When the former Chief Justice of India, M. N. Venkatachaliah visited the Bhasha Tribal Academy in Tejgadh, Gujarat, the children studying there asked him so many questions that the amazed justice exclaimed, “If a tribal boy can ask the Chief Justice of India these questions, India still has hope!” Can adivasi school drop-outs in rural Gujarat sustain their curiosity and engagement with the world? The answer to this question may lie in the ability of Dr. Ganesh Devy, the teacher who set up Bhasha Center in Gujarat, to challenge the pedagogical preconceptions of us all.

There is a great hunger for learning among the adivasis. Given dedicated teachers, children in even the tiniest of hamlets would shape up as potentially excellent University entrants. So Bhasha decided to set up non-formal support schools in about eighty villages to help children who were lagging behind, or those who had missed the bus of learning altogether. Reducing school hours and altering the very pattern of school were both crucial to providing learning opportunities for these children. While reduced hours allowed the children to stay in school as well as tend to cattle, collect water, fetch firewood and otherwise help their families for the rest of the day, the question remained: how to inspire the love of learning in children who are disillusioned with the system? The answer to this quandary leads back to a re-understanding of the meaning of education itself.

Children are often asked what they want to be when they grow up and the usual answers are "doctor", "pilot", "engineer" or "architect". Yet is schooling just a means to get a job and buy a comfortable life or does education function to help us understand the mysteries of life? Can it cultivate in each of us the intelligence to find the answers to our problems? J. Krishnamurti, a teacher of rare originality, had this to say, “Intelligence is the capacity surely to think freely, without fear, without a formula, so that you begin to discover yourself what is real, what is true.” Not to imitate but to discover – that is education! Learning is really a process of unlearning. True learning happens when there is no motive, no incentive - when you do it for the love of itself!

So how does one inspire this love for learning? One way is to connect classroom concepts to the child’s life experiences. An education that has no connection or relevance to practical life is of no consequence especially to adivasi children since they are more integrated with their natural environment than their urban counterparts.

The memory span and capacity of children is vast. Why does my father’s reading and oral explanation of Dasha Avatar remain imprinted in my memory to this day, while I have little recollection of the stories in the countless Amar Chitra Kathas and Enid Blyton books I read consequently? We know that children learn a lot in the early years through observation alone. Children thrive in their pre-school years at home and soak in tremendous amounts of knowledge from their parents without being able to utter many words themselves.

The core of the new Radio Schools started by Bhasha is the realization that writing cannot be equated with knowledge or wisdom. The Mughal Emperor Akbar could neither read nor write and yet he was able to keep enormous amounts of information in his memory, including fairly minute geographical details once they were recited to him. The entire musical tradition of Northern India, including the intricacies of talas on the tabla, has been passed on for centuries without any recourse to writing. It is reputed that Tansen himself was illiterate. Given the particular adeptness of Adivasis with oral learning, using the radio to reach schooling to the hard-to-reach students becomes not only appropriate but necessary. Where teachers cannot go, transistor sets go. In villages where large numbers of children get left out of formal schooling, oral means become confidence builders.

The instructional materials developed by the Academy teachers correspond closely to those in formal schools, but they are tailored to fit into the oral medium in the local language. The radio allows the child to relate home speech/tribal speech to book speech. The lessons combine formal education concepts, along with knowledge of local songs, stories, ecology, science and technology. After all, the oral literature of the Adivasi is intermixed with song, dance, music, ritual and crafts, all integral parts of daily life. Teachers from within the community help the children tune in to the lessons, supervise their homework and give them feedback. In the initial two to three years, Bhasha puts these children under the care of the teacher; in the third or fourth year, they are introduced to the skills of writing and reading. This helps them catch up with the others at the board examinations stage.

Teachers currently working at the Academy have been selected for special training at the Baroda or Ahmedabad radio station and will receive Radio Broadcasting degrees from the Open University. The technology for the schools is being developed by the DA-IICT, Gandhinagar. Dr. Devy has had talks with the Central Government’s elementary school department and they are open to the idea of these radio schools. When it is established that the method works well, they will formalize an official order recognizing them.

Any intervention in an adivasi community will have a lasting impact only if it includes a sympathetic understanding of the adivasi mind. In one adivasi’s words, “It is everyone’s duty to ensure that each child in the village goes to school. If every child starts learning, then he will become a thoughtful individual and will be able to live and prosper in the contemporary world.” In the years to come, we may look to this experiment and find in it the answers to our own frustrations with the formal system of education.

Dr. Devy says, “When I see the children in these non-formal learning centers playing, singing, painting and reading, my faith in the future of the Adivasis is strengthened or as Wordsworth said, ‘My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky’.”

Here's to many more rainbows across India’s rural skies!

Mamta Chinnappa is an AID volunteer in San Diego.