COMMUNITY, CULTURE AND

CURRICULUM
POLICY AND PRACTICE ON
MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION IN ORISSA
paper to be presented in national Seminar on Community and school
Linkages: Principles and Practices “to be held in NUEPA,
New Delhi, (17-19 march 2008)

Dr Mahendra Kumar Mishra

State Project Coordinator SC/ST and Minority Education
Orissa Primary Education Programme Authority
Bhubaneswar
 Antonio Gramsci
 All men are intellectuals one could therefore
say: but not all men have functions of
intellectuals in society. There is no human
activity from which every form of intellectual
participation can be excluded
 NCF 2005
 Community may also have questions about the
inclusion and exclusion of particular knowledge and
experiences in the school curriculum. The school must
then be prepared to engage with communities to listen
to their concerns and to persuade them to see the
educational value of such decisions. For this, teachers
must know the reasons why some thing is included
while some thing else is not. They must also be able to
win the trust of parents in matters like allowing
children to use home language in schools,
 NCF 2005 contd..
 It is not a good enough explanation to say that
the decisions were taken at the state level. If
we are to ensure participation of children of
all groups in our secular education, we will
have to discuss our curricular choices with
others who are legitimate stakeholders in
education.
 Issues
Who owns the school ?
Government ?
Teachers?
Children ?
Community ?
 Community’s role in school
For physical work ?
 Community is responsible
for Physical work
 Enrollment
 school management
 Civil work
 Financial support
 Community labour
 Manage school finance
 Check teacher absenteeism
 Community is not involved
in intellectual work
 They consider that school is
a model where they have no
entry in classroom
transaction
 School education dept take
care of education
 Knowledge out side the
school is not considered as
curricular activities
 State initiative
 Community participation Rule 2000
 After cabinet approval School Education
Committee was formed
 DPEP promoted community participation
through community mobilization, community
construction, formation of VEC /MTA and
their training
 Use of SIG/TLM grant through community
 NPEGEL ( MCS) for women participation
 Role of community
 What is the perception of the community in
school ownership?
 Are they for physical domain to support the
school in terms of
Community construction,
Forming VEC,MTA,
Watching teacher absenteeism?
 Is the VEC really represent the voices of the
Community ?
 Is the Headmasters / teachers believe that
community is really a strength to the schooling
as a social process?
or
 There is a gap of school and community ?
 Five Guiding Principles From The National
Curriculum Framework 2005
• Connecting knowledge to life outside the school.
• Shifting learning away from rote methods:
Meaning & Communication
• Enriching the curriculum to provide for overall
development of children rather than remain
textbook centric.
• Making examinations more flexible and integrated
into classroom life.
• Nurturing an over-riding identity: How does the
tribal child become a true citizen of India?
 NCF 2005 empowers community
 Our objective is to examine two programmes
taken up in SSA Orissa to address
education of tribal children
 To explore why community is important for
education of tribal children vis a vis using
community knowledge in school curriculum
 Why community in schools?
In Tribal Context of Orissa
 Tribal literacy 37.37
 Female tribal literacy 23.51
 High Dropouts
 Low achievement
 Over a period of last 30 years rate of tribal literacy is
only 17 % to 37 %
 About 11749 schools in Orissa have at least 20 +
children with linguistic diversities
 Out of that 5900 schools are tribal dominated
 Reasons

 Lack of community participation

 Unsuitable state curriculum
 Gap of home and school language
 Noncontextual text books
 Child unfriendly teaching methods
 Lack of monitoring and supervision
 School in isolation in the village
 (Vision 2020,SME Dept.Orissa
Existing school with blocking the learning
 Intervention MLE
 Orissa SSA initiated multilingual education in ten
tribal languages on pilot basis in 200 schools
 They are Santali, Saura,Munda,Koya,Kui, Kuvi,
Juang, Oram, Kishan , Bonda
 Selection of schools were made based on
community participation.
 Schools with 100 % monolingual tribal children were
selected
 Teachers were from the same community
 Five Questions about Multi-Lingual Education
What is it?
 Multi-Lingual Education is a curriculum and teaching methodology
that:
 Begins with mother tongue (L1, home language) as a medium of
instruction and builds good bridges to other languages, while
maintaining the use of L1 for as long as possible.
 Builds on what we know about how children learn best. (Begins with
the known and moves to the unknown by building on the child’s prior
knowledge, using his/her world or real knowledge and moving to new
knowledge.)
 Allows the child to construct knowledge rather than the teacher being
the only way to knowledge and rather than the teacher designing only
one learning experience.
 Uses the language the child knows best to teach reading and writing
skills.
 Allows the child to learn academic concepts in mother tongue
 Process
 First language of the child first
 Curricular themes from cultural context
 Experience of the children to be explored
( from known to unknown)
 Community to select the schools
 Teachers from the same community
 They are to decide with the tribal teachers to
select the cultural themes to be adopted in
curriculum
 Contd..
 Community teachers select the themes for the
whole year
 Each theme is discussed with the senior people
of the community and knowledge is explored
 Teachers use the knowledge in preparation of
curriculum and instructional materials
 Cultural themes co-opted with
curricular themes
 Whole year is divided in to three terms
 Each term represents broadly one season, total three
seasons are represented
 Rainy, winter and summer
 Each term them divided in to ten themes
 Each theme contains children's experiential
knowledge from the nature and society and then put
in to curricular themes
 Children use to study the cultural themes according
to the seasons they come across
 THEME WEB
Reading and Numbers Village
Family
Writing: Letters, Counting Environment Work:
Home
words, sentences. system (forest, trees, Agriculture,
Letter and word Measuring rivers, etc) market,
games fishing, forest
Alphabet book products
Letters, words
and sentences Birds
and
animals
Alphabet chart
Letters and Key MATHS Environmental Festivals,
words LANGUAGE Studies fairs,
SKILLS celebrations
MORNING
THEME
AFTERNOON

GAMES AND
LANGUAGE
ACTIVITIES
USE Reading and
listening activities
Listening stories
Games Children’ reading
activities books
Writing and speaking
activities
Songs, Dialogue, drama,
dancing storytelling
Creative writing
 Two track approach
Track I Track II
 Basic Interpersonal  Cognitive Academic
Communication Skill language proficiency
( BICS) ( CALPS)
 This track stands for
cultural context the the
 New skill based
child witness from the knowledge on accuracy
environment and and correctness
society, skill and
knowledge
A fish from the book and many fish
from the children
 How Community take part in
curriculum construction
 Teachers go to the
community
 Select the cultural
themes for the whole
year
 Each theme is discussed
in details with the
community
 Community in curriculum
construction
 Then they prepare the
curricular themes
 Instructional materials
are prepared
 The go the community
for validating the
knowledge that is
represented in the
curriculum and
instructional materials
 Community validating the knowledge that is
represented in the curriculum and instructional
materials and providing feed back
 Finalization of Curriculum at
District , Zonal and State Level
Instructional Materials are prepared in 10 languages

on MLE approach
Community getting back the MLE instructional materials
embedded with culture inside the classroom
School Museum: Involvement of community
and culture in School curriculum
Classroom Transaction
Classroom Transaction
SRUJAN: Comprehensive programme for
involvement of community

SRUJAN is a community based child

centered, teacher' supportive, culturally
appropriate programme for retention and
achievement
 Cluster approach ..
Based on NCF 2005 ideas )
MLE

School

Srujan RUPANTAR
 SRUJAN

PRI Involvement
Story Telling Festival Community Jati Mahasbha
Traditional Game
Song and Dance
Art and Craft
Science Quiz
Essay and Debate
SRUJAN Preparation of
Bilingual TLM
Child
Friendly Activities
Teachers Community
Resource
Reading room
 Impact of Srujan
 5 lakhs children are taking part in story telling
festival, traditional games, music and dance, art and
craft and nature study
 523 Clusters are taken up in 36 Blocks
 7896 schools are involved
 10000 community members
 2100 PRI members
 14000 teachers are actively participating
 75000 stories from the community to children
 75000 pictures drawn by the children
JATI MAHASABHA
A living library
Story telling Festival
Traditional wall paintings :
Geometry?
3D wall paintings: santal art
Traditional music and dance
A classroom story on the wall : Village
women as TLM makers
Wood Craft