School Education is usually thought of as a saviour for the oppressed and marginalized communities, as a pathway to escaping poverty. It is seen as an institution that opens new doors and opportunities for the marginalized. Here, I try to deconstruct this assumption and explore if schools have truly been able to emancipate the marginalized or do they insidiously collude with dominant knowledge practices, to enable continued subjugation of the vulnerable. At the same time, there also have been curriculum debates and alternate models of textbook development that placed children’s context and everyday experiences at the centre, which meant a greater emphasis on the home language of the child. What do these debates mean for the Mising community? What possibilities does the development of an educational experience in one’s own language offer to the Mising child? This article is a preliminary attempt to look at language and knowledge issues in the school curriculum especially with respect to tribal children.
The conundrum of the socially undifferentiated learner and a voiceless curriculum
There are two very detailed qualitative studies on the impact of the school curriculum on tribal people, one from Madhya Pradesh and another from Nagaland. The political and social history of the Misings might be very different from tribes of central India or even from those of Nagaland, but there are also certain similarities especially in the matter of ‘voice’ which seems to be absent or erased from mainstream textbooks. And that is why such studies seem relevant despite the difference in context.
In the study by Krishna Kumar (1989) of school curriculum in Madhya Pradesh, he had given the example of a tribal boy who is caught in a quagmire while being made to answer a history question by a teacher in a Hindi medium school. The topic being taught in class was Hindu rituals and customs. There was a section in the textbook which talked about tantricism. It was portrayed as a mysterious, superstitious, and backward phenomenon, associated with tribes and which had influenced Hindu cultures and customs. At one level, there are problems with the confidence being projected onto this claim. History as a discipline would generally steer clear of such a confident assertion as there is always a possibility of being proven false in the light of new evidence. But the other problem, which is even more major, is with the use of the term ‘tribes’ in such a callous and insensitive way without acknowledging the fact that it is also associated with the identity of the tribal student sitting in class. The text insinuates that anything associated with tribal cultures is backward and primitive, therefore reinforcing already harmful stereotypes. In addition, the teacher also happens to ask the same boy if he had understood the text and asks him to repeat it for the class. If he answers the question correctly, it would in some sense mean he agrees with the text which claims that tribal cultures are backward and savage. If he is silent and unable to follow what is being said in class, which could be attributed to the fact that Hindi is not a familiar language for him, he would be dismissed as a failure. In both the cases, there would be a tacit acceptance of his ‘backwardness’, either as a student or as a member of a tribal community.
Kumar also examined how tribal characters were treated in the text. Was there a proportionate representation of tribal characters? If indeed they were represented, did they have any agency? Or were they mere compensatory additions in the textbook in the name of representation? In one of the chapters, the famous story of Eklavya was retold (Eklavya belonging to the Bhil tribal community), where Eklavya had to sacrifice his thumb when being asked by his guru Dronacharya, who himself was trying to assuage the jealousy of his princely students. But Kumar asks what kind of an impact the portrayal of such a relationship could have on students, especially when the teacher and the student both come from such starkly different backgrounds. What kind of a message does it send? In another chapter, a tribal boy bravely saves a forest officer, who was being attacked by an animal. Because of this heroic act, he is then given a medal by an army officer, who thus becomes a certifier for the character of that boy. All these points towards the creation of ideal characters from tribal communities, who can apparently create a space for themselves in the mainstream only when they do something remarkable and only after getting certificates of certain virtues, bestowed on them by people in authority. Such characterizations gloss over the lived realities of tribal people and ‘pick and choose’ certain traits which are appealing to the dominant groups. They are not shown as people who have a voice or who can live life on their own terms.
Similar to this is the study by Kikon (2003) on Nagaland textbooks. Here, Naga characters have been infantilized, and a glorification of an ‘ideal’ Naga takes place. There has been an erasure of Naga political history and of their angst against what they considered a foreign imposition. What happens instead is a manufactured amnesia regarding this aspect of their history, and instead a glorification of the ‘simple’ Naga of the past, aimed at creating docile and obedient citizens.
Such treatment of tribal cultures in mainstream textbooks and curriculum goes against the very spirit of democracy, which is built upon dialogue between different groups of people. What we have instead is a sanitization of democratic processes and the raising of children unable to have a voice that they can call their own.
However, resolving issues with the curriculum is a complex process. It requires a politics that is committed to democratic values.
Representation of different social groups and the nature of their representation in the school curriculum are also dependent on the political dynamic between them outside of the school (Apple, 2000; Kumar, 1989). The more power a group holds in society, the more it is able to influence the content of the curriculum. But that should not lead us to some sort of determinism. It would be wrong to assume that schools or the education systems have no say over such issues, and what matters is only the political tussles outside.
There is also a need for the vocal sections of marginalized communities to turn inward and focus on the well-being of their children. The whole discourse around education, apart from language debates and debates about its ability to reach the most marginalized in society, must also centre on students’ learning needs. How does he learn best? What can develop his/ her self-esteem in a society that works to stigmatize the experiences of certain cultures? Can schools be imagined as places that children look forward to going instead of accepting them as alien spaces that erode children’s identities and that impose an artificial culture on them?
Contextualization, constructivism, and alternate models of curriculum development
A concept closely related to questions about children’s well-being is that of ‘contextualization’. It’s an idea that takes into account the context that the child grows up in, giving them a place in the knowledge systems of school textbooks, validating children’s everyday experiences, naming them, and building upwards from there to develop concepts in Science and Social Science. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005, one of the more progressive documents developed in the history of curriculum development in India, had placed utmost emphasis on the child’s milieu in textbook planning and centering subaltern narratives while talking about India’s history. Such documents gave a rare opportunity for hitherto invisibilized stories and experiences that were not part of the dominant canon to be heard.
This document also learnt from earlier experiments that happened in the field of textbook development. One such well-documented project is the Hoshangabad Science teaching programme in Madhya Pradesh, where the curriculum was not imposed on school students in a top-down approach but developed from the ground up using the constructivist approach. At the end, a well-contextualized Science textbook came into fruition for middle-school students. Students were taken on field visits to take note of their surroundings, and everyday occurrences, which then acted as aids to develop concepts in Science and Social Science. There were, of course, many obstructions and roadblocks. In a society like ours where superstition and classist-casteist mindset abound, it is very difficult to shift the lens to a rational and scientific one. Even more perplexing is the idea that local knowledge has any value in the education system. There is resistance from politicians who benefit from a populist and orthodox mindset. There is even resistance from society and from one’s own family when you take on the task of dismantling unsubstantiated claims that go against Science but are considered as ‘truth’ in society. Despite such challenges and despite the fact that the project did get stalled by a political situation that didn’t want such progressive ideas to develop, it was a lesson for those committed to the idea that Science, Science learning, and a democratic mode of imparting education can be made accessible to the remotest parts of the country. In this project, the people’s language played an important role because it is only through the local language that local knowledge can be honestly communicated.
Envisioning an education and curriculum for Mising children: imagining language for both pedagogic purposes and knowledge generation
Can such a project be envisioned for the Misings as well? An education where Mising children’s context is validated in the school curriculum, an education where children get to see their experiences being talked about in the textbook, where knowledge associated with tribal ways of living is not stigmatized or seen as an antithesis to Science and modernity, but as something that can function as the primary building blocks of knowledge for children. Conflicts and contradictions will, of course, arise. But if the core principles of democracy and children’s well-being are kept at the centre, resolutions will come about more easily.
As of now, the schooling system is not very kind to children from those linguistic communities who, when they first start going to school, encounter a completely alien language, which they are not very familiar with at school. It is cruel to hold them in such hostile places for long hours, that in the name of disciplining and educating children, it robs them of their free, creative, and curious spirit, which could otherwise have been very productively channeled had education happened in the child’s own language. What happens instead is a forced immersion of children in a new language that is touted as a more formal language fit for official use and for purposes of knowledge dissemination. Indian society is already structured on the basis of unjust language hierarchies, adversely affecting the psyche of those whose languages have been relegated to the margins, lowering their self-esteem, and causing cultural amnesia in people from said linguistic communities. Such an immersion in the dominant language only reinforces this hierarchy and teaches small children that what they know and what they speak is not worthwhile or legitimate knowledge. What’s valid is the dominant language they are now going to learn in schools. At an age when schools should have helped channel children’s curiosity to understand their experiences and what they see around them, they instead seek to socialize them into the dominant culture.
Usually, when it’s difficult to arrive at certain concepts through inductive logic, that is, arriving at a theory after making several observations, educationists develop artificial simulations of reality. That is why we have Science labs or Social Science labs and visual aids like documentaries and movies that can give children some sense of the real thing even when they can’t access it around them. For instance, people who do not live near volcanoes get an idea of what it is through documentaries or through Science projects where they artificially mimic a volcanic eruption. Concepts like the heliocentric model of the solar system have to be explained using models, etc. Sometimes, we also have the opposite problem. While on one hand, there is a struggle to translate scientific terms from English to the local languages, there is at the same time a struggle to accommodate within formal systems the knowledge system that tribal communities have developed after having interacted with their natural surroundings for generations, in the spirit of harmonious exchange, a logic that defies the exploitative tendencies of modern capitalist economies. Tribal communities have developed a rich vocabulary in their language to describe what they see and experience around them. Since these are not very well documented, they do not enter the so-called official knowledge that makes up the school curriculum.
Tribal worldviews have a lot to contribute to knowledge generation in general. The local language can be used for a dual purpose. One is of course for pedagogic reasons. Children learn better in their mother tongues. The mother tongue becomes a means through which the local context can be taken into account while teaching children, which makes the educational experience more meaningful for the children rather than an exercise in rote. But the other purpose of the local language is also knowledge generation. Can the Indian education system take cognizance of both these points simultaneously?
The education system is already plagued with many problems. From low budgets, poor infrastructure, unmet language needs of marginalized children, to teacher training systems that still struggle to incorporate progressive ideas in line with the NCF 2005, a question might arise as to the priority one needs to assign to the question of local knowledge. But I do not see this as a separate issue. It is very much linked to the language issue, and more importantly to the well-being and self-esteem of the tribal child. Language is not a mere tool for communication. It also encodes ways of living, worldviews, thought and an entire lens to see the world. When one talks about translations, it should not be a mere one-way process where new terms in Science and Social Science are being developed in Mising. There needs to be dialogue between languages. One needs to learn from the other. The Mising language is also capable of contributing knowledge. Just like how new words from Assamese and English are added to the Mising lexicon, there is also a lot that the Mising language has in store and can contribute to other languages.
The newly revised Mising language textbook that first came out in 2006 (after the NCF 2005) is a case in point. It is actually a very well-written textbook, which can act as a blueprint for future textbooks written in the language. Most of the chapters are not mere translations from other language textbooks, but are original and true to the experiences that Mising people face. It has characters that have agency, that take initiative and are committed to resolving the issues they face in society. They are not at the receiving end of others’ mercy. They face floods, deal with dying livestock and livelihood loss, tackle superstition, celebrate their festivals, have conversations to resolve issues and are not looked at condescendingly by more privileged groups. They are shown to be capable of handling their own issues and stand tall in the face of crisis. Such portrayals are important for developing the self-esteem of the child.
It’s however another matter that such portrayals are limited to Mising textbooks only, which are also used in a limited way because of the meagre number of schools where Mising exists as a subject. The non-Mising child from a dominant linguistic group would still not have access to such progressive portrayals. In mainstream textbooks which are used by children of all communities, characters are shown to be ‘neutral’, as not having any identity and yet the experiences, symbolism, aesthetic and morality are all that of the dominant groups, packaged as the norm, while invisibilizing the experiences of others. And if in fact characters from other cultures are shown, they lack agency, some traits are glorified as if to say this is what they should be like. They are not allowed to feel and say things they want. They are not allowed to experience the full breadth and width of human experiences possible.
Through this article, I just wanted to turn people’s attention towards curriculum debates within education, and to the content of textbooks, which can enrich the language debates that we currently have. Language, thought, and knowledge are also deeply interlinked. If indeed we do manage to get our language in schools, issues of knowledge and tribal voice should not be relegated to the margins. Because what we ultimately want is a Mising child who can have a meaningful educational experience, who won’t feel intimidated when he encounters more powerful cultures but is able to use his own culture and knowledge systems as a source of strength.
References
Apple, M. W. (2000). Cultural Politics and the Text. In Official Knowledge (pp. 42–60). Routledge.
Joshi, S. (2014). Never A Dull Moment: Academic Narrative of Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme. Eklavya.
Kikon, D. (2003). Destroying Differences, Schooling Consent: A Critical Analysis of Education Policy in Indian-Administered Nagaland. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 4(2), 232–248.
Kumar, K. (1989). Social Character of Learning. Sage Publications.
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