Indian Educational Thought and Experiments: A ReviewAuthor(s): Sureshachandra ShuklaSource: Comparative Education, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1983), pp. 59-71Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3098449 .Accessed: 30/03/2011 21:14

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Comparative Education Volume 19 No. 1 1983 59

Indian Educational Thought and

Experiments: a review

SURESHACHANDRA SHUKLA

Experiments and thought in Indian education during the British period can only be under- stood as responses and reactions to the situation then prevalent. Each particular response varied both with the social and geographical conditions, which were different in each case, and with the value or ideological orientation of each thinker or movement. To understand these different responses in terms of an alternative future that we might visualise today could possibly imply a teleological position: namely that the past has been moving in the direction of a distant future, and also that that future is the same as the alternative future we visualise today.

However, it is much more urgent and plausible to consider the future an open category, subject to individual and group decisions, no matter how limited by the determining circumstances of the past. The following review of Indian educational thought and experi- ments will, therefore, merely provide a background of material from which the builders of the future may select ideas of their choice, if any, based on current values or ideas. Alternatively, these could be viewed as concepts or ideas which may be considered to have so powerfully influenced current trends that they have still to be taken into account in designing a future, even if we have to modify or negate them.

As can be understood even theoretically, Indian responses in the area of education to the situation in the British period more often than not occurred in the idiom of the system of formal education built up as a consequence of the British attempt to draw on western experience to formulate a system of education for India. This would answer the needs of the colonial socio-economic and political system established under their rule.

One implication of the foregoing statement is that the system built up in India was neither a straight implantation of the Western educational system-if there is one single prototype of Western education-nor wholly a conscious design to serve the purposes of the British East India Company or the British Government alone. It was: (a) an adaptation (b) by persons drawing on their Western experiences, primarily British (c) responding to the needs of British administration in India, (d) integrating such existing previous structures into the new system as were functional and (e) adjusting to such pressures and demands as they had to meet from within sections of Indian society.

The second crucial implication is that the Indian response to Western education was mainly in a form in which it accepted the basic programmes and structures of 'western' education. Any new and indigenous ideas that it might be inspired by, were attempted within this framework. With rare exceptions, confined to structuring individual or particular institutions, there was no departure from basic type, from the essential form and structure of the system of schooling and education being built round British rule in the country. The most significant dissent from this

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system, and constantly the most large-scale failure, in this respect was the plan of Basic Education sponsored by Gandhi. The history and fate of Basic Education (see below) merely illustrate the essential premise of this paragraph, namely the strength, durability and pervasi- veness of the British-sponsored western educational system. This arose both from: (a) the internal linkages within the system (e.g. between one stage and another through examination and syllabuses and between administration, "affiliating" universities and individual institu- tions through inspection); and (b) linkages of the system to occupational hierarchies as well as to status systems, both traditional and emergent. These manifold linkages ensured that even if there was a certain change (for instance, in the occupational system through a certain rise in engineering employment) its influence for change on the system of formal education was held in check by the continuance of an older linkage between education and the status system in traditional society or under British rule, and between different elements of the educational system such as examinations and rules for entry to the next higher stage.

A PROPOSED TYPOLOGY

Indian educational thought and experiment could be classified according the following tendencies, not all mutually exclusive:

(1) The desire to complete and carry to its logical conclusion the beginnings made by the system offormal education. Among these would be included Gokahle's demand for universalisa- tion of primary education and, in a certain sense, the whole demand for technical education made by men like Madan Malaviya (Banares Hindu University) or J. N. Tata (Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore).

(2) The desire to invest the system of formal education with more indigenous content. Among these would be included the recurring demand for the teaching of Indian languages and literature, for the use of Indian languages as medium of instruction, for Indianisation of the teaching of history and generally for the introduction of nationalistic values in the educational curriculum (though this was diversified into many streams with the rise and diversification of the National political movement).

(3) The desire to introduce religion or religion-based culture as an important element in education. There are many variations of this from Aligarh to Deoband among Muslims, from Benares Hindu University to the Gurukuls of Arya Samaj among Hindus, among others.

(4) The desire to orient education entirely towards a nationalist, political movement and associated change in the content of education exemplified by the Vidyapiths and Jamia Millia thrown up in the 1920s.

(5) The 'social change' orientation, e.g. in womens' education, in the educationally rather weak working class, peasant or socialist parties or in lower caste movements etc.

(6) The desire to create a new kind of man. Included here would be Tagore (as the most outstanding example) who pleaded for greater closeness to nature and less concession to the pressures of formalisation, whether in school or in the economy and administration. Gandhi would be subsumed in this category but in a very different sense. He wanted to create a very different kind of society and wanted basic education to function towards that end by creating the Sarvodaya man (see the glossary following the Notes).

(7) The desire to improve the processes of teaching and learning by paying more attention to the child and his stages of development, by reducing the stress on bookishness and formalism imposed by examinations and related devices.

Indian Educational Thought 61

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE BRITISH SYSTEM

Before we proceed to a discussion of these tendencies (which, let us repeat, are not all mutually exclusive) it may be useful to specify the fundamentals of the system that the British organised. It will be seen that the structural transformation was a concomitant of the unification of market, administrative and political systems, in short, of modernisation, if we divest that word of its value connotation [2]. The essential structural characteristics of this system were specifically marked by rationalisation of the processes of teaching and learning, comparable to the rationalisation brought about by machine industry as against cottage industry.

(1) Introduction of the "class" system [3] in schools, grading children by age or achievement. This contrasts with the peripatetic teacher, teaching an undifferentiated group of chil- dren, who was characteristic of widespread indigenous instruction in the pre-British period.

(2) Use of standardised books and centralised examinations, whether oral or written.

(3) Use offull time professional teachers-and of professional teachers alone-for purposes of instruction.

(4) Articulation of curriculum between one stage and another and the consequent development of a continuous, sequential, internally interlinked educational system in which the child progresses from one stage to the other. This contrasts with the absolute lack of linkage between the indigenous elementary instruction of a quasi-vocational character and the higher learning of the madrasas or tols (see glossary). The different types of institutions in the pre-British period catered for different populations. One tendency resulting from the emergence of the new system was the gradual coalescence of different groups of school- going population into a single clientele of a unified educational system. The system thus had the tendency to be uniform.

Besides these formal structural characteristics of the educational system, certain character- istics in terms of ideas and content may also be noted.

(1) Early schooling, which was semi-vocational [4] and short in duration in the indigenous period, became more discipline-based and preparatory in character.

(2) The development of vocational and even professional education is seen as a branching-off from the main educational system.

(3) The liboral and rational, as well British hegemonistic, ideas of nineteenth century Britain were taught.

Those characteristics in terms of ideas were modified, when they were not totally opposed, by Indian leaderships. Some of the characteristics of the Indian response which took place within the framework of the official system, and somewhat modified it even during the period of British rule are:

(1) Scientific rationalism and egalitarian socialism, tempered with a relative reluctance to

probe Indian social structure or British Imperialism too deeply,

(2) A continuous conflict as well as combination between tradition and modernisation. The differing balances between the two poles of this dichotomy are represented by men like Radhakrishnan and Nehru and Gandhi. In each case, the essential concern is with a definition and strengthening of identity--the identity of the Indian. In each, reliance on the past, on tradition, is needed in order to find a base for this identity and in each case its modification by contemporary and modernistic influences is attempted. (Radhakrish- nan looks more backward than forward, while Nehru appears to do the opposite. But both of them look in both these directions and in fact their visions of the present and of

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the desirable future are different, Nehru representing a greater fascination with socialism and science.)

(3) The position of the individual in relation to his group or collectivity. This exhibits some emphases which are more collectivistic. From the view point of education, the stress, the change towards individuality and the need to recognise the individual in the process of education, even when it is intended not to stress it too strongly in the goals, is seen in men like Zakir Hussain and Saiyidain as well as in Gandhi. But Gandhi's strong collective orientations are much more earth-based and closer to the common man than those of the formal educationists. He stresses the individual least of them all, notwithstanding his appeal to the 'inner voice'.

(4) The socialists [5] seem to have had very little to contribute because they were: (a) caught up with modernism, and (b) preoccupied with the tremendous problems of organising and conducting a minority-based mass movement of workers, sometimes peasants, tribals or scheduled castes, with the instrumentality of an essentially middle-class 'modernised' leadership. They had, therefore, neither the time and energy nor the theoretical-ideologi- cal motivation for defining distinct educational positions or conducting educational movements. Exceptions here would be the movement of tribal education (Thana) in the 1930s and 1940s and some similar examples.

THE CASE OF BASIC EDUCATION

To illustrate the foregoing propositions the most instructive case would be that of Basic Education. The movement for Basic Education started not from within the educational system for its reform alone. It came about as a consequence of Gandhi's attempts to restructure Indian education, in keeping with his ideals for Indian society. It is, of course, also entirely possible that while working out his Nai Taleem (New Education) at Wardha in conjunction with his plan for a Sarvodaya style of living, he was not necessarily thinking of it as the major prototype of Indian education in general. But when Congress came to power in a number of provinces, that faced Congress-and also Gandhi-with the practical problem of providing mass education economically. The immediate push in favour of self-sufficient craft-centred basic education may have been one of Gandhi's highly practical responses to an actual situation which, incidentally, also happened to coincide with a long-term ideal-in this case, the educational ideal of his ideal society, even though he must have been realistic enough not to imagine that the whole of Indian society was moving in that direction. Support for Basic Education came from progressive educationalists like Zakir Hussain and Saiyidain [6]. Their essential inclinations were not primarily in the direction of Gandhi's type of new society but in the direction of individualising and humanising normal classroom and school education. Thus we see three sets of forces coinciding in a single movement for Basic Education: (a) the pull of an ideal society; (b) the immediate administrative financial needs of the newly emerging Indian administration; and (c) individualistic-humanistic tendencies in educational reform. The proponents of each of these courses paid homage to, and made compromises with, the others. Thus the Gandhians conceded the need for individualisation and humanisation; the educators accepted the need for social change, however grudgingly and in however limited a measure; and the administrator-politicians (e.g. B. G. Kher) accepted both of the foregoing for their immediate practical objective, namely an economical scheme of education. This led all of them to support the movement for Basic Education.

If the pedagogic essence of Basic Education is examined, the hard-core emphasis on manual and observation training, social development and the development of new values appropriate to a democratic society are common to all supporters of Basic Education. Except the Gandhians, all others also subscribed to the idea of an industrial society. The orthodox Gandhians have given a very central place to work, but they prescribe that work should be

Indian Educational Thought 63

such as is carried on in a low-technology society in common by every member or participant. The other educators differ from them both in the extent to which they consider work to be central to the learning process and in the kind and technology of work which is introduced in education.

It will also be noticed that the common core of agreement on Basic Education is not very different from the kind of changes which came about in school education in Western Europe as well as in United States and, finally, even in the very different process of social transformation in the USSR, when those nations set about industrialising themselves. The emergence of Basic Education may thus be seen as the Indian variant of an educational transition common to all societies as they embark on the modern, the industrial mode of production and its concomitant-a complex, large-scale society. The difference in the Indian case (in the educational field as in many other spheres of life) appears to be that political change (namely national independence and representative government): (a) forms a larger part of the change than does industrialisation and economic development, and (b) precedes it. This difference may account for the fact that formal political change to democracy is not necessarily translated in social terms to more individualised or more equal social relationships. It is also not supported by a large base of industrial growth; therefore changes initiated in the political process are not carried through into work and other social relationships or sustained over a long period of time. Because of the weakness of the momentum of this pressure on education, the depth of change in education is minimal. The inertia of an existing and continuous system of education persists with greater strength and ultimately prevails over the trends of change.

Once this fundamental fact is recognised, the other incidental relationships of Basic Education to other societal and educational factors as well as the modest degree of its success, are seen in clear perspective. Some of the perceived failures of Basic Education have been as follows:

(1) Students were found ill-prepared for the next higher stages of education. This is understandable in a situation where small units of industrial growth mean fewer occupational and educational opportunities to emphasise the skills and personality development which Basic Education might otherwise have brought about [7].

(2) Techniques of correlation and teaching materials were poorly developed. This is easy to understand when society's demand for skills and trained manpower does not emphasise sufficiently the kinds of skills developed in Basic Education, or for that matter in any activity- or work-centred education.

(3) Proficiency in English was inadequate in children from Basic schools. When a society retains a hierarchical, social structure in which the bureaucracy based upon competence in English is the strongest element, the skills needed by and for it are bound to be considered important.

(4) The relation of work-centred education to life did not appear strong enough. This is intelligible in a situation where life outside the school had not-and, alas, still has not-yet changed in the direction in which the theorists of Basic Education expected it to change.

(5) The higher values of art and literature did not appear sufficiently strong. This is again understood in terms of the gap between the higher elite culture of present-day society on the one hand, and the culture of work and the common people on the other, which alone "could be emphasised by the purest form of Basic Education. The nearest approach to this

being successfully done is the cultural and educational revolution in the People's Republic of China.

It was argued notably by Dr Shrimali [8], then Education Minister in the Government of India, that Basic Education is not to be linked inextricably to the Gandhian ideal of society

64 S. Shukla

but that it was preparation for skills and habits appropriate to a modem industrial society. Had India industrialised on a large scale so as to make industry the major component of its economic life, the success of Basic Education from this point of view would have been apparent. As, however, industry had not become the major element in economic life, this did not occur.

The recent shift from Basic Education (in which work is at the centre of curricula and is introduced at an early stage of education) to Work Experience [9] (in which work is one of the experiences but not the core of the educational curriculum and is introduced at a later stage of education) can be seen as an adaptation of the ideas of socialist countries where advanced modem science and technology are seen to be the main form of economic activity. In this effort as well, it is likely that there will be difficulties and deficiencies similar to those encountered by Basic Education since the industrial sector of Indian life is still a minority sector, and culture and society remain dominated by professional and bureaucratic values. This trend is all the more aggravated by acute unemployment because in this situation the search for employment, when selection continues to be based on criteria connected with the old education, further intensifies the demand for traditional education and not of work-centred education. It is, indeed, correct that appropriate manpower studies linked in quantitative as well as qualitative terms to the specifics of economic development patterns could locate much more employment to which education could appropriately relate, and could also indicate the kinds of work that would profitably be introduced in education whether for vocational or for disciplinary purposes. However, the total quantum of additional employment located even by these studies is likely to be small, and the influence on preferences within the school curriculum are still likely to be modest.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOLING

Some of the other more significant episodes in the history of educational thought and experiments in modem India may now be reviewed by way of illustrating the lessons for designing a future.

When the British started building up the base of the new system of formal education--of which the superstructure emerged in the form of the three affiliating universities in 1857-they sought to integrate and incorporate the existing indigenous elementary schools within a uniform system leading up to the University through the high schools. Throughout the nineteenth century one notices two conflicting elements in British policy; namely, the desire to make elementary schools functional to occupations arid the desire to make them a better preparation for the later stages of education. This meant, initially, that reading and writing for lower level administration was to some extent counterposed to more liberal cultural content. Towards the end of the century, as the higher and secondary stages became firmly established, the latter trend became stronger. However, in this period, particuarly because of the collapse of the rural economy (dramatically illustrated by the famines) and also because of a faint emerging awareness of the needs of industry, the practical aspects of an elementary school curriculum again received official attention, though without any substantial practical success.

The indigenous elementary schools had a largely vocational character--though the picture varied from one part of the country to another depending on the extent to which brahmans used these schools--in as much as they taught agricultural or business accounts along with correspondence and keeping of records. However, in many parts of the country, for instance, in Bengal, they also had a more distinctly cultural character. The elementary schools, which were promoted through the system of inspection and promulgation of textbooks by the Government, did not appear sufficiently cultural to sensitive Indians like Iswar Chandra Vidya Sagar. As an Inspector of schools he therefore sought to introduce Bengali literature and even Sanskrit into these elementary schools. This trend was not sustained over a long period

Indian Educational Thought 65

by official British policy when the effort was more and more to reorient the existing indigenous schools, themselves having a quasi-vocational character, towards the administrative and revenue system established by the Government. Some new vocational content replaced the old and the system of payments by results tended to emphasise the mastery of prescribed content which would be more or less uniform in all the schools. This had very little cultural content.

Later in the century, particularly after the famines of the 1870s, the effort to rejuvenate the rural economy by paying attention to handicraft industry, agriculture and the improvement of revenue records led to efforts for introduction of certain elements of agricultural and even object lessons and nature studies in the rural elementary schools. There was even a suggestion from the Director of Education in the Punjab to adjust timings and holidays to suit the needs of farmers. The later efforts and directives of Lord Curzon to orient elementary education in a rural and practical direction are well known. All of these have, however, come to very little, and elementary education has retained its primarily verbal and bookish character. This is easily understood in terms of: (a) the weakness of effort in schooling; (b) the weak influence of productive activities on education; and (c) the stronger pull exercised by the high school and college as these became more widespread and more strongly established. The strength of the last factor is illustrated by several facts from the history of nineteenth century education. In Uttar Pradesh (then North Western Provinces) and the Punjab, where for many reasons higher education in English developed slowly, the influence of the traditional Persian or the business scripts of Kaithi and lande respectively (see glossary), remained strong for a long time. Indeed, even government employment could often be obtained without a formal English education. By contrast, in Bengal, the absorption of indigenous schools into the government system proceded much more rapidly [12].

Gokhale's argument in favour of allowing the municipalities to enforce compulsory educa- tion can most justifiably be viewed as a liberal attempt to make India similar to the Western liberal societies-an unsuccessful effort, for India under British rule was not advancing in that direction. Gokhale's policy was the sheet anchor of successive Indian governmental efforts in the 1920s and 1930s, and remains to this day. However, by itself it does not represent any major change in terms of educational ideas and programmes. For that, India had to wait for Gandhi, whose contribution has already been reviewed.

'NATIONALISTIC' TRENDS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The awakening of indigenous consciousness under the British period was sometimes expressed in a religious idiom. In terms of higher education, the Aligarh Muslim University as well as Banaras Hindu University represent, however, a secular but sectarian approach. Of these, the Aligarh experiment [13] does not represent any major departure from the educational type laid down by the British. One only notes with some unhappiness that the educational prototype towards which the Muslim Anglo-Oriental College under English principals developed was most like a residential public school in Britain, with emphasis on 'character'; it was less oriented towards intellectual enquiry and the creation of new knowledge than even the desiccated Indian university system. The concession to religious education in both these cases was nominal. The reference to religion appears to have had largely a psychological justifica- tion in terms of establishing identity more than anything else. A similar effort at a much lower level will be seen in the Shibil Institution at Azamgarh [14] which combined also the upward social mobility aspirations of a low Muslim caste, the Rautaras under the leadership of the theologian Maulana Shibil Nomani who came from modest social origins and had worked with Sir Syed at Aligarh. His dissatisfaction with the upper caste orientations of Sir Syed expressed itself also in a certain initial disenchantment with the British, but this was only short-lived. The institution developed as a 'loyal' one and conformed to type.

The Madrassa at Deoband [15] represents an effort to revive Islamic learning in an anti-

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imperialist framework [15]. Some similar motivations combined with the nationalist movement gave rise to institutions like Jamia Millia Islamia which, however, belongs to another group of institutions-those thrown up by the nationalist movement in the twentieth century.

Another important direction of Indian experiments and thought in education is the desire to create an entirely indigenous type of institution both in structure and content such as the Gurukuls started by the Arya Samaj Movement. The Gurukuls became a minority even in the Arya Samaj educational movement, while the college party dominated Arya Samaj educa- tional thinking and promoted traditional colleges. It is easy to see that in terms of actual content of schooling as well as the style of skills acquired, the Gurukul produced persons unsuitable for society under the British period. These institutions, therefore, did not prosper.

The Jamia as well as Gujarat and Kashi Vidyapith were genuine efforts to take higher education out of the established routine of government-sponsored universities. In the Vidya- piths, an attempt was made to bring the curriculum nearer to Gandhian ideals of rural service and Sarvodaya. Hence, greater attention was given to social sciences in practice. All three of these institutions, particularly in the post-independence period, developed an interest in areas like social work, adult education and pedagogical reform. This can be viewed as an attempt to relate learning to life more directly than the classical university would. However, over a period of a quarter-century after independence they have all conformed to type. The fundamental weakness here seems to have been that the theoretical structure of modern knowledge requires an institution more like the modern university than like these institutions. On the other hand, the community service ideal for higher education needs much more than they could or did develop either in terms of intellectual cultivation or in terms of research, even for applied and practical work, whether in agriculture or industry or in the social sciences.

There is, of course, a more fundamental reason for their relative failure in the post- independence period. These institutions could have reached their ultimate success only in the context of a radical change in society-even if they had provided an adequate base in terms of knowledge and institutional infra-structure. The rapid expansion of conventional higher education linked to bureaucratic-professional occupations even after independence, on the one hand, and the emergence of Indian Institutes of Technology and agricultural universities etc. linked to high, modern technology on the other hand, have resulted in the neglect of and low social support for higher learning based on social and productive work in a low-technology environment.

The limited contributions of these institutions, however, lie in drawing attention to certain basic propositions of the nationalist movement in education: namely (a) emphasis on Indian languages; (b) emphasis on linking learning to the service of society; and (c) attempts to rub out the boundaries of the intellectual disciplines so as to merge them with each other.

In the foregoing paragraphs, there might appear a certain suggestion that the development of modem western-style education has been a regrettable development in Indian society. This point requires to be examined on a fundamental plane. So long as western or Soviet development (including their industrial and political development) was the sole model for the future, the emergence of the kind of educational system that has developed was inevitable and even desirable. Formalisation, systematisation, even bureaucratisation, characterise all institu- tions in modern society. The requirements for cumulative, sustained growth in intellectual institutions necessitate similar developments. (It is quite another matter that in the Indian case, because of retarded, colonial economic development, the institution of modern education became distorted by pressures of unemployment and a unproductive colonial culture.) It is only in the perspective of society alternative in all dimensions (namely technological/adminis- trative, interpersonal relationships) that one can visualise an alternative in education. Social alternatives such as Gandhi's have so far been viewed both as visionary and unpractical, even as unrealistic. It is only in the last half-decade or so, particularly since the Club of Rome [17] studies, that the present trend of social and technological development has been seriously

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questioned as itself being unrealistic for mankind, besides being: (a) exploitative vis-ac-vis the poor in all societies and the poorer societies of the world taken as a whole, and (b) productive of alienation in the human individual. It is this dire prospect which has promoted the search for alternatives in society-alternatives, whose practicality is not yet established but is still aspired to. It is only in the context of such social alternatives that other alternatives such as in education can be visualised.

OTHER TRENDS

In secondary education, ever since the Education Commission of 1882, the desire to limit the expansion of higher education as well as the hoped-for diversification of occupations open to school leavers have led to various schemes of diversification, starting from the Clerical and Commercial Examination (Punjab 1890s) and other similar attempts in other provinces. It is open to examination how far this is realisable even in a limited measure dependent on the degree of industrial and other development. The lengthening of the span of secondary education starting from the Calcutta University Commission (1917-19) has been another persistent objective in this area. One suspects that this response emerges as much from the labour-surplus economy that India has as from the desire to place higher learning on an extended and broadened academic base. Involved, also, is the issue whether the university is seen as an elite (albeit intellectually elite) institution in line with the European ideal or as a research-cum-service institution on the US model. Against this background, the liberal- vocational dichotomy has persisted in the field of secondary education throughout almost a century-both under imperialism and in the period of independent national development. A resolution of the dichotomy linking all education, including secondary education, much more closely to development work in the immediate environment would be realistic mainly in the context of an alternative model of society [18].

The public school in pre-British India can be seen as an experiment of a reactionary kind-an attempt to build a 'ruling class'-more specifically a subordinate ruling group-out of the old landed and princely families in combination with the sons and daughters of the professional and bureaucratic classes. This experiment prospered well; the vast proliferation of boarding as well as day public schools (expensive English medium schools) in the period after independence reflects the kind of society which has been built.

The few efforts of the oppressed social groups are represented by institutions like SNDT Women's University, Mahatma Phule's and Ambedkar's movement for the education of the scheduled castes of the Maharashtra and more recently the work amongst tribes in Thana by Parulekars under the influence of Marxist thought and the communist movement. The first of these represents no major educational innovation except that special attention is paid to women, a traditionally backward group in Indian society. Women's education also received a fillip from other sources such as Gandhi's movement and the nationalists. It has, however, been based primarily on acceptance and adaptation of the traditional role of woman rather than its radical modification [19].

The struggle of the backward classes for education was successful, more particularly in Maharashtra. This action again represented no new design in education but only an attempt to bring a backward group on a par with the rest of society. The educational movement combined with the struggles of the tribes in Thana involved only a small amount of literacy and a similarly modest amount of vocational training along with a very substantial component of political education, most of which was obtained through struggles in combination with study circles, night classes and group activities. The unrecorded history of numerous peasant and working-class movements in India is replete with numerous similar educational activities. These represent a very clear departure from the prototype of the formal educational institution and may offer very substantial elements of education for an alternative future where non-

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formal and life-long education, as well as close links of learning with life, could be important elements.

ADULT EDUCATION AND LITERACY [20] The history of adult literacy is a chequered and inconclusive one. The movement of 'Each one, Teach one' launched after the Congress Government took power in 1937 had not been a great success. It was seen at a later date, immediately after independence, that presumably literacy would succeed well when combined with a wider movement for better living and the acquisition of some elementary social and vocational skills, e.g. for social education. Still later it was recognised that for literacy to be successful it should be functional; that is, combined with preparation either for productive activity or for civic and social participation. As, however, the experience of the intensive agricultural programme and farm-oriented functional literacy as well as of farmer education has shown, the number of people covered by such programmes for successful economic production is a very small fraction of the total popula- tion. The programme, therefore, in any case, restricts itself to a few, although the type of educational work undertaken, particularly in functional literacy, is of a novel kind with high potential for development in an alternative future for India.

As the problem of mass education for Indians is crucial to any alternative future, it may be desirable to discuss two or three aspects of the literacy question at greater length. First, the question of its extent and universality: India remains the largest illiterate country of the world even though it possesses one of the largest stocks of trained scientific manpower in the world. It bears repetition that while the percentage of literates in the population went up from 17 to 24 in the decade of the 1950s, it rose up to only 29-5 in the 1960s. The rate of growth of literacy is slowing down and India is heading towards a plateau of about 40-50% literacy. The prospect is one of permanent illiteracy for half of India's society. Many feel that slowing down the population's growth rate may moderate the acuteness of this problem. But it appears much more plausible that the factors of poverty and cultural gap (or deprivation) are as closely associated with illiteracy as they are with drop-outs in school. Unless people are drawn into the exchange of the market economy or the web of literate communication in administration or politics, it is not likely that there will be either the motivation to learn and/or retain reading and writing skills. Campaigns for large-scale literacy work may succeed for a while; but, to be lasting they will have to be linked with economic or political or other activity in the life of the people.

An attempt was made to understand the question of the extent of literacy by Dr Adiseshiah among others in UNESCO; the initial premise appears to have been that the very idea of illiteracy was a scourge and a disease. The experts finally defined a minimum circle of literacy based on development projects either in agriculture or in industry. This, as we have noted earlier, is confined to about 1-2% of the population--far short not only of universal literacy but also of the critical level of about 40% which historically in many societies has produced the dynamism required to move society over the 'development hump'. It remains to be examined how far the 40% or any similar critical magnitude is applicable to a society like India with such acute inequalities and rigidities of social structure, despite such a high development of higher education and industrialisation in terms of absolute magnitude. That development still represents a very minor fraction of either the total population or the total economy.

In this stark and discouraging context, the prospect of a life-long education and a learning society appears distant and visionary. It looks like transplantation ,of the next stage of the developed societies into the context of a highly underdeveloped one. The only likely conse- quences of such educational concepts in a society of unequal educational distribution, not to speak of socio-economic disparities, is the further accentuation of these disparities, thus

Indian Educational Thought 69

providing more education for the already educated while failing to attend to the task of essential minimum learning for the illiterates.

In this context, the question of choosing between elementary schooling and adult literacy, or devising an optimum mix of the two for the most rapid advance towards universal education, is a question awaiting our attention. Choices in the past have been of an either/or kind. This is perhaps inappropriate. Also, a dynamic climate of change in society and a release of the initiative of masses of people, primarily of the illiterate and deprived, in favour of their own interests, has in history been the major, almost the only force for universalisation of literacy and education in such underdeveloped contexts. Again, the school certainly has to take on many more functions than ensuring the mere three R's of its own children. It has to become the centre of change in the community and to link with other centres of change. In many ways this is nothing new; it was attempted successively in social education, community development and later agricultural improvement programmes. The paucity of results suggests the existence of recalcitrant barriers, essentially of the socio-economic variety, which hardly any concepts and designs of education by themselves appear capable of crossing.

CONCLUSIONS

It is not directly within the scope of this paper to discuss technical and vocational education. However, it is useful to note that research and development has been concentrated in India outside the formal educational institutions, and in laboratories, special institutes and councils, particularly since independence. One consequence of this has been the lack of creativity within education itself. However, it is a point worthy of re-examination whether higher education and learning should not be more closely involved with the world of work as well as related research. Experience of agricultural universities, Institutes of Higher Technology, and other technical institutions will hopefully be reviewed by others better qualified. It may soon be possible to work out, in the light of their experience, the prospects of involving higher learning with life to a greater extent than now.

Leaving aside this important consideration, which will also have implications for the methods and design of education in schools, we may state the following tentative findings:

(1) The essential prototype of education as represented by the university and the formal school system remained the stongest element throughout the history of Indian education. Attempts to depart from this type have had little success.

(2) To a certain extent, the development of modem knowledge necessitates the growth of institutions of this kind, and these need not be considered evil in themselves-although, it would be desirable for these institutions to be much more productive of new knowledge and much more relevant in terms of being connected with continuous productive and social life.

(3) In an under-developed economy like India's, unemployment and under-employment are widespread phenomena, while the growth of literacy and education is essentially related to the modern sector of the economy and covers only a small fraction of the population. The prospects of universal education are therefore bleak, unless an alternative technology and related forms of organisation and of mobilisation of people are devised. This itself may be dependent on structural changes in society. Given these, the school will and should be restructured to take on most change- and community-oriented characteristics. The development of new forms of education (such as adult and continuing education, work-oriented and functional literacy) is necessary, but has been weak. In earlier history, linking of learning to life may have been somehow lacking in design; but the fundamen- tal causes for failure lie in the character of the development of Indian society which did not accept the relationship of learning to life. On the contrary, it emphasised learning as a

70 S. Shukla

medium of social ascent and mobility, itself perhaps inevitable in a hierarchical and slow- growth situation.

(4) Efforts at giving an indigenous orientation to education in the form of language or religion or anti-imperialist content of history and social studies have been similarly unsuccessful and for similar reasons.

(5) The large expansion of research and of science and technological education in the post- independence period represent a substantial healthy departure from the whole system. However, its magnitude will remain necessarily small, in direct proportion to the low industrial and technological content of economic activity.

(6) A larger programme of life-long education and of learning to live will be possible only in a society, all of which is subject to continuous change either in its economic activities or in terms of social relationships. This is, however, still possible only for a small fraction of society.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

[1] This notion is similar to, though not identical with, the concept of 'genetic imprint' in education spelled out by Rudolph & Rudolph in Politics and Education in India (Delhi, 1973) or the idea of 'intertia' in education in my paper Demographic aspects of educational planning, Educational Sciences, Vol. II, No. 1 (Oxford, Pergamon Press, 1967).

[2] Literature on modernisation is prolix. I have stated my position in relation to education in 'Modernisation and education' in: SRIVASTAVA, S. K. (Ed.) Tradition and Modernisation (Allahabad, 1976).

[3] See my Elementary Education in British India during the Later Nineteenth Century (Delhi Central Institute of Education, 1959) for a detailed delineation of this process. This position is different from the note that J. P. Naik & R. V. Parulekar have taken of the demise of indigenous education under British rule. See NURULLAH, S. & NAIK, J. P. (1940) A History of Education in British India (Bombay, Macmillan) and PARULEKAR, R. V. (Ed.) (1959) Indigenous Education in Bombay (Bombay).

[4] BASU, A. N. (Ed.) (1935) Adam's Reports on indigenous institution in Bengal (Calcutta). [5] UPRETI, M. C. (1971) Political ideas and education in India, unpublished doctoral dissertation, (M.S. University of

Baroda, Centre of Advanced Study), was unable to locate any specific contributions of socialists to educational thought and practice-in spite of considerable effort.

[6] This was, indeed, very substantially due to the poor equipment and teachers for Basic schools, and the relatively low social groupings among whom Basic education was spread. However, even allowing for these factors, children from Basic or any other actively or work-centred curriculum would initially appear poorly equipped for the next higher stage. Even when, as the Eight Year Study of progressive school alumni of the USA had demonstrated, the cognitive, intellectual and social development of these children is not only equivalent to, but higher than, many who have passed through traditional curricula, their initial assessment by teachers of the next highest stage would show them as poorly equipped in terms of the specific demands of that stage, e.g. formal learning and language, mathematical and other due abstract skills. The rigid external examination-centred structure of Indian education emphasised this fact much more than would be the case in work-flexible and more multi-channelled systems which are much more likely to develop in socially more open and industrially more developed contexts.

[7] See, for instance, Basic National Education (Wardha, 1938) or Zakir Husain's addresses to Ali India Nai Talim Conference. Also SALYIDAIN, K. G. (1958) Education, Culture and the Social Order (Bombay).

[8] Ministry of Education, Government of India (1956) Handbook for Teachers of Basic Schools. [9] Curriculum of the Ten Year School (Delhi, National Council of Educational Research and Training, 1975) and

Education and National Development Report of the Education Commission (Government of India, 1960). [10] I have discussed the relation of work and unemployment to education of higher levels in, 'Education elements of

a cultural policy-a socialist perspective', in: SATISH, SABERWAL (Ed.) Towards a Cultural Policy (1973). [11] SHUKLA (1959); see Note [3]. [12] Ibid. [13] See my 'Muslims and education' in: IMAM, ZAFAR (Ed.) Muslims in India (Delhi Orient, Longmans, 1975). [14] AHMAD, NIAZ (1975) The Shibil institution: a Case Study in Muslim education in eastern Uttar Pradesh,

unpublished doctoral dissertation (Delhi, Jamia Millia Islamia). [15] FARUQI, ZIAUL HASAN (1968) Deoband and the Rise of Pakistan (Bombay) and The Madrassa of Deoband.

Modern Asian Studies (1976). [16] The dissatisfaction of radical Muslim leaders such as Muhammed Ali with this and their move to develop a

Muslim university on an Islamic rather than Western intellectual base is well-known. Some of this later spilled over into the movement for the foundation of the Jamia Millia Islamia.

Indian Educational Thought 71

[17] Limits to Growth, which first brought out this situation forcefully, has been followed by considerable discussion which does not show signs of being resolved in the very near future. While some limitations on the use of high- energy consumption patterns appear to be conceded in principle, in practice the development of modern high technology continues.

[18] The continuing difficulties in implementing either the 10 + 2 school pattern for India in the early 1970s or under the proposed new educational policy illustrate this proposition.

[19] See for instance Noera Desai's article (1977) on SNDT Women's University in Journal of Higher Education, III, 1, p. 5 (Delhi).

[20] India's recent National Adult Education programme and movement for non-formal education emerged after this paper had been written. While my basic positions as outlined here persist, I have undertaken a more systematic discussion in, Social aspects of non-formal education, in: BHAN, SUSHEELA & SHAH, A. B. (Eds) Non-Formal Education (1982). It appears clearly necessary to distinguish between revolutionary and developmental varieties of non-formal and adult education.

GLOSSARY

(words in order of appearance) tols-places of classical instruction in Sanskrit, teaching one or the other classical speciality. Kaithi-script used in court and revenue records. lande-script used in business accounts in the Punjab. Rautaras-a caste-like Muslim group in East U. P. of medium status, below the high status syeds, sheikhs etc. Sarvodaya-Gandhi's social vision of an equal society at low technological levels. SNDT-Shrimati Nathibai Devi Thakersey -benefactress of the university for women in Western India after whom it was named.