3ll_Tribal_Education

Low levels of literacy amongst tribals prevail because a majority are still reeling from poverty malnutrition...also the government has not made directed efforts to eradicate suffering but instead they have been neglected and exploited by ruthless officials..

Apologies for bringing bad news in the New Year. Advertisements during 2003 featuring the president, prime minister and HRD minister repeatedly promised to send every child to school under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan scheme by 2003.
With 35 to 75 million children still out of school, that promise stands broken. Paradhi is a Dalit tribe, still officially branded as a thief caste, in Marathwada. Their literacy rate is eight per cent. They often bear the brunt of brutality from suspicious police. Interest in education amidst such daily life battles would be expected to be low. Yet when Bal Huqq Abhiyan activists led by Dalit leader Eknath Awadh entered a small village, Kalambh, this is what a 12-year-old boy Pistaulia said, ‘‘We have only one candle for 30 children. Can we get one more candle so that we can study once the embers of our dinner fire cease to give light?’’

- Bonsai Effect in Basic Education, SANJIV KAURA, 08/01/2004, [C.ELDOC.N00.08jan04toi1.html]

WALKING an arduous stretch of over three km for a basic school education is routine for many children living in the backward areas of Thane district — and they are considered lucky. For there are others who are deprived of even this and are left either looking after their siblings or herding cattle. A recent survey by UNICEF and Shramjivi Sanghatna, an NGO working for the develop-ment of tribals, reveals that one out of every four children in three talukas of Thane district are deprived of basic education.

...Living in conditions of extreme poverty, where a meal of 'bhakri' with dry chilly powder is also a luxury, sending their children to school is the last priority for these tribals. In an effort to reach out to those living in the interiors of the district, the state's education department had tied up with UNICEF last year and has intro-duced a new educational programme for the children. Under the programme, volunteers of UNICEF and the associate NGOs will first edu-cate the tribal parents about the need for literacy among their children and then teach the chil-dren in a makeshift classroom.

- UNICEF, NGOs to educate Maharashtra's tribals, KISHORE RATHOD, Mid-Day, 22/04/2001, C.ELDOC.N21.22apr01mid1.pdf]

Infrastructure of existing schools that the government has set up is so sorry that its no wonder that children are disillusioned and the dropout rate is high also the low quality excuse for education is being meted out to tribals doesn't help much

It is indeed ironic that the emergence of different types of schools in rural India has reinforced existing social divides — leading to discernable hierarchies of access. Unfortunately official statistics do not capture these trends as they essentially collect information from government schools. Even this information is disaggregated either by general category, SC and ST or by boys and girls — and not by gender in each social category — thereby making it impossible to analyse emerging trends with respect to school participation.

- Beyond the numbers, Vimala Ramachandran, The Hindu, 24/02/2002 [C.ELDOC.N20.beyond_the_numbers.htm ]

Over 1,000 ashram schools and 190 govern-ment- run hostels for adivasi chil-dren in Maharashtra are facing lack of basic facilities. Students have been subjected to severe dis-comfort as there are no bathrooms, no roofing and tiling and no power connection. In addition, stockpiles of foodgrains have been contaminated due to the free run enjoyed by insects and ants.
There are 410 government-run ashram schools, 507 aided ashram schools run by non-governmental organisations and 161 post-basic ashram schools in the state. Together, they house over 2,70,000 adivasi students. The Vidhan Sabha's Anusuchit Jati Kalyan Samiti recently visited these schools in Raigad, Gadchiroli and Amravati and also the 190 hostels housing over 15,000 students...

- State-run schools in bad shape, Asian Age, 25/08/2001, [C.ELDOC.N22.25aug01aa1.pdf]

There is no special curriculum developed for tribals, who have their own unique language, references and symbols, very different from larger society. The education imparted at government and private schools is often divorced from the reality of the tribal.

L S S O’Malley (1910) wrote about Santal Pargana in 1910, “… the district is a backward one, chiefly because the population is mainly composed of aboriginals, who have little thirst for knowledge”. The O’Malleys may have left, but their Indian successors continue to hold on to such beliefs.

These beliefs are often expressed in official policies and programmes. The tribals, on the one hand, are accused of being indifferent towards acquiring education, yet on the other, are not allowed to acquire education. Tribal children face major hurdles, both in terms of geographical accessibility and the poor functioning of the existing primary schools. Poverty is a key issue here. Those who somehow manage to cross the barriers of accessibility and affordability find themselves facing an even greater challenge.

The problem that the tribal children face everyday is the barrier of language. Hindi, the official language of Jharkhand and the medium of instruction in government primary schools, is as foreign to them as any other imported tongue. All the general caste teachers we interviewed said that for them the biggest problem of teaching is that of communication. Children, who are otherwise quite intelligent, simply do not pick up anything in school because they cannot follow either their teachers or the prescribed textbooks.¹²

The teacher is the focal point and a catalytic agent in the educational process of the tribal child. Unfortu-nately many teachers are non-tribals working in tribal schools. Unless they have knowledge of a tribal language or a language of wider com-munication prevailing among the tribals forming a school community, the teacher is at a great loss. In the interest of health, classroom community interaction, the teacher' must learn the language of tribal community.

The monolingual tribal child faces cognitive and communicative prob-lems where the instruction is in the major regional language... tribal children suffer for speaking in their mother tongue and not being able to speak the school language. They neither understand the language of the text nor the teacher. As the teacher does not know the language of the learner and the parents neither know the language of the text book nor the teacher, the break is almost complete. The education is therefore merely symbolic.

Very often the multiplicity of tribal languages and small members of learners in each class are cited as hurdlers for giving instruction. Lan-guage as a medium should not be mixed with language as a subject. Language as a subject can be taught at different levels drawing students from different levels drawing students from different classes into a single level. It requires will to instruct in tribal languages. Secondly the socio-linguistic setting is closely related to the strategies of instruc-tion.

- Tribal Languages and Tribal Education, Midatala Rani, Social Action, 01/10/2000, [J.ELDOC.N00.01oct00SOA7.pdf]

To walk the Naga hills with Kelechütsü is to understand a mind and a community that is extraordinarily attuned to the environment in which they thrive, and which has as its fundament the concept that we know and call sustainability. That, when linked to the catch-all word 'development', such a concept is the subject of innumerable working papers, seminars and conclaves, and otherwise provides brigades of 'development professionals' a livelihood is seen as hugely amusing by Kelechütsü and his friends, but their amusement is also tempered by a distant alarm, for they are all too aware of the might and reach of the development industry.

Contrast this world with another. Early last year (2004) a young tribal girl in the district of Gadchiroli, Maharashtra, had this to say about the 'education' she was expected to go through: “I go to school as often as I can. I get bored when I go, and they shout at me. They don’t teach me about anything around me.” Tribal societies both – one in the Naga hills, the other the guardians of the dense central Indian forest tract of Dandakaranya – and in their own ways, exposing the hypocrisies of our education systems. The young Nagas will privately critique the systems posing as education just as Gadchiroli's tribals do, but the 'right' to 'compulsory education' steamrollers on, uncaring of cultures, contexts and futures. 'Compulsory education' is the legitimisation of an absurd terminology – do we talk about compulsory eating or compulsory sleeping? If it is a truly natural need, where is the need for compulsion?

- The first and last learners, Rahul Goswami, www.infochangeindia.com, 07/02/2005, [C.ELDOC.N30.alt_edu.html]

Is formal education able to do what is supposed to for tribals i.e provide the skills to earn a livelihood , find a sense of self worth etc? Rarely so

Though job reservations for tribals exists, the quali-fied humanpower is limited or is unavailable. In 1977, altogether six tribals were enrolled in the district Industrial Training Institute (in) though Singarem Collieries operated there and regularly imported labour for skilled jobs from other districts. While in 1977 there were 17 vacancies for ITI certificate holders in the employment exchange, there were only two tribal candidates available. What are the reasons for this failure? suggests that the pro-lies in the web of socio-economic backwardness in which these tribes have historically been invested.
Schools in Adilabad district have very poor infrastructure, poor transport facilities, no residential quarters for the teachers, and there are no houses avail-able for hire. In fact, the disincentives for non-rural and non-tribal teachers are so high that large scale absenteeism has to be accepted as part of the edu-cational scenario in these tribal districts.

- Educating the underprivileged, Grassroot Development, 31/08/1998, [C.ELDOC.N00.31aug98grd1.pdf]

Thus NGO's, people's movements and alternative curriculum schools start their own learning centres, sensitive to the reality of tribals to fill in the gap ...
It was found that not a single school shown in the government records in 33 villages of Maharashtra had been functional for a day since in-dependence. The Andolan had exposed this and had undertaken a 'fast and dharna' with the demand to "close the ghost schools". This did bring out temporary change but not a long-term one. However, a new initiative was felt necessary considering the fail-ure of the present formal educational structure. Such centres of education were expected to emerge in the organised tribal vil-lages in the valley which would have deep roots in the local socio-economic context, on one hand, and the vision of the new and sustainable development, on the other. This led to the take off, starting not Pathsala (conventional school), or Ashramshala (tribal school) but the Jeevanshala (life schools).

Special classes are held as part of curriculum to introduce the students to their own community, culture, natural resources, socio-economic reality, the movement along with some special-ised book material. Some time is kept for painting, mud-work, and a few crafts. The aim is to inculcate through various cul-tural programmes, the values of equality, justice, environmen-tal consciousness and social obligations.

- Nurturing the Narmada Ethos, Humanscape, 01/12/1997, [J.ELDOC.N00.01dec97HUS.pdf]

Nestled deep within the forests of BR Hills, the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra has been working progressively to make the Soliga community self-reliant, within the context of their distinct cultural iden-tity and way of life.

The school achieves this unique blend in educating tribal children by:
• Introducing the experiential learning concept. Environmental studies are given a major thrust....
•Drawing upon the Soliga traditional knowledge. The tribe's rich traditional knowledge about trees, herbs, plants -the overall bio-diversity of the region has been studied and documented by VGKK....No tradi-tional belief or practice is discounted as mumbo-jumbo but is harnessed as a base to build further knowledge. E.g. Soligas traditionally worship the sun as a source of life. This is the base on which the teacher builds the children's knowledge about the sun, about solar energy and photosynthesis.
• Introducing ideas on poverty, exploitation, rights, as part of school 'lessons'...
• Early introduction of vocational education. The Gandhian idea of learning vocational skills early has been taken up by VGKK in earnest...
• Learning the basics of livelihood - forest produce, agriculture, and horticulture.

- The bamboo children, Shoba Raja, Humanscape, 11/01/2002, [J.ELDOC.N00.11jan02HUS2.pdf ]

Says Namra, "India's educational sys-tem is inseparably linked with social and political systems. It has failed to benefit the Adivasis and Dalits, who have been further pauperised in the post-194 7 pe-riod. Two interlinked elements are poverty and illiteracy. Education would not reach the poor unless the conditions of poverty are removed first." He further adds, "when we felt that the educational institutions in our society have failed to resolve the dichotomy be-tween the needs of its oppressed class and their desire to acquire knowledge, we worked out a programme which was a radical shift from the formal education."

Shram Niketan's NFE model is flex-ible and instruction is mixed with production, planning and educa-tional games. These are no set books or other teaching material. Improvisation and creativity are hallmarks of the programme. Says Anuradha, 'The lessons imparted are techniques of agricultural production, scientific knowledge of biological pro-cesses in nature, wage calculation, weight and volume measurement and a mini-mum ability to read and write.
The learning goals of Shram Niketan have as their aim, to provide wider un-derstanding of local conditions in a holis-tic perspective to the children from mar-ginal, small and medium-sized farming communities. The children from landless labourers are directed towards under-standing wage and quality calculations and price mechanisms in the market. The educational thrust is towards application of scientific techniques for increased production. It is also kept in mind for both these groups, that the essential require-ment is to give them a more expanded world-view, built upon a materialistic explanation of phenomena.

- Lessons From The land, Tarun Bose, Humanscape, 01/07/1996, [J.ELDOC.N00.01jul96HUS11.pdf]

Despite the boost given through various grants, concessions and reservations tribal education in India still remains a myth. While the government and NGOs come out with innovative programmes to bring tribals to the mainstream controversies on indigenous tribes and preserving cultures pose problems of different dimensions.

Literary classes in tribal colonies organised by governmental agencies and voluntary organisations have been going on for quite some time. But providing them the best possible infrastructure and learning situations in their natural settings without affecting their age old customs and practices is definitely a new experimentation. An attempt in this direction is Vivekananda Tribal Centre for Learning (VTCL) at Hosahalli near N-Begur in HD Kotte Taluk of Mysore district.
The school started in 1990 on a seven acre campus close to the Gundre range of Bandipur forests by the Vivekananda youth movement, Mysore is spread on 18 acres today accommodating a high school section, primary school section, tailoring institute, administrative section, three labs, library, spacious play grounds etc in the sylvan surroundings.

Policy on Education of Scheduled Tribes- For more; read The National Policy on Education 1986- Programme of Action 1992 [R N00.33
Statistics: Dropouts and literacy rate- For more; read Selected Educational Statistics 2002-03 [R N00.32]
Analysis - For more; read India Education Report Education among Scheduled Tribes by K Sujatha- [B.N21. G1]

Reports

Education for social change amongst tribals
*1. Elementary Education for the Poorest and other Deprived Groups: The Real Challenge of Universalisation, Jha, Jyotsna & Jhingran, Dhir, Centre for Policy Research, 01/06/2002, [R.N00.23],
- pg108- 137
(scan pg 108)

Governments initiative to universalise elementary education
2. Different Approaches for Achieving EFA - Indian Experience, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, 01/01/2003, [R.N00.41],
- Education of SC/ST- pg 23-25

Statistics and present status of schemes and programmes
3. Ministry of Human Resource Development - Annual Report 2003-2004, Government of India, 01/01/2004, [R.N00.30,]
- Education of SC ST- pg 34-36
- Enrolment of ST – pg 264-265

Analysis and critique (on schemes and programmes)
4. India Education Report, Govinda, R, Oxford University Press, 01/01/2002, [N21.G.1.] ,
- Education among Scheduled Tribes- K Sujatha Ch 7 pg 87- 95

Statistics
5. Selected Educatonal Statistics 2002-2003 (As on 30th September, 2002), Government of India, 01/01/2004, [R.N00.32]

Government's policy on education towards tribes
6. National Policy on Education 1986 - Programme of Action 1992, Government of India, [R.N00.33],
- Education of SC and ST and other backward sections- Ch2 pg 5-8

Statistics and present status of schemes and programmes
7. Annual Report 2003-04 - Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, 01/01/2004, [B.L13.M4]

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Books:

Identity formation amongst tribals
*1. Social Character of Learning, Kumar, Krishna, Sage Publication, 01/10/1919, [B.N00.K5],
- “Learning to be Backward” Ch3 pg. 59-77

Government's policy towards tribes- critique and analysis
2. Tribal Policy - Pulling Back From the Brink?, Mander, Harsh, Socialist Front, 01/01/2004, [B.L13.M3]

3. Problems Of Development Of Tribal Areas, Deogaonkar, S.G., Leeladevi Publications, 01/01/1980, [B.L13.D2]

4. Getting Children Back to School - Case Studies in Primary Education, Ramachandran, Vimala, Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. 01/01/2003, [B.N21.R2],
- “Agramee: Real Life Education for Tribal Children” Vimala Ramachandran and Sapna Agarwal, Ch 8 p.g. 296-334

5. Child Development in Tribal Areas, Bandana Bhuyan, 1999, [B.L13.B2], Anmol Pub.

6. Single teacher school in Tribal areas, K Sujatha, 1996, Rs 250, NIEPA

7. Schools and Schooling in Tribal Gujarat: The Quality Dimension, BL Kumar, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Working Paper No. 150 November 2004.

8. District Primary Education Programme, Digumati Bhaskar Rao, September 1996, [B.N21.R60 ]1. Strategies of Tribal
Education for Intervention 2. Strategies for Tribal Education

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Websites:

http://tribal.nic.in/