, vessels etc. The shop owners will act on resource persons in commence, economics, taxation, commodity diversity and sources etc. 8. Besides shop owners, amongst guest faculty there will be 3-4 cultivators, 1-2 pisci-culture 2-3 animal rearers, 2-3 mechanics etc. Their services could be honorary or in lieu of services rendered to them or on honorarium basis.

There will be a very detailed class by class, month by month, academic plan on how to integrate field work with textual curriculum. A teacher training programme too will be made.

On an average we can assume that each category will put in a certain amount of labour which can be compensated through a share in the products.

Age Group 3 to 10 - Nil Age Group 10 – 13 - 100 hours / year Age Group 13-17 - 150 hours / year Teachers - 150 hours / year Parents - 150 hours / year

(If the parents don’t want to put in labour, they can contribute @ Rs.15-20/hour.)