Over the last two Covid-ridden years, I have written a few times criticizing the way in which the children of Bangladesh have had their education stolen away from them, and that the educational authorities did not take any initiatives to bring flexibility into the ways of educating young children. During the many months when formal education was virtually closed down, there was the opportunity to explore ways of learning by doing, by seeing, by touching etc. Nothing was done as far as I know.
A lot of my feelings and observations are connected with my experiences of over 50 years ago in Bihar, India where in work supported by Oxfam-UK with a Gandhian ashram, I was able to see how children from the very poorest could break through the ties of bondage.
After the devastating famine in Bihar of 1966/67, the leader of the ashram, Dwarko Sundrani, was passing through a village not far from Bodh Gaya, accompanied by a Frenchman who was working with the French NGO “Brothers to All Men” and driving the jeep. All of a sudden a Musahar ( one of the “untouchable” castes. Members were traditionally rat-catchers and in scarcity times were known to eat rats) woman in a tattered cloth which could hardly cover her body dashed in front of their jeep and started narrating her harrowing story.
She stated that she had not eaten anything for six days and that her husband had died of a snake-bite six months before. She said that she had three daughters and it was becoming very hard to feed them. Dwarko gave her money, asking how long she could feed her family with the money. When she said that it would be sufficient for five days, Dwarko was so overwhelmed with compassion that he decided to start a school exclusively for scheduled caste and scheduled tribe boys and girls.
Dwarko begged the woman to allow one of her daughters to help his experiment with poverty and education, to which she readily agreed. The daughter’s name was Sita, and thus, Samanwaya Vidyapith was established on June 15, 1968. To begin with, it was decided to admit girls and boys from the very poorest families from 50 villages in the area.
During the monsoon of 1968, Dwarko went to a village not far from Bodh Gaya, accompanied by an Oxfam colleague, Alan Leather. An ashram village worker had identified an orphan to be a student -- Dharmanath, an eight-year-old boy. Dwarko and Alan were returning with Dharmanath when about 15 persons armed with sticks and led by a landlord, Bhawan Singh, came to beat them because they were taking Dharmanath for schooling.
It quickly appeared that Dharmanath had committed the sin of being born a Musahar and the landlord had paid to perform the last rites of his mother. Dharmanath could not pay back that money and thereby became a bonded labourer for life.
Dwarko’s whole philosophy of non-violence and peace was at stake. He provided arguments against the system of slavery and labour but the more he argued, the more angry Bhawan Singh and his goons became. Alan had taken photographs when they wanted to beat Dwarko and had run away with his camera lest it should be snatched from him. Some of the men feared grave consequences and the landlord and his men retreated and went home. Dharmanath had been so frightened that he ran for his life.
A few months later, Dwarko was at the school when he saw Dharmanath entering the Vidyapith. Dwarko asked him whether the landlord would again start beating him but he discovered that he had come for schooling. His answer was so blunt that Dwarko could not believe it. He said that if the landlord ever tried to snatch him from the school, he and his goons would be murdered by the Naxalites (extreme left-wing communists). Only then did Dwarko understand that Dharmanath had been sent to the school by these left-wing extremists who had established a firm hold over his village.
As Dwarko used to say: “Poverty breeds violence and hatred. Education breeds goodwill, peace, and harmony.” Dwarko also used to say that an education can be summarized in three words: Yoga, udyoga, and sahayoga -- total development of life, ie, physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual; correlation of education and manual work leading to self-reliance in the basic necessities of life; and harmonious living with nature and society.
What education is for
The aim of education is not solely to induce literacy and numeracy. This is only a medium. The aim of education should be to develop the whole personality of the child. The personality of the child is developed in the family and in the school, hence it is essential to develop the family too. People’s education and children’s education must go hand-in-hand, so education must be correlated with development work.
The Samanwaya Vidyapith was and still is correlating education with agriculture, dairy farming, and mechanics. In mechanics, diesel engine repairs, electrical motor winding, and jeep-driving and such other training is imparted. The masonry needed for low-cost housing is also taught. The education is also combined with singing, dancing, painting, puppet shows, prayers, etc.
Generally, the purpose of going to school is to get a diploma and eventually a degree and a job. In the Samanwaya Vidyapith, no certificate is offered. There is no government certificate, no government books, no government examinations.
Instead, the ability to earn and learn is developed. There are about 100 boys and girls in this experiment. The Samanwaya Vidyapith is laboratory work and village education is extension work. In these villages, education is also correlated to village problems. For instance, due to deficiency of vitamins in the food there is night blindness in some nearby villages, so the school gives each child seeds of ten types of green vegetables and three papaya trees to grow. The villagers are also selling vegetables and fruits and earning money.
Cholera is endemic in the area, so the children and the teachers go and disinfect the drinking water and the wells. They make compost manure from the waste in the villages. Lessons in language, arithmetic, and science are based on growing vegetables and fruits, making compost, and health matters.
The government is giving some financial support for this project and the extension centres were bringing in significant sums of money from vegetables, fruits, and manure when I visited some 20 years ago. The school receives a lot of cooperation from government agencies and it has made good progress in the integration of religious sentiments.
When I visited the school, even Muslim teachers were teaching the Ramayana to Muslim girls on their own initiative, and the Hindu teachers had started teaching the Holy Qur’an to Hindu children. The area was once infested by terrorists but the educational system has had a good influence on the youth with the result that 25 young and potentially dangerous terrorists had been converted and had joined the program at the time of my visit.
In conclusion, I should apologize to the readers that I have written at some length about an educational experiment in another country -- but the education experts in the ministries of Bangladesh should look into ways in which educational systems, particularly in the rural areas and urban slums, can be made more flexible, relevant, and practical.
Huge numbers of children drop out of school or never attend school in order to augment the family income. Having education which is more appropriate to the needs of extreme poor families is vitally important. Surely, something can be done?
Julian Francis has been associated with relief and development activities of Bangladesh since the War of Liberation. In 2012, the Government of Bangladesh awarded him the ‘Friends of Liberation War Honour’ in recognition of his work among the refugees in India in 1971 and in 2018 honoured him with full Bangladesh citizenship.