Rejection of the colonial system of education was one of the important features of Gandhi as an educational reformer. He put forward an alternative. Gandhi’s critique of colonial education was part of his criticism of western civilization.
Man versus Machine |
| M.K. Gandhi |
For Gandhi, man represented mankind and the machine was a representation of the industrialized west. The core of Gandhi’s recommendations was the introduction of productive handicrafts as a compulsory component. The curriculum of basic education favoured the child belonging to the lowest strata of society and hence his basic education program implied social transformation.
The Basic Education Scheme
The rationale for the basic education programme was that the schools must be self supporting. The reasons were both financial as well as political. Financially, it would help the schools generate their own resources and politically, the schools would be free from the interference of the state.
Gandhi was inspired by the works of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian writer who was a supporter of individual’s right to live in peace and freedom and against all forms of oppression. He was also inspired by John Ruskin and his writings from which he drew the message that the benefit of all is what a good economy should aspire for and that manual labour as well as intellectual labour were equivalent to each other.
Self Sufficiency
Basic education was a symbol of Gandhi’s perception of an ideal society consisting of self reliant communities. The basic education plan was to help and train children for productive work (spinning of Khadi) and imparting to them attitudes favourable to community life.
Gandhi viewed industrialization as a threat to humanity. The basic education programme was his idea of a system of education which was craft centered and not dependent on modern technology and modern industry.
Gandhi left religion out of his basic scheme although he was a deeply religious person. This was because he felt that religion could bring in conflict. Mother Tongue was a very important component of the basic scheme of education. The central craft (spinning of Khadi) was correlated with the teaching of various subjects such as history, geography, science, mathematics, mother tongue etc.
Opposition
Gandhi’s basic scheme of education was criticized by the national planning committee of the congress party as well as the Muslim league.
The national planning committee and his chairman Jawaharlal Nehru believed that industrialization could solve India’s problem of poverty and unemployment.Nehru proposed rapid expansion of large scale industries much to the contrary of Gandhi’s methodologies.
Implementation
Gandhi wanted to free the Indian teacher from the slavery of bureaucracy. His basic education plan implied an end of teacher’s subservience to the prescribed text book and curriculum. It gave freedom and authority to the teacher. It was a libertarian plan as it did not give the state the power to decide the teacher’s role.
Gandhi’s ideas have been interpreted in different ways. On one hand he is called a thinker of progressive educational thoughts and compared with Dewey and Pestalozzi. On the other hand he is criticized for recommending a fixed charter on education with had an orthodox perspective. It is customary to look back at the implementation of the basic school program as a failure. However if we examine the basic education scheme in the light of its historical context we will give greater credit to the programme.
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