Text, Theory, and Caste: The Limits of Kerala’s Educational Reform

Part Three

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Language and Experience

The second important feature of the colonial-Brahmanical model is the relation among language, experience and knowledge. Language is considered a career of knowledge which represents the thought process and hence knowledge can exist only in language. The above relation between language and knowledge emerged during the colonial period. The colonial discourse produced different kinds of hierarchical series with dichotomous categories such as science and art, theory and practice and objective and subjective etc. at the higher and lower end of the series. The position of an object in the series was determined by its relation to language or more correctly to the form of language. This series enabled colonialists to make the Brahmanical text as a form of traditional knowledge and the artisanal practices as mere practical bodily work. The highest form of knowledge was objective scientific theory. The entry of upper castes in the field of knowledge production did not challenge this superiority of theory but questioned the colonialist assertions that India did not have a theoretical tradition. The orientalist and nationalist discourse elevated Brahmanical texts to the status of traditional knowledge. The artisanal practices and different forms of agricultural labour became practical work which does not require much intellectual capabilities. Similar processes of invalidation and primitivization of native practices happened in other colonies in Africa and Latin America as well.

From the early twentieth century onwards anthropologists have challenged the colonial concepts of tradition from various stand points. From a structural-functional position, Malinowski attempted to rationalize primitive cultures and their practices. He observed that “tradition is a fabric in which all the strands are so clearly woven that the destruction of one unmakes the whole”. In his analysis on South African native communities, Malinowski criticized the colonial attempt to modernize “the tradition of people living in the simple tribal conditions of Africa” through “schooling of unblushingly European type”. While Malinowski and several other anthropologists in this period critiqued colonial claims of superiority, these criticisms still privileged the binary of modernity and tradition, but now from a cultural relativist stand point.

The 1980s and 90s witnessed a worldwide surge of new social movements which gathered protest against the alarming rate of destruction of the environment, against the destruction of the livelihoods of indigenous communities in the name of development, and against the economic exploitations through globalization. This had its own reflection in the academic scholarship on the question of knowledge and practice. Scholars began to study indigenous practices not merely as traditions but as alternative to the violent practices of modern knowledge. This scholarship privileged and even valorized the experiential elements of indigenous practices against the objectified forms of scientific knowledge. Studies in the anthropology of the senses underscored the importance of taste, touch smell and aural senses in the epistemology of indigenous societies.

Scholars who study experiential knowledge from a phenomenological perspective relocate knowledge to the realm of unconscious, impulsive and implicit thinking. For example, Peter Storkerson explains experiential knowledge as “things recalled from experiences, things tacitly or implicitly learned or acquired.” According to him, “the various kind of experiential knowledge and knowing have in common the use of what is termed unconscious, non-conscious or implicit thinking, which does not involve explicit, expressible, analyzable theoretical system of knowledge”.

Once the linguist turn in the academic scholarship brought forward the impossibility of experience outside language the theory of the connection between knowledge and language was reinforced. This turn shifted the focus of debate from experience to “texts”; texts in various sense: from its very general concept as text book and written text to the very particular sense where post-structuralist theories used the term. Even now the text book is a crucial domain in which ideological contestations and debates of educational policy are taking place.

The educational reform process in Keralam in the last two decades one way challenged the importance of text book in schools; at the same time it retained the relation between knowledge and text in another sense. The section which deals with textbooks in the Education Commission Report of 2004 is a good example for this. In the earlier part of the report the Commission has emphasized the importance of child centric and activity oriented learning practices. The conventional idea of text book as all source of knowledge is irrelevant in this new practice. The report states:

If school education is to be made ‘totally student-centered’, the role of the textbooks and the manner in which they are used would certainly need to undergo drastic changes. The textbook would no longer be the repository ‘of all the knowledge’ that the student is expected to learn. It would be just one in an infinite array of material with which the student interacts in her course of journey of discovery, as she builds knowledge.

The report adds that “in fact the word ‘textbook’ itself could be a misnomer, since the content of the books would be designed essentially as ‘triggering off’ points from where the actual process of self learning begins”. This criticism of the role of textbooks, in one way, questions the objectified nature of knowledge which could be transferred from the teacher to the student through textbook. The mention about self learning and journey of discovery implies that knowledge is not an object that could be handed down, but it is gained as a process. Does this challenge the colonial- Brahmanical idea of the relation between knowledge and text? We can answer this question by analyzing the other materials in ‘the infinite array of materials with which the student interact.’ The report continues:

A variety of additional reading materials supplements, newspapers, magazines and reference books would have to be made available to the learner on a regular basis. It is in this context that the school library would assume added significance.

It is clear that most of materials in the infinite array are texts and most of the activity that are suggested in activity oriented learning are activities of reading writing and speech all of which could be termed as language activities. For example the curriculum draft prepared by SCERT for secondary school lists some activities for learning social sciences at secondary level. This includes, visiting of libraries, collecting journals and other audio-visual materials, collecting historical documents, interviews with important individuals in the neighborhood and so on. These activities are designed in order to develop a critical mind which is the final objective of education. Thus the reform discourse keeps the divide between mental and physical labour intact.

Theory and Practice

The very process through which the curriculum was designed and implemented is another example where the theory – practice divide was kept unchallenged or even reinforced. The process began with formation of an expert committee of teachers and scholars to design the draft of the curriculum. The workshop of selected forty experts discussed  and  debated  the  theoretical  issues  and  formed  a curriculum and draft approach paper for a new pedagogy. How to implement this new curriculum was not decided in this workshop. To decide the actual activities in the class room, district level and block level workshops were organized including all primary school teachers. In these workshops teachers themselves had to design activities for each content prescribed in the curriculum. The very process created experts who created theories and practitioners who designed and implemented the program.

The words of the one of the experts who participated in this workshop explain the conceptualization of the reformers regarding theory and practice. In an interview he described an event in the workshop for text book creation.

“We were almost finishing the design of Malayalam text books when the Director of the program brought an outside person, who was an Adivasi and social activist. The activist evaluated the texts and thoroughly criticized it for its upper-caste Hindu language. Then we recognized that we have to start again from the beginning.” This cannot be a surprise looking into the caste characteristics of the committee. Out of the forty members, thirty five were from upper caste and thirty three of them men. To my question whether this Adivasi activist was included in the further deliberation he said that “Oh no, but we consulted with some of the Dalit and Adivasi activist and incorporated some of their view after critical scrutiny.” To another question of lack of representation of Dalit, Adivasi, and women members the expert explained that “this committee did not follow reservation norms. The members were selected purely based on their scholarship and prior experience in this field. The objective of the workshop was to discus the ideological and theoretical issues. But once the curriculum was formulated, it was discussed in public forums in a democratic manner.”

The debate and criticism that came out in the public sphere after the implementation of the program also points towards the concept of superiority of theory over practice. The main criticism about the program from the public was that it has diluted the content and the students will not be able to compete with other students under the CBSE board. Since this was implemented only in Government and Aided schools this was considered as part of the World Bank agenda of destroying the opportunities of the weaker sections in the society. At this point the defenders of the program introduced more theoretical works to justify the new program. In a book Lev Vygotsky ad Education, author P.V. Purushothaman states in the introduction:

This book is important in two ways. First it introduces the contributions of one of the most important thinkers of education to the readers. Second, it helps to gain ideological clarification regarding the educational reform processes that is happening in Keralam. This book proves that the present reform of curriculum is not part of a hidden agenda of any individuals or organizations like Kerala Shasthra Sahithya Parishath, rather it is baked by the debates happening worldwide on education.

Most of the critiques of the reform did not challenge the theoretical assumption of the current reformers or psychological theories of Piaget or Vygotsky. For example, one critique explains:

Our objection is not against the ideas behind the reform program. Everyone who are familiar with the debates in education will agree that the old child psychological theories are redundant and new theories including Lev Vygotsky are important. But the question is about the practical implementation. Are our teachers ready for this change and if not do we have designed any program to make them ready? Theories might not be wrong but they are not always useful or practical in certain situations.

Both the critiques and the defenders of the program emphasized that the theory, which was after all tested by the experts in the West, cannot be wrong. The major question in the debate was whether the situation in Keralam was suitable for the implementation of the theory or can the situation be changed making it suitable for the program.

All the three issues discussed in this paper – the issue of mental and manual labour, the relation among language, experience and knowledge and the problem theory and practice – points towards the current forms of practices of casteism in the domain education. The reformers criticism against the colonial-Brahmanical concepts of mental and manual labour was limited so that the former did not consider the problems of the very notion knowledge in the latter. The reform discourse did question the present system of producing ‘theoretical Brahmins’ and ‘practical Shudras’, but did not extend its criticism to the Brahmanical nature of the theory itself. This analysis reminds us the importance of examining the caste practice not only in the sociological domain but also in the domain of epistemology.

(The End)

This paper was first published in Artha Journal of Social Science in 2016