Page:SELECTED ESSAYS of Dr. S. S. KALBAG.pdf/8

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more than seeing senior girls doing hemoglobin estimations on primary school children and advising their parents on diet correction or examining drinking water samples for microbiological quality or even holding vaccination camps for poultry in different hamlets. The students would be visiting farmers' fields and measuring 'earth resistivity pattern' to advise where to access groundwater for irrigation. And all this going on, not as extra-curricular activity, but as integral to the main school curriculum where each experience becomes a source of knowledge, values and multi-skills. Having seen all this, Gandhiji would be expected to exclaim with joy that this is precisely what he had said at the Wardha Conference in October 1937. He would be inclined to recall the following statement made by him 70 years ago, "...... instead of merely teaching a trade or a handicraft, we may as well educate the children entirely through them. Look at takli (spindle) itself, for instance. The lesson of this takli will be the first lesson of our students through which they would be able to learn a substantial part of the history of cotton, Lancashire and the British empire. ...... How does this takli work? What is its utility? And what are the strengths that lie within it? Thus the child learns all this in the midst of play. Through this he also acquires some knowledge of mathematics. When he is asked to count the number of cotton threads on takli and he is asked to report how many did he spin, it becomes possible to acquaint him step by step with good deal of mathematical knowledge through this process. And the beauty is that none of this becomes even a slight burden on his mind. The learner does not even become aware that he is learning. While playing around and singing, he keeps on turning his takli and from this itself he learns a great deal." - Excerpted from the address by Mahatma Gandhi at the Wardha Education Conference, 22 October 1937 < Rural Development Through Education System 3