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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Facilitating Learning

Original Post: http://www.samanvaya.com/main/learning.html

This article was first written as an explorative, introductary write-up for further discussion in a seminar on Education in October 2002 and has been edited further in March 2009. It briefly looks at what is Education, the aims of education and means of achieving the same. - Priya, April 09

Man is a learning species. Education, or the process of learning is life long and does not fit into a stipulated period or station in life. That education is acquired only through "teaching" or school is a myth. The Latin root for the word education is educere, which means to "bring out what is latent". In modern dictionaries like the Webster's some of the given synonyms of education are culture, knowledge, guidance, learning and enlightenment. Obviously all these are life long processes.

Aims of Education
Understanding education as being of such practical nature, it's aim would be that children learn to live in harmony with their surroundings, to create, to view reality and make decisions and initiatives through their understanding, to work as part of the social order and to learn from and strengthen nature. The child will learn to deal with situations and respond in keeping with his culture and the traditions and knowledge-systems of his people, fearless of the consequences. She will learn, not for the purpose of collecting facts & figures (information) and getting preference in the job market, but for strengthening herself and being socially responsible (knowledge). It follows that she will learn to value kindness, compassion, patience etc and being of use to the society and community. In this process she and nature alone will be her 'teachers'. It follows automatically that the motto of such an educational process can only be Freedom and Strength, from within.

What are the means of achieving such education?
A child of 1 or 2, adventurously, boldly ventures out on his own to experiment with what he sees around him, unafraid of any opposition that he may find along the way. The explorer falls again and again, but is back with the same curiosity and enthusiasm with which he started. Learning is intrinsic to him, and he has not yet learned to fear failure. He has not yet learned to value the reward that he will be sure to get if he does something that adults commend; he is satisfied with his learning excursions. When after many trials, he places his wooden train just the way he wants on the grass, between the rocks, he knows he has "succeeded". He understands the "learning" too on his own, until school, parents interrupt this process and hasten it to a premature death (today). The children in whom it is not so easily stifled are the ones who may not get the high ranks, who are called "day dreaming" in the classroom, who make mischief and are forever being summoned to / punished in the principal's office.

Understanding
The process of learning is organic / complete in itself; it cannot be splintered into many subjects isolated from each other, for reproduction in exams. 'Specialising' in a subject equips one with certain skills that may fetch remuneration. But knowledge is beyond accounting and laboratory skills. And knowledge cannot be 'taught' by 'teachers' in schools. The first step towards achieving the aims of education is understanding that we don't teach (as the word is understood today) the children (or anybody for that matter); teachers and schools are not the be-all and end-all of education. They are, and ought to see themselves, as only facilitators of learning.

Working within and without the present mainstream system
The present system of schooling (in India) is born out of, and immersed in the culture of education as it was established in early nineteenth century by the British government to serve their political needs. We seem to have forgotten that the history of our education system can be traced to much earlier times. Neither have we as a nation looked deeply and tried to understand what we have had and how it can be used today, nor have we radically initiated, experimented with original content, ideas and methods in a consistent manner. There are of course several efforts and initiatives across the country doing pioneering work with alternative education and schooling processes. There are also many individuals and groups working to bring in reforms and clean the system from within. We need these multi strategies in these complicated times. However, all these strategies have not yet been able to make a collective and vast enough impact to bring about fundamental and true changes at a national level. The alternative education movement and fraternity in India needs to think and work towards integrating their efforts, and forging a common bare minimum national education policy that will incorporate within itself a decentralised structure and flexible formulations for regional and institutional contexts, balancing out the dangers of standardization while still pursuing a togetherness.

Self schooling
Families may also choose to opt out of the current formal system of education. We already know that learning is a constant process, and we learn from what is within and around us. So our children could be "deschooled" or "homeschooled" (to borrow John Holt's term). I use the term 'self schooling' here, rather than 'self learning' since 'schooling' is associated with a certain organisation and structure; and similarly we may follow our own routine of doing things. It should be noted that routine does not mean mechanical or without thought. There are no set rules to this. Children and parents could together chart their own learning courses and activities, or organise learning sessions with other homeschooling families and so on. It is being innovative that matters here and importantly, building on the natural learning processes that would make the learning a self motivated, intense and interesting experience, taking it away from the humdrum and horror of schools. There is already an increasing community of homeschoolers in India, particularly from Bangalore and a few other cities including Chennai, and they can be contacted for assistance with mainstream integration options if so thought necessary. There are many possibilities for mainstream integration if desired, including taking up the National Open School exams. Currently there are no particular laws governing homeschooling, and it is a valid option today for families with the resources and time.

Learning Communities
Given the nature of learning, everyone is a learner. The teacher facilitates, and learns right along with the children. All in the family together explore and learn from each other.Here is the concept of a "learning society", a much discussed concept in modern communities in search of alternative lifestyles and perspectives today. A concept not very far from the traditional communities of India, which were 'learning communities' wherein knowledge was not simply bookish and all community members were stakeholders of knowledge and shared their knowledge with others and with the next generation. Here is the concept of a vibrant learning society functioning on the foundations of its strengths and facilitating learning.

Facilitate means to assist and smoothen the progress of something or somebody. Exams, textbooks and competition have only proved to be impeding the process of learning in most of the cases and do not contribute to a learning community.

Team-building IN Co-operation IN Confidence IN
Competition, as it is understood today, is an obstacle to learning, undermines the self-confidence and worth of the child, promotes individualism as against team or community spirit, cooperation and friendship. It fuels rivalry and discord. While this might well bolster the spirits of the few teachers' favourites in class, who are able to get the good ranks, and would get the ranks anyway, it damages the majority. While it does nothing towards the learning of any child in class, it aids in creating clear-cut distinctions and helps one set (small 'successful'-group) look down upon the other (large 'failure'-group), and the latter becoming resigned to it as part of life thereafter. More dangerous is that it further fosters false notions of success and achievement as those practiced by the small ‘successful’ group and incites all to aspire for the same no matter what their individual inclinations and talents are. Such a life-destructing view of competition continues into adult and work life, negating true understanding, promoting itself, teaching not to question the status quo and feeding the same competition values to the next generation through education. It is a self fulfilling prophecy that needs to be challenged. It is ironic that the Latin root of the word competition, competere, means "to seek with" or "strive together".

Satisfaction and Achievement
Exams are again related to the concept of competition, and contribute to it's boom. If you got good ranks, you are a success story, otherwise you are a failure; and being a failure is sin. This is not education and no learning happens in such a situation. A child does not need exams and tests to evaluate himself in the process of education; indeed may not need any kind of an evaluation mechanism when all that is necessary is learning. All that matters is that he learns; he will also recognise the learning himself. When a child completes a jigsaw puzzle, he knows that has "succeeded". Relevant and meaningful evaluation and performance assessments do come in an educational process but need to be evolved in participation with the learners and on the basis of empathy and context. Only then would it be a true evaluation of the learner and his or her learning and capacities.

It also needs to be understood that examinations and certificates are nothing but one way of entering the career and job world, and an obsolete way at that. Career options, occupational needs and skill sets are constantly changing in a fast changing, global and turbulent world, and requirements in job candidates also changing likewise. Just the exam grades without a more balanced personality and achievements or pursuits in lateral domains are no longer enough to do well in the job market today, if they ever were. There are as many ways as there are people, of entering the job market and charting one’s own path to occupational and material success.

Being NatureWorms and PeopleWorms instead of BookWorms
Textbooks are the greatest hindrance to learning, participation, dialogue, discussion and sharing in class. It narrows the options that the child has for learning, and consequently his imagination and innovation. He needs practical education more than theoretical knowledge, at least at the early stages. He needs to learn from nature, his fellow-beings and appreciate them. Following this, there ought to be no textbooks for children until the age of 10 or 12. He may of course pick up the reading habit on his own. But this is not to be made compulsory. Guides and textbooks may be published for the teachers, if necessary.

As we also very well know, textbooks may also be convenient tools used by 'privileged intellectuals' to present history and society as they please. We can do away with such presentations. It is also the dominant intellectual society’s imbalanced preoccupation with academics that tries to impose the notion that academic excellence is the only excellence, or superior to all other. This is not to decry 'intellectuals' and those who have achieved academic excellence. Society needs them just as it needs all other kinds of excellences. God be with them but fixation on academic achievement as the only means to societal approval, and the only type of higher education has lived to its full and needs to be expended from our psyche.

Nature's Tools
Gandhiji said that "they (ancestors) saw that our real happiness and health consisted in a proper use of our hands and feet." (Hind Swaraj) and advocated working with our hands and feet. He promoted the learning of a craft by all children in schools, and this would also be a means of supporting the school. In his educational experiments and the educational policy that he initiated and promoted, Nai Taleem (New Education), he advocated not only active work with crafts from very young age, but also that after the age of 12 or so, the child should take up a livelihood / vocational skill, which would definitely lead him / her towards many more learning paths. In learning a craft, she is also able to cultivate observation, patience, precision, experimentation etc besides also the satisfaction of creating with her hands and design. In the process of acquiring a vocational skill like carpentry or pottery, she not only channelises her energy towards productive activity, but also learns to respect and value labour. This is so very necessary to challenge the obsession with academics, and to fulfill the creative urge inherent in every human being. In the current scenario, learning and / or teaching methodologies should be able to incorporate learning a craft / working with hands / taking up a vocational skill or interest etc in curriculums and utilise the same as a medium for subject teaching, if they so require.

Public Work
It needs to be acknowledged and accepted that education is for a happy and meaningful life, in its entirety, which includes individual and social transformation. An individual does contribute to social well or ill being by his or her decisions and actions (or non-actions), whether he / she accepts it or not. An educational process should facilitate this awareness and help the individual take charge of her life and understand his / her role in society. The child from an early age should learn to value social responsibility and take active interest in what is happening around him, which would culminate in him participating responsibly in community initiatives and issues as he grows older. Community activities and programmes should be organised wherein children can be involved, like cleaning the neighbourhood, zero waste management and tank restoration projects and cultural programmes. He learns to interact with co-workers, elders and others in the community, and work harmoniously towards a common goal.

Small is Beautiful
In his book "Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered", Schumacher asked for human-scale and appropriate solutions. He talked of an economics "from the heart rather than the bottom line" and of "smaller working units, co-operative ownership, and regional workplaces using local labor and resources". We need to talk decentralisation, and work at solutions that would involve the community in the learning process. The village (neighbourhood) schools have to come back, minus the expensive, unnecessary paraphernalia that is now so much a part of the education system, and which our people can ill afford. Such neighbourhood schools nourished and sustained by the neighbourhood community and resources, and catering to the neighbourhood would be able to create vibrant networks of people and institutions around themselves that would support the learners and lend them wings once they finish their formal education in the school.

Looking Back, or Looking Forward?
India had "the legend of 1,00,000 schools" and a school flourishing in every village. How we managed this, Dharampalji has explained "the vast system of education was made feasible by the sophisticated operative fiscal arrangements of the pre-British Indian polity...substantial proportions of revenue had long been assigned for the performance of a multiplicity of public purposes." ("The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century") It is time to look beyond the factory school, which is after all not more than 200 years old, and find out how the world brought into being some of the most brilliant musicians, thinkers, writers, scientists, architects, composers, mathematicians etc in the many 200 years before.

In the words of J.C. Kumarappa, "University education can go overboard for a time without damaging the nation. As it is we are top-heavy, we have many more graduates than we need. These have also created a problem of unemployment as they are not the products of the type of education that we need." ("Economy of Permanence") We need new, original ways of looking at education, it's purpose, aims and methods of it, and based on this evolve our educational processes and build educational institutions, school and higher learning.

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"By challenging the well established notion that there are certain time-honoured, proven rules capable of guiding us when we want to prepare a curriculum for the education of children, I wish to emphasise that there is no escape from reflecting on the conditions prevalent in society and culture, if we want to design defensible curriculum… By taking shelter in the ‘received’ perspective… we merely shun our responsibility and allow ourselves to be governed by choices made long ago or elsewhere under very different circumstances. ... Education deals with knowledge in a rather limited context, which is defined by the social reality of a particular period of history and locale" - Prof. Krishnakumar, Director, NCERT, in his book "What is Worth Teaching"

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priya nagesh, April 2009

PaataShaala Guest Lecture I - Nai Talim

PaataShaala Guest Lecture – Nai Talim, by Shiv Dutt Mishra, Nai Talim Samiti

Date: 2nd September 2008

Participants:
Prof. Swaminathan, retired IIT Delhi Professor, Historian
Balakailasam, Director
Sashikant, Director
Arvind, Professor
Rajsri, Teacher, Sevagram
Ravitha Bhatia, Teacher
Uday Meghani, Activist / Social worker
Chitra Nagesh, Freelance Researcher
Krishnan, Graphic Designer / Activist
Ranjith Henry, Kolam
Balakrishnan, Centre for Women’s Development
Bhuvana, Parent
Ram, Samanvaya
Priya, Samanvaya

A summary of Shri. Shiv Dutt Mishra’s Talk in First person
Let’s take the phrase Nai Talim – “Nai” means new and Talim, which is an Urdu word, means “Education”. On October 22nd 1937 there was a conference in Wardha on education, which was when it was formulated this way, but it was not a new concept that came up that day. Gandhiji started his experiments with education, beginning from his own children, and many years of such experiments came to be called as Nai Talim.

There are 3 basic questions – Why education? What education? And how education?, which have to be answered by any educationist. In his experiments, Gandhiji was very clear that he will work for an education that will not make the person, a servant. Perhaps, he becomes a servant of livelihood, which is a very small part of his entire life. This is not education.

We see today also that education is imparted only for examinations. Those who have an array of educational titles still do not have jobs and those who have little education are still able to support their families. How is this? So, all of the hungama of conventional education, particular syllabus, exams and whatnot are not going to give a person knowledge, practical or otherwise. Even a Ph.D or an M.Sc would not have the confidence or time to teach his own children, he will send them to school! We all know the shortcomings of the mainstream education system that we have and let us not go into it further.

One of the core ideas of Nai Talim is that, education is child-centric, correlated to the swabhava of the child, particularly the Basic and Primary education. The child is not burdened with the idea of learning and education. For instance, modern neurologists say that any child cannot concentrate beyond 15 minutes on one thing, so then we have to make things interesting and fun, maybe bring in change every 15 minutes. Making a child sit in one place and asking him or her to listen or write etc for 40-45 minutes is violence. The child’s nature is to do, create, explore. If we convert the idea of discipline, that listening to the “Do it!” or “Don’t do that!” orders of the teacher is discipline then we won’t get very far with the child’s education. We will only create servants, which is what the whole system is anyway geared to do. Gandhiji was experimenting and designing an education process to make masters, not servants!

Knowledge in organised education has to be connected to reality. In Nai Talim, we say that knowledge is to be imparted through the medium of craft or through real activity and real experience. That which is connected to real life and meaningful work is true education, not by models and projects. Even calling it “learning by doing” would be diluting it. It is not structured and bookish knowledge as is the case with conventional system. Bookish knowledge would cut them off from real life.

The two basic principles of Nai Talim are that 1) whatever education is imparted, should be with the help of some creative / productive craft of that area / region, i.e. craft is the medium (not that they are all going to go out into the world and only practice that craft for their livelihood) and 2) whatever is earned out of such craft would take care of the current expenditure of the school. Reading and writing is one medium of imparting knowledge, craft is another. Gandhiji used to say, and today it is well known, that children should not be started on writing straight away. We should start with sound, and reading aided by pictures, and then gradually script. These methods of teaching are connected to how children learn first through their senses – the first is by touch, he knows his mother by her touch first. Then come sight and sound. Then at one stage they want to taste each and every thing they come across. It is after going through such stages in their development do we need to reach reading and writing. And time is required for everything. There is a certain time by which the coordination between fingers, eyes and mind happens for writing. Every child needs her own time and space to go through this. But today, we all want our children to learn everything quickly. If we go with the child according to his or her swabhava, then we will see that they all learn ‘quickly’. For instance, for children everything is play – this is in their swabhava. For them there is no difference between study or work and play. They learn through play. So if we understand this and remove the divisions in our teaching between study and play time, then we will help along the child in his learning. Take for instance, how the child learns script. For a small child, even the letters are pictures. So if we go by what the child sees and understands from the real world, then we should start with simply getting them to understanding words and their meaning first. And then, with time, break them down into letters / alphabets. In all this, the attitude of the teacher should be that of a mother. First comes love, then everything else.

This teaching should be for real life, for through out their life, not just a part of it. For instance, why do we separate subjects? History can be taught through geography or vice versa. Language is taught in and through every other subject. So we should be aware of this and not isolate language teaching to one class and not bother about it during other subjects. And at the primary level, the child is coming in contact with more and more in the outside world. So our teaching must correlate with his engagement with every day life and world. Whether we want it or not, children are learning all the time, and outside the class room, from everywhere. Then, better to understand and integrate all that too, so that they can make better sense of their world. In this situation, it becomes important that our schools are connected to reality, which means they can help the children understand societal problems and issues of the neighbourhood. This is being connected to the real world. They should be helped to understand society and its culture and their identity in it.

Today, we find that those who have the knowledge of science and theory do not know to work on ground, practically. And those who are actually working with a tool or machine, may not be aware of the science behind it. We have separated and isolated them. Gandhiji in his education process wanted to join the two, and provide an education that will allow the child to explore and express his inherent qualities and grow to their full potential and become ‘Masters’. An integrated understanding such that every child / person as he grows up can think independently, take initiative, be confident and solve problems. Then the problems of the locality and country will automatically get solutions. If we are living in this city and country, then we take responsibility for it, and this starts with the family and school.

Understanding phenomena is the basic thing. And there are so many methods of understanding. Not just one way. It cannot be that there is only one right way. The education process must be such that the child also recognises this type of responsibility and values within herself. They are taught not through textbooks but by observation and doing and routine work. We do not need a whole lot of material for this. We don’t need costly instruments and equipments. If it is to be real life teaching, then the real world materials are the materials of education also. Children also recognise and relate to material that they find in their real life instinctively. Correlation and integration is easier this way. One way to see their learning is to listen to them – they repeat whatever they have learnt and find interesting. The child must be able to talk about their learning process to their parents.

Discussions
In answer to the question, why did the Nai Talim school close in 1974, Shri. Shiv Dutt spoke about the equations between the Nai Talim Samiti and the Sarva Seva Sangh, and that ultimately it closed due to lack of teachers.

During a discussion on higher education and the Sevagram Vishwa Vidyalaya, Shiv Dutt spoke about how in Nai Talim, whatever is taught in the conventional system can be completed by the students in 8 years. He further added that if the children do not learn certain things going the Nai Talim that they may have learnt in the conventional system, then he is confident that they don’t need those things in their life since Nai Talim is for real life!

Ram, Samanvaya said that there are many schools that have been started by picking up and adapting ideas from Gandhi and Nai Talim. He described a school that had existed just outside Chennai, and that the old woman who had been running it said that she has been doing so along Gandhian lines. She has heard Gandhiji only once and visited Sevagram a few times. He went on to say that however that such an institution exists is not known even to Gandhians in Chennai. His question was whether there has been any attempt to get to know such people who have been inspired by Gandhiji’s ideas and started educational ventures, since this would give us a picture of how these ideas have spread. His concern was that we should not fall into the rut of centralised thinking that Nai Talim can only be in Sevagram and others must follow suit.

Shiv Dutt in answer said that Nai Talim is not a method and that it must be taken in spirit and adaptations will obviously have come. He added that with poor understanding we will just try to correlate and do things absolutely by the letter and that wont work. He stated that innovation, which also implies adaptation, will only work. He further emphasised that the point is that knowledge must be related to real life and inter-relation must happen, then only will real understanding take place and our children will really think. What the student understands is a lesson for the teacher; it is his responsibility to create an environment where leaning happens – he or she is a facilitator.

Another question that came up was that since Nai Talim as a concept is for the age group 7 – 14, what of children before the age of 7. In answer Shiv Dutt said that largely principles of Nai Talim with regard to child and learning will be the same way. He further said that in that age group, they are learning how the outside world works and learning to interact with it and we have to help them in this process.

There was a discussion on whether there is material online on Nai Talim. However it was realised that at the moment there is no comprehensive material. Much of the material is with the Multiversity group and volunteers are needed to upload the material onto the web.
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Shiv Dutt Mishra has been associated with the Nai Taleem Samiti and the Sevagram Ashram for almost a decade. He has authored two books in Hindi, on the concepts and practice of Nai Taleem idea and its spread and variations. He has also been a close aide of Shri. Dharampal in the last 5 years of Dharampalji's life, working closely with him in particular in his Hindi writings. Academically he is trained in economics and law and is a student of Allahabad University.
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Priya