Of Nai Talim and working with hands

The earlier post had mentioned a non-existent dichotomy between the academic and non-academic, and how the hand can be intellectual. At Samanvaya we have started looking more deeply into Nai Talim (New Education), an educational framework initiated and promoted by Gandhiji and coworkers and active until the late 1960s, under which "working with hands" is one of the primary principles. The following is a relevant extract of an interactive session that Mahatma Gandhi had with teacher trainees in Wardha on Nai Talim in 1939:

DISCUSSION WITH TEACHER TRAINEES AT WARDHA CENTRE - About 75 delegates, FEB 1939
- From the Complete Works of Mahatma Gandhi CD version

Before going to the meeting, a friend had asked him if the central idea behind the scheme was that teachers should not speak a word to the pupils that could not becorrelated to the takli.

Gandhiji, answering this question in the general meeting, remarked:
This is a libel on me. It is true I have said that all instruction must be linked with some basic craft. When you are imparting knowledge to a child of 7 or 10 through the medium of an industry, you should, to begin with, exclude all those subjects which cannot be linked with the craft. By doing so from day to day you will discover ways and means of linking with the craft many things which you had excluded in the beginning. You will save your own energy and the pupils’ if you follow this process of exclusion to begin with. We have today no books to go by, no precedents to guide us. Therefore we have to go slow. The main thing is that the teacher should retain his freshness of mind. If you come across something that you cannot correlate with the craft, do not fret over it and get disheartened. Leave it and go ahead with the subjects that you can correlate. Maybe another teacher will hit upon the right way and show how it can be correlated. And when you have pooled the experience of many, you will have books to guide you, so that the work of those who follow you will become easier.

How long, you will ask, are we to go on with this process of exclusion? My reply is, for the whole lifetime. At the end you will find that you have included many things that you had excluded at first, that practically all that was worth including has been included, and whatever you have been obliged to exclude till the end was something very superficial that deserved exclusion. This has been my experience of life. I would not have been able to do many things that I have done if I had not excluded an equal number. Our education has got to be revolutionized. The brain must be educated through the hand. If I were a poet, I could write poetry on the possibilities of the five fingers. Why should you think that the mind is everything and the hands and feet nothing? Those who do not train their hands, who go through the ordinary rut of education, lack ‘music’ in their life. All their faculties are not trained. Mere book knowledge does not interest the child so as to hold his attention fully.

The brain gets weary of mere words, and the child’s mind begins to wander. The hand does the things it ought not to do, the eye sees the things it ought not to see, the ear hears the things it ought not to hear, and they do not do, see, or hear, respectively, what they ought to. They are not taught to make the right choice and so their education often proves their ruin. An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other is a misnomer.

Shrimati Asha Devi asked Gandhiji to explain to them how the mind could be trained through the hands.

The old idea was to add a handicraft to the ordinary curriculum of education followed in the schools. That is to say, the craft was to be taken in hand wholly separately from education. To me that seems a fatal mistake. The teacher must learn the craft and correlate his knowledge to the craft, so that he will impart all that knowledge to his pupils through the medium of the particular craft that he chooses.

Take the instance of spinning. Unless I know arithmetic I cannot report how many yards of yarn I have produced on the takli, or how many standard rounds it will make, or what is the count of the yarn that I have spun. I must learn figures to be able to do so, and I also must learn addition and subtraction and multiplication and division. In dealing with complicated sums I shall have to use symbols and so I get my algebra. Even here, I would insist on the use of Hindustani letters instead of Roman.

Take geometry next. What can be a better demonstration of a circle than the disc of the takli? I can teach all about circles in this way, without even mentioning the name of Euclid.

Again, you may ask how I can teach my child geography and history through spinning. Some time ago I came across a book called Cotton—The Story of Mankind. It thrilled me. It read like a romance. It began with the history of ancient times, how and when cotton was first grown, the stages of its development, the cotton trade between the different countries, and so on. As I mention the different countries to the child, I shall naturally tell him something about the history and geography of these countries. Under whose reign the different commercial treaties were signed during the different periods? Why has cotton to be imported by some countries and cloth by others? Why can every country not grow the cotton it requires? That will lead me into economics and elements of agriculture. I shall teach him to know the different varieties of cotton, in what kind of soil they grow, how to grow them, from where to get them, and so on. Thus takli-spinning leads me into the whole history of the East India Company, what brought them here, how they destroyed our spinning industry, how the economic motive that brought them to India led them later to entertain political aspirations, how it became a causative factor in the downfall of the Moguls and the Marathas, in the establishment of the English Raj, and then again in the awakening of the masses in our times. There is thus no end to the educative possibilities of this new scheme. And how much quicker the child will learn all that, without putting an unnecessary tax on his mind and memory.

Let me further elaborate the idea. Just as a biologist, in order to become a good biologist, must learn many other sciences besides biology, the basic education, if it is treated as a science, takes us into interminable channels of learning. To extend the example of the takli, a pupil teacher, who rivets his attention not merely on the mechanical process of spinning, which of course he must master, but on the spirit of the thing, will concentrate on the takli and its various aspects. He will ask himself why the takli is made out of a brass disc and has a steel spindle. The original takli had its disc made anyhow. The still more primitive takli consisted of a wooden spindle with a disc of slate or clay. The takli has been developed scientifically, and there is a reason for making the disc out of brass and the spindle out of steel. He must find out that reason. Then, the teacher must ask himself why the disc has that particular diameter, no more and no less. When he has solved these questions satisfactorily and has gone into the mathematics of the thing, your pupil becomes a good engineer. The takli becomes his Kamadhenu—the ‘Cow of plenty’. There is no limit to the possibilities of knowledge that can be imparted through this medium. It will be limited only by the energy and conviction with which you work. You have been here for three weeks. You will have spent them usefully if it has enabled you to take to this scheme seriously, so that you will say to yourself, ‘I shall either do or die.’ I am elaborating the instance of spinning because I know it. If I were a carpenter, I would teach my child all these things through carpentry, or through cardboard work if I were a worker in cardboard.

What we need is educationists with originality, fired with true zeal, who will think out from day to day what they are going to teach their pupils. The teacher cannot get this knowledge through musty volumes. He has to use his own faculties of observation and thinking and impart his knowledge to the children through his lips, with the help of a craft. This means a revolution in the method of teaching, a revolution in the teacher’s outlook. Up till now you have been guided by inspectors’ reports. You wanted to do what the inspector might like, so that you might get more money yet for your institutions or higher salaries for yourselves. But the new teacher will not care for all that. He will say, ‘I have done my duty by my pupil if I have made him a better man and in doing so I have used all my resources. That is enough for me.

Q. In training pupil teachers, would it not be better if they are first taught a craft separately and then given a sound exposition of the method of teaching through the medium of that craft? As it is, they are advised to imagine themselves to be of the age of 7 and relearn everything through a craft. In this way it will take them years before they can master the new technique and become competent teachers.

G. No, it would not take them years. Let us imagine that the teacher when he comes to me has a working knowledge of mathematics and history and other subjects. I teach him to make cardboard boxes or to spin. While he is at it I show him how he could have derived his knowledge of mathematics, history and geography through the particular craft. He thus learns how to link his knowledge to the craft. It should not take him long to do so. Take another instance. Suppose I go with my boy of 7 to a basic school. We both learn spinning and I get all my previous knowledge linked with spinning. To the boy it is all new. For the 70-year-old father it is all repetition but he will have his old knowledge in a new setting. He should not take more than a few weeks for the process. Thus, unless the teacher develops the receptivity and eagerness of the child of 7, he will end up by becoming a mere mechanical spinner, which would not fit him for the new method.

Q. A boy who has passed his matriculation can go to college if he wishes to. Will a child who has gone through the basic education syllabus too be able to do so?

G. Between the boy who has passed his matriculation and the boy who has gone through basic education, the latter will give a better account of himself because his faculties have been developed. He would not feel helpless when he goes to college as matriculates often do.

Q. Why should a child waste 7 years on learning a craft when his real profession is going to be something else, e.g., why should a banker’s son, who is expected to take to banking later on, learn spinning for 7 years?

G. The question betrays gross ignorance of the new scheme of education. The boy under the scheme of basic education does not go to school merely to learn a craft. He goes there to receive his primary education, to train his mind through the craft. I claim that the boy who has gone through the new course of primary education for seven years, will make a better banker than the one who has gone through the seven years of ordinary schooling. The latter when he goes to a banking school will be ill at ease because all his faculties will not have been trained. Prejudices die hard. I will have done a good day’s work if I have made you realize this one central fact that the new education scheme is not a little of literary education and a little of craft. It is full education up to the primary stage through the medium of a craft.

Q. Would it not be better to teach more than one craft in every school? The children might begin to feel bored of doing the same thing from month to month and year to year.

G. If I find a teacher who becomes dull to his students after a month’s spinning, I should dismiss him. There will be newness in every lesson such as there can be new music on the same instrument. By changing over from one craft to another a child tends to become like a monkey jumping from branch to branch with abode nowhere. But I have shown already in the course of our discussion that teaching spinning in a scientific spirit involves learning many things besides spinning. The child will be taught to make his own takli and his own winder soon. Therefore, to go back to what I began with, if the teacher takes up the craft in a scientific spirit, he will speak to his pupils through many channels, all of which will contribute to the development of all his faculties.
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Sensing Nature Through Arts - Summer Camp

“Sensing Nature Through Arts”
Summer Camp for children aged 8 – 12 years, 4th – 9th May 2009
A Review-Report

Kalakshetra Foundation and The Aseema Trust jointly conducted a six day summer camp, “Sensing nature through arts” for children aged 8 to 12 years. The camp activities were spinning and weaving on a frame, printing from nature and paper making, clay work, kolams and pot decoration, and kalamkari. There were also movies to watch and talk about. The camp was hosted in the quiet and natural environment of the Kalashetra Art centre. The vasanas and energy of the space were just right and suited for a camp-full of people trying to sense nature.

More than anything else, the beauty of the organisation of activities was in the qualities required for the minute hand work – silence, reflection, observation and a sense of aesthetics. In an urban set up we have moved too far away from doing useful work with hands, and the connection of hand work to mind and heart is seldom acknowledged. A dichotomy of academic (mind) and non-academic (hand) work that is non existent has been fed into our psyche, and we fail to see how the hand can be intellectual and emotional. And we have too soon forgotten that science begins with observation. And that man can come closer to the nature that he is part of only by first observing her closely.

The camp introduced and facilitated these qualities in a vibrant manner wherein the children discovered the same in themselves even as they were producing beautiful works of art.

They were learning to walk peacefully, carefully, observe, gather and categorise pieces of nature (leaves, flowers, twigs…) without disturbing her;
they were discovering the joy of being concentrated and focused in one activity unmindful of mild physical discomforts as they were working on their paintings and clay;
they were realising the usefulness of observation and precision;
they were experiencing the intangible pleasure of struggling and completing a creation of their own;
they were imagining, thinking, visualising, and also expressing their ideas through their work;
they were learning to be patient and perseverant in getting that thread just right through the loops;
they were strengthening ties of friendship and cooperation while helping and teaching each other,
they were discovering that being gentle is also being strong while modeling clay;
they were feeling the excitement of numbers as they were counting threads, measuring without the use of external aids, working with different sizes of clay models, teaching each other complicated kolam patterns;
they were experiencing a non-hierarchical, non-pressurised learning environment where learning is for learning’s sake;
they were learning to learn from nature, to mention a few.

Besides all this of course, they were picking up skills of spinning, weaving, threading, painting, clay modeling, braiding, paper making, kolam-drawing... They were also getting an understanding of different materials and their properties through experiential work with cloth, clay, paints, sand, water, stones and so on. We also had very interesting sessions of history, film appreciation, unorganised play, contemporary social issues and listening to music thrown in. We watched a movie on Khadi cloth and its making by Kanika Myers, extracts of a movie that revolved around school children in rural Karnataka and their discussions on caste discrimination, and Satyajit Ray’s movie titled, “The adventures of Goopy and Bhaga”.

An open session was planned for the last day when the children exhibited their work to their parents. There was also a potluck snacks party for the entire camp team including the faculty, volunteers, children and others. The children’s theatre on this day deserves special mention. The play by Shri. Velu Saravanan and his team was entrancing and very interactive. Judging by the laughter and complete involvement of the entire population in the hall, all of us were children for that duration. Set in the background of a fisherman’s child finding a pot with a genie inside while at sea, the team also kept asking some fundamental questions on what is knowledge and what is development through the course of the skit. This is very relevant since the success of the summer camp is not simply in it being conducted well, although it is a part too, but in the continued internalising and practice of these qualities in each of us who were a part of the camp.

A fitting finale was a running presentation of the delightful memories and moments of the camp captured digitally.

Priya Nagesh
May 16th 2009
Resource person at camp

Seminar on Raising Happy and Peaceful children, 2nd May 2009

Seminar on Raising Happy and Peaceful children, 2nd May 2009

The theme for the seminar was “Raising Happy and Peaceful children”. Weighty indeed! Everyone in the group had to contend with these two questions, posed by one of the presenters – Can I make anyone happy? Or Can I make anyone unhappy? And I think we all in our own ways kept reaching the same conclusion from different points that children raise themselves; we can possibly move towards happy and peaceful, only by being happy and peaceful ourselves. There is no easier way. This was a refreshing direction to take, considering also that the seminar was held in Chennai, generally thought to be a conservative city that tends to take a straightjacketed view of education, schooling and learning.

The seminar was organised by Relief Foundation, who were also celebrating their completion of 10 years of work, and positioning this seminar as a consolidation of their learning. Congratulations to Smt. Vidya Shankar, the founder of Relief Foundation, and the entire team on their hard work and achievement. The seminar was an indication of the same.

A quality of the seminar which is to be appreciated is the diverse nature of the gathering. There were - - many parents, some homeschooling their children, others who have put them in the ‘alternative’ schools (as different from the conventional ones) in Chennai, and still others who are simply questioning the mainstream schooling system

- heads of alternative schools (Rukmini Ramachandran, Navadisha Montessori Institute; Sudha Mahesh, Head Start, Marlene Kamdar, Saraswathi Kendra Learning Centre, … )

- educationists (Ratnesh, Geniekids Bangalore; Clive and Suseela, Centre for Learning Bangalore, others…)

- teachers (from Riverside to share their experience, Vivekananda school, Chennai…)

- members from the NGO fraternity having grassroot work experience …

Of course, most participants would fall into more than one category.

The glaringly missing participants here in my opinion were children. Deriving from an understanding that perhaps each one of us is responsible for our happiness and peace, it makes complete sense that children make a part of a seminar on happy and peaceful children. Qualifying the age groups and so on can of course come in, but first we need to have a sense of flatness, non-hierarchy, which is completely missing in the Chennai psyche. The Chennai psyche must learn to relinquish control as parents in homes, as teachers in the classrooms, and as principals in schools, give up control and work at being gardeners, only watering and mulching, then see how the plants grow and flowers bloom. This is an issue that needs to be taken seriously by parents and educators looking at true and healthy processes of learning and education. However, it must also be said that there were many in the group who were truly thinking and enquiring, for children, and for learning.

The other group that was missing was the mainstream – i.e., teachers and parents from conventional schools; as Rukmini Ramachandran pointed out several times during her session that she was “preaching to the converted”. Even assuming that this was specifically for the converted, i.e. those who are already thinking of issues of peace and happiness in education and schooling, then a substantial part of the day should have been for discussing the Why’s and How’s of dealing with and bringing into practice some of these fundamental questions. The Riverside and Geniekids experiences were very enriching in this sense. For instance, in the group discussion session, one topic was on how to make the home a learning environment. Now in a ‘converted’ group, this theme would without doubt bring in a suggestion like spending more quality time with children. But that is obvious isn’t it? We would need to go deeper into an issue like that to ask fundamental questions like, what do we mean by spending more quality time with children, how do we do this considering that in a middle class Chennai environment, both parents work and their work schedules are tight, so does this mean the mother will need to stop working (which is mostly the case, although I know of one couple where the father stays in and the mother goes out to work)… So a deeper understanding of the issues, of our own assumptions and our minds will only be possible when we go into such details; the ‘How’ of things. But this does not mean giving clear-cut 10 or 15 or 30 steps to making the home a learning environment like one of the bestsellers, whatever that means. This means a deeper enquiry and discussion, which would lead to each unit (individual, family, couple etc) creating their own solutions and also arriving at a collective understanding perhaps.

The issues that were touched upon to start a process of dialogue and discussion were profound and significant. I say “start a process” because these are not issues that can have conclusions and solutions that can be neatly packaged and presented in workshops and conferences. One such was very succinctly and simply put by Clive Elwell, Centre for Learning, when at the end of the group discussion, he asked the question, “where is learning in all these discussions? Is there some learning that is for learning’s sake and not accumulated? … Where is happiness? There could be an enquiry and dialogue into this, but is there a formula for it?”

Some of the interesting discussions that came up during the day included:

- Whether current and advanced research into child psychology is included in all the educational frameworks being followed by the schools, and whether such inclusion is really necessary all the time and is it not that some of our understandings of child and human behaviour are well observed and time tested;

- Whether individual is for society or society is for the individual;

- The philosophy of Maria Montessori and related themes, including its similarity with Gandhian ideals and thought;

- The different facets of running a school and integrating some of the alternative perspectives and thoughts and

- The problematic of competition, exams, a competitive world and preparing to enter this world of competition, if at all.

This issue of competition was the most felt in the group and kept raising its head through out the day in different ways. An interesting way of looking at this was given by Rukmini Ramachandran. She said that “in this race to get into all the competitive exams and institutions, do we know how many wildlife photographers are there in the country today? Five! In a country of one billion we have 5 wildlife photographers.” In a country of unimaginable biodiversity and such opportunity in the domain of environmental and wildlife science, we have five wildlife photographers.

Sorrowfully, even many of the supposedly alternative people in the country have fallen victim to this issue. There is talk of all the best inputs, the best and free learning environments, the interesting and most creative teaching and learning aids so that they can face a safe and secure tomorrow. A SAFE AND SECURE TOMORROW? Does any one of us know what is going to come on us tomorrow? This evening? The only thing that is constant in this world is Change, and I am saying this in a completely practical and material sense. And we have enough evidence of this. How have career opportunities and necessary skillsets changed in the last 5 decades? Given this situation, what about the child of Today? What about the child of Now? Who am I as a parent today? Who am I as a parent now? How can any “combination of good academic skills blended with attitudes and values” make superheroes out of our children, if this moment I am ranting at them to finish a particular task on time? What they will take with them is the rant, and our own understanding of time. Rukmini Ramachandran touched upon this aspect of time beautifully in her presentation. We are living in a No-Time age. Listening to music, “No time!”. Visiting relatives, “No time!”. Reading a book that one has wanted to for long, “No time!”. What do we have time for? There is a sure connection between this perception of a “competitive world”, and the common understanding of Time, and we need to investigate that connection. If as parents and teachers, we can concentrate on the children of today, and ourselves as the parents and teachers of today – then we would all be better off as human beings and excel in any roles that we want to take on tomorrow. After all, today had been a tomorrow that we had been working towards some time in the past.

An important issue that was touched upon in my view, was that of the aspect of reality and idealism in general and the quality of goodness in particular. Many ideals were looked at during the presentation by Ratnesh of Geniekids including the questions on happiness, but not dug deeper due to lack of time. In his presentation he spoke about how a child must be allowed to see that he / she is special. The adults around him must create opportunities and instances for this, especially also when he may do something that the adult disapproves of. This understandably resulted in heated reaction and questioning by the audience. In the discussion it came about that perhaps there is a difference between intention and behaviour, and while we may approve or disapprove of the behaviour, we do not disapprove of either the doer (child) or his intention. And that this discrimination must be clear in our own behaviour to the child.

One response was that in reality people do not treat others as such, and so the child must learn to deal with reality. I would think that the whole purpose of an alternative is to challenge certain realities. And so to the extent that alternative perspectives challenge, say, consumerism, or abuse of environment etc, to that extent, alternative situations need to be created and practiced. Only then would we be presenting any challenge. I am sure it is obvious that to show to ourselves first that we can live on collective and limited resources without exploitation and towards preservation, practicing such methods like reducing plastic, reusing materials and recycling what can be recycled, makes sense. Similarly, that people do not discriminate between the doer and the action in reality does not justify saying that this must not be practiced in our educational process. It makes it all the more necessary to practice the opposite force. However, the danger lies in challenging without an understanding of human behaviour, i.e. why people do not discriminate between doer and action. If children see only the challenging nature of an alternative perspective without the requisite understanding that must be the base of such a challenge or at least the process that leads to such understanding, then there would be no empathy or sensitivity to the reality. And this is when learners who come out of alternative scenarios find it difficult to cope with mainstream perspectives and end up issuing empty challenges and labeled best as rebels, or worst as terrorists or trouble makers. This is what is happening today.

The other response to the above discussed case was to his suggestion that we must also not disapprove of his intention since the child’s intention is intrinsically positive. He used the word ‘positive’, I would like to substitute it with the word, ‘good’. So he said that for example, if the child jumps on the sofa, then let’s try to understand his good motive, which is – to have fun! Now the reaction to this was much more heated than the earlier one in that most of the participants could not digest taking the intentions of the child as good. Some of course tried to say, why not be neutral saying that it is neither positive nor negative. The discussion indicates the spirit of society in general – how afraid we are to have faith in the intrinsic good of others. It is difficult for us to simply take at face value that a person, be it adult or child, naturally only has goodness in him / her. And that any behaviour or action is because of other cobwebs that have hidden this goodness. How cynical we have become. How can I be happy or peaceful if I am all the time ascribing all the actions of my child or friend or neighbour to bad intentions? To think that it is on the very base of inherent human goodness that our entire country went on satyagraha and got political freedom. One of the primary principles of a satyagrahi was to see the intrinsic goodness of the other, including the British. It is a very sad fact, but what Clive Elwell said is true, “we are not living in a happy and peaceful society”. So then how are we going to raise happy and peaceful children? Can we be happy and peaceful ourselves? This discussion cannot end.

Priya Nagesh
5th May 2009