SHIKSHANTAR ANDOLAN by Shilpa Jain
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The world we live in today is mired in crises from ecological devastation to widespread exploitation to dehumanizing violence. India, like most countries, comes face-to-face with these challenges in both their most sophisticated and their most subtle manifestations. Yet many of us, especially the educated, have been trained to believe that there is little we can do about them, that these crises have always been here and so will always be here, or that these are simply the costs of Progress. Even if one does feel concerned about the challenges before us, they find it difficult to think about, much less act on, getting out of the trap of Development, Modernization and Globalization. Indeed, many of the educated block the transformation and/or dismantling of our current consumeristic and militaristic society by branding any and all efforts in this direction as impractical or romantic.
Shikshantar Andolan, a not-for-profit peoples' movement, was founded to challenge debilitating and paralyzing mindsets, like the above, by engaging and re-engaging individuals, organizations and communities in twin processes of decolonization and regeneration. The movement intimately links itself to the larger struggle for swaraj (rule over the individual and collective self), as did India's independence movement. It draws its energy from the belief that each human being has infinite human potential, and each community has infinite capacity to create its own visions and realities of living, interacting and being with one another.
Simultaneously, Shikshantar draws its relevance and sense of urgency from the current context we live in. Driven by selfishness, greed, competition and an insatiable quest for profits, the global economic-political system and its partner-organizations have provoked many of the problems we are so overwhelmed by today. This neo-colonial order which alternately seeks to legitimize itself in the name of Scientific Progress, Economic Development or the Global Village that divorces us from our Selves and Nature, from our instinctively moral thoughts about who we are, what our roles and responsibilities are, about what the world around us is and what it could possibly be. To carry this out, it uses various institutions of propaganda and thought-control (including factory schooling and mass media), which not only manipulate our identities, knowledge systems and visions, but also stifle our actions/reflections/expressions and limit our long term choices. This today has led to, what can be termed as, the crisis of the schooled, as evidenced by rising rates of insecurity, suicide, depression, mental illness, violence, crime, corruption, divorce, child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, etc., and as demonstrated by paralyzed and insensitive attitudes to larger economic, political and ecological problems. Ironically, the bulk of problems that Indian society faces today are not due to poor, illiterate people but rather stem from the well-schooled segments of society.
Shikshantar's purpose therefore grows out of the above set of beliefs and contexts. As a peoples' movement, it seeks to create spaces for dialogue between individuals and among communities in order to
- expose and dismantle the exploitation and dehumanization of this global system (and its local realities); and
- to generate new reference points around collective learning and living.
For example, Shikshantar is a core partner in the Udaipur as a Learning City (ULC) process-project. ULC grows out of a desire to address the ecological, socio-cultural, economic and political problems inherent to modern industrialization and urbanization. It also recognizes that the continual growth of urban India is sucking the energy out of rural India. Unless the current model of urbanization (and its resource consumption) is radically changed, there is no future for the villages. ULC seeks to generate spaces and media in which different individuals, groups, and communities can come together around four process-goals:
- To appreciate and nurture the vast potentials and creativities of each human being and of different communities;
- To build new collaborative relationships between people and regenerate feelings of caring;
- To challenge dehumanizing, destructive and exploitative forces, institutions, systems and attitudes; and
- To grow creative shared visions and actions of a balanced, meaningful and just future for Udaipur.
ULC is built on the belief that no one institution can cater to the diversity of human beings. This means that we must start to think in terms of strengthening the larger learning ecology with its own diverse set of learning spaces, media, processes, relationships. However, this learning ecology is not to be pre-planned and socially engineered by experts and then handed over to the local people. The people themselves are responsible for co-creating it.
Over the past 10 years of ULC's existence, several unique activities have emerged organically from local peoplesí interests, concerns, and dreams. These activities fall roughly within five broad categories:
- identifying and connecting local learning resources;
- nurturing self-organizing learning communities;
- promoting community reflections/community media;
- hosting unlearning/learning workshops and seminars for learning activists; and
- regenerating learning spaces.
Learning parks are one example of children and their families regenerating their own learning spaces. Learning parks are self-evolving spaces that are emerging in different areas, under the leadership of children, ages of four to sixteen. With the support of local communities, these children are engaged in dynamic processes of learning that increase their confidence and self-esteem, enhance their creativity and evoke their enthusiasm. Learning parks draw upon and evolve local knowledge, language, culture and wisdom, and childrenís interests and natural energy/curiosity drive the entire learning process. Their motivation for doing different things - creating their own park, playing non-competitive games, doing woodwork, celebrating festivals, telling stories in their local language (Mewari), visiting local places - comes from within, as opposed to being coerced through external punishments and rewards. The parks (best understood as a web of processes and relationships) run without money and instead rely upon the children, to make what they need with their hands, and upon the different members of their localities (their families, local shopkeepers, and craftsmen) to donate materials. In this way, the children connect with diverse people and foster new and dynamic relationships, which opens a world of learning possibilities to them and is resulting in the creation of multiple learning webs. Thus, without external imposition or planning, three distinctly unique learning parks are self-organizing in different parts of Udaipur.
Also under ULC, a number of youths have generated several processes and spaces for genuine reflection and expression. For example, they have self-organized into a learning community, Platform for Youth, which meets regularly to discuss issues of concern to them, with topics ranging from nuclear weapons to unemployment to cultural breakdown via globalization. Other youth have formed their own theater group, Yuva Ehsas, in which they write, act, direct and produce their own plays; the themes again stem from their own interests and life experiences. The first play was entitled, Hum Kya Haye? and examined the roles and responsibilities of youth in today's India. These plays, along with another form of media, Yuva Halchal (a bulletin of essays, poems and cartoons all produced by youth), are intended to start dialogues to build shared meanings with youth in Udaipur and in other parts of India. For youth, these media and communities offer spaces to analyze and share their own personal experiences, feelings and understandings about the challenges of the present and of the future.
Shikshantar believes that the monopoly of so-called expert institutions like NCERT, UNESCO, or the World Bank, must be demystified and broken if true self-learning and unlearning is to manifest. So, in addition to ULC, Shikshantar works on synthesizing, analyzing, and disseminating research on education and development, to be channeled into creative experiments and actions. This involves not only collecting cutting-edge research from all over the world, but also drawing upon the vast paramparas of India, upon our spiritual traditions, and upon a number of thinker-activists including Gandhiji, Tagore, Krishnamurti and Aurobindo. Much of this research is shared through the quarterly publication Vimukt Shiksha, which is available in both English and Hindi. Past issues have covered the topics of human intelligences, creativity, wisdom, democratic living, global media, conflict transformation, and resisting the culture of schooling. Shikshantar team members are also invited by diverse organizations all over the country and the world to share their research in hands-on unlearning workshops and seminars. Finally, Shikshantar is involved in stimulating samvaad (critical and generative dialogues) to influence the policy and research agenda in India. Current open dialogues are taking place on unfolding the concept of learning societies as well as on exposing and resisting the current campaign to declare education a fundamental right in India.
In this way, Shikshantar is different from other efforts in education, for it urges critical and creative thinking on a systemic level. It breaks from current superficial trends of piecemeal school reform or participatory village development. Instead, it urges people of all ages and stages of life to deeply reflect on their own roles in reinforcing a system of global exploitation and injustice and on their own responsibilities for resisting it and regenerating more meaningful, balanced and just ways of living and being.
More detailed information on Shikshantar, our conceptual framework as well as our activities, can be found on our website: www.swaraj.org/shikshantar
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© Copyright 2003. Shilpa Jain - All Rights Reserved.