Work and education: some aids for thinking and practice

The relationship between work and education is multilayered. In this section, we have put together three books/ documents that explore the interface between these two domains. All the three highlight elements of practice.

Nyla Coelho. 2012. Our Land Our Life: A Curriculum for Children of Rural Communities in India. Mapusa, Goa: Organic Farming Association of India.

This book is the result of an engagement with a large number of stakeholders with the goal of preparing a land-based curriculum for children in rural India. All national and state-level curricula tend to focus on urban areas. These often do not address rural communities’ needs, and generally ignore the local, rural context. They are also usually based on a ‘chalk and talk’ pedagogy.

In this context ‘Our Land Our Life’ fills in a critical gap in our thinking about education. It genuinely tries to think about alternatives in education, and how these can be reimagined through the process of recovering and revitalizing our agricultural traditions.

It contains a curricular framework for land-based education in rural India for children aged 6-16 years. However this curriculum is quite flexible with respect to the age factor. This curricular framework has been developed with two foundational concepts. The first is that of ‘living systems,’ which sees everything as living and as part of systems that limit, organize and perpetuate themselves in an interlinked yet autonomous manner. The second concept is that of ‘learning by reflecting on experience.’

The curriculum contained in this book has multiple goals. The first is to provide children with a system of well-rounded education that helps them become reflective citizens. The other goal is to support them obtain the skills and knowledge needed to create sustainable livelihoods for themselves, which are either land-based or are related to local industries and services dependent on agriculture.

As a result, the curriculum contains both academic subjects and modules related to agriculture. The framework of pedagogy envisaged by the curriculum, and the book, is centered on the learner and is activity focused. It is also sensitive to the contexts of rural India. It brings in the so-called ‘extra-curricular activities’ in as an important part of learning.

The activities are so designed as to facilitate an interface with the local living systems, farming communities, and neighborhoods. However, the book does not contain activity guides, or teaching resources/manuals.

These are perhaps best developed locally. This is because of the importance of the role and the autonomy of teachers/facilitators in the teaching-learning process.

Hence, it is perhaps for the better that activity guides and teaching manuals are not included in the volume, as the activities are best developed and executed locally with teachers/facilitators as active agents.

This note is essentially a reworked version of the ‘Summary’ provided at the beginning of the book. A free copy of the book may be downloaded here.

Sangram Gaikwad (Editor). 2010. Selected Essays of Dr. S. S. Kalbag on Education, Technology & Rural Development. Pune: Vigyan Ashram.

This is a collection of essays by Dr Shrinath S. Kalbag (23rd October 1928 – 30th July 2003), who was a scientist and educationist. After completing a PhD degree in Food Technology in the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA, he returned to India. At first he worked at Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI) at Mysore as a scientist.

Later he joined the Research Centre of a major MNC’s Indian operations, as head of the Engineering Sciences Department in Mumbai. He worked there until 1982. Then he took voluntary retirement, and started working on establishing an institute of nonformal education for the rural youth. It was to be modelled on an ashram, with the goal of working for rural development. This was the genesis of Vigyan Ashram (VA) set up in 1983 in Pabal, Taluka Shirur, in the Pune district of Maharashtra. VA has made important contribution to the field of work-based education in India. The work of the ashram survives the demise of Dr Kalbag in 2003.

The essays collected in this volume are important for multiple reasons. First, they help break the narrow ‘vocational’ focus of a large number of discussions surrounding work and education in India.

At the same time, the essays collected in the book highlight the relevant of foregrounding the need for an education system in India that is relevant for the needs of its rural areas.

In this context, the book brings in important considerations related to science and appropriate technology into discussions surrounding education. The essays contained in the volume bring home the idea that education can be intrinsically related to the work and lives of students, instead of just training them to become cogs in a pre-existing system.

Some of the essays in the book also directly deal with the work of Vigyan Ashram. They provide important learnings for other organizations who may want to work in the interface of rural development, appropriate technology and education.

The book deals with a variety of relevant topics. These include ‘Construction Alternatives,’ ‘Information Technology Can Make a Breakthrough in Education,’ and ‘Science through Technical Education’ to ‘How to Use Technology for Rural Development.’

For anyone who wants to explore the linkages between work and education in rural India, Selected Essays of Dr. S. S. Kalbag provides enough food for both thought and practice. A free copy of the volume may be downloaded here.

This position paper explores the pedagogic role of work in education. It focuses especially on how marginalized children, consisting of more than fifty percent of India’s child population, can learn, drawing from the context of their own natural and social environments. It also grapples with the way children from privileged backgrounds are increasingly alienated from their sociocultural roots and how work-based education can address this issue.

The position paper identifies the separate silos in which work and knowledge are put, as a crucial pathway through which practices of exclusion work in the Indian context. This is exemplified by the fact that social groups working with their hands are denied access to formal education. On the other hand, most of those having access to formal education learn to denigrate manual work and generally lack any productive skills.

The position paper identifies Gandhi’s Nai Talim (Basic Education) as an important challenge to such practices of education and knowledge making. In the Basic Education framework, children are expected to work in real-life like situations.

Their work in such contexts, reflections upon this process, and the teachers’ inputs together constitute ways in which knowledge is obtained, values are cultivated and skills are learnt. All this is supposed to take place in a holistic manner, integrating ‘the head, the heart and the hands.’

The paper critiques policy frameworks and practices in Indian education to show how the pedagogic role of productive work has never been given the importance it deserves. It reaffirms the point that the pedagogic role of work in education must not be conflated with vocational education.

It recommends the reestablishment of our whole pre-primary and K12 education system, with work as the central pedagogic method. It envisages both productive work and social engagement as part of this process.

The position paper also shares the enabling conditions necessary for institutionalizing a system of education across the country based on work. Some of these include a common school system, and a system of process-based assessment.

The position paper calls for the implementation of work-centred education in the school system across the country in a time-bound manner. It also makes the argument that Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE) in India would not be possible without a system of common, neighbour-hood schools, and it sees work-centred education as the key to creating such a system.

This note about the position paper significantly draws upon its ‘Executive Summary.’ A copy of this document may be downloaded here.

We hope that the three volumes shared here help you to relook at the relationship between work and education in a meaningful manner. These are very good guides indeed as gentle nudges to reflect upon our own thinking and practice in this very important space.