Against the background of the gradual expansion of Basic Education and the other stages of the broader concept of Nai Talim, the debates about the role and scope of economic self-sufficiency continued. The first Conference of Basic National Education, which took place in 1939 in Poona, marked the beginning of a series of conferences bringing together teachers, experts, researchers and members of the HTS to discuss the progress and problems of the scheme, since it was felt that ‘it would be useful for the workers in basic education to meet together for a collective consideration of the practical problems of basic education at work, and for the assessment of work already done’. 541 At the conference, different experts involved in the implementation process presented their views on the issue of self-sufficiency. Jiwatram Bhagwandas Kripalani for example, a strong proponent of Gandhi and president of the INC in 1947 during the transfer of power, referring to the Dalton Plan and the Montessori System, pointed to the fact that the ideas of Progressive Education, as they were implemented in Europe, were too expensive for the situation in India, and, therefore, in order to stick to these ‘new systems of education based on reality, labour and craft work’, it was important to think of alternative ways of financing the institutions.542 K.G. Saiyidain, however, warned that although ‘… there is a need in life for developing a capacity for hard, strenuous and earnest work’,543 it should not be used as an instrument of exploitation, but for ‘the development of the human mind and the human personality’.544 The conference report also pointed out that the versions of Basic
540 Sykes, The Story of Nai Talim, p. 44.
541 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Eighth Annual Report 1938-46, p. 10.
542 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, One Step Forward, p. 210.
543 Ibid., p. 203
544 Ibid., p. 198
Education that were implemented differed across different locations, which made it difficult to compare the implementation process and evaluate the effects of the new education scheme.
The spirit of euphoria reported on in the report of the Poona conference is also visible in the documentation about the second Basic Education Conference in Delhi in 1941. More than a hundred delegates were present, and one of the findings proudly presented was that ‘the children in basic schools are more active, cheerful and self-reliant and their power of self-expression is well developed, they are acquiring habits of co-operative work, and social prejudices are breaking down’.545 As Sykes recalled in her history of Nai Talim, at that time there were diverse reports of its positive effects:
There are reports of play-centres for younger children run by the Basic School children themselves, of school gardens started on their own initiative, of school ‘shops’ and ‘savings banks’, and in some cases of how crafts learned at school had been practised at home to increase the family income.546
Gandhi was not personally present but sent a message to the 1941 conference, reiterating the importance of economic self-sufficiency, especially under the circumstances, as the government was withdrawing more and more support for the implementation process:
I hope that the Conference will realize that success of the effort is dependent more upon self-help than upon Government, which must necessarily be cautious even when it is well-disposed. Our experiment to be thorough has to be at least somewhere made without alloy and without outside interference.547
In his presidential address, however, Zakir Husain again restated his fear that, implemented too radically, the idea of economic self-sufficiency would have negative effects. The Zakir Husain Report had already warned that there was ‘an obvious danger that in the working of this scheme the economic aspect may be stressed at the sacrifice of the cultural and educational objectives. Teachers may devote most of their attention and energy to extracting the maximum amount of
545 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Eighth Annual Report 1938-46, p. 18.
546 Sykes, The Story of Nai Talim, p. 37.
547 CWMG Vol. 80, p. 158.
labour from their children.’548 For Husain, ‘not all activity but only that which is planned can be educative. Work executed mechanically, which could have been done by a mere machine, cannot educate.’549 Echoing Kerschensteiner’s understanding of the positive impact of manual work on moral development, he argued that the criterion for the selection of the type of work must be that it is
‘really educative, for the body as well as the mind, work such as makes men better men’. He warned that ‘… children are not labourers, their activity is creative’.550 However, at the same event, Rajendra Prasad sounded a note of caution, saying that ‘one cannot help feeling that to the extent the earning part of the scheme has been thrown into the background, the chances of its universal adoption have also been reduced’.551
Gandhi’s radicalism with regard to the question of the schools’ economic self-sufficiency experienced a major setback after a CABE report – the so-called Sargent Report – was published in 1944, dealing with questions of post-war
‘educational reconstruction’ in India. It stated that ‘the Board, however, are unable to endorse the view that education at any stage, and particularly in the lowest stage, can or should be expected to pay for itself through the sales of articles produced by the pupils’.552 This points to the fact that the Basic Education Movement had to make compromises in order to win the cooperation of critical actors, and, since for them the idea of economic self-sufficiency seemed to be like a red rag to a bull, the idea was weakened more and more. At the same time, the proponents of Nai Talim, although divided on the question of economic self-sufficiency, kept their positive spirit, and in the sixth HTS Annual Report of 1944, six years after the official start of the Nai Talim experiments, HTS presented results of a report on the achievements of children in Basic Schools as compared with children in other primary schools. The report came to the conclusion that a child in a Basic School ‘is not behind the pupils of the old primary schools in his attainment in what are known as “academic” subjects, and is superior in
548 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Basic National Education, p. 15.
549 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Two Years of Work, p. 31.
550 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Two Years of Work, p. 31.
551 Ibid., p. 16
552 Hindustani Talimi Sangh, Eighth Annual Report 1938-46, p. 33. See also: Government of India, Post-War Education Development in India: Report by the Central Advisory Board of Education (New Delhi: Bureau of Education, India, 1944).
knowledge relating to his life and environment including scientific knowledge and training in a productive craft’.553 Evaluations by HTS based on data from Sevagram were used to prove that, at a practical level, the remuneration of teachers through the earnings of the children would work.554
At the Basic Education Conference of January 1945 in Sevagram, the issue of economic self-sufficiency was again a central topic in the discussions.555 In his opening speech Gandhi stood fast by his conviction that ‘the only true education is that which is self-supporting’.556 In the end, the issue was again left open, and a resolution that ‘New Education should be so organized that a normal adult pupil in villages earns enough wages during his period of training to defray his costs of education’ was passed.557 This resolution did not, however, address any specific means by which economic self-sufficiency could be realized, let alone how to achieve this goal when educating young children. Selling the products produced in the schools was not very easy,558 and the problem of disposing of the yarn spun in the institutions is often referred to in the reports. Gandhi’s idea was that the government should purchase the products produced by the Basic Schools.
However, as Sykes stated: ‘the yarn was not in itself a marketable commodity and governments, faced with what officialdom was an unheard-of demand, were very unwilling to cope with it’.559 But Gandhi remained convinced of his idea and continued to present it to the Basic Education Movement; the last time was shortly before his death, in a journal article in November 1947, in which he reiterated his conviction that ‘all education to be true must be self-supporting’.560