About three decades
ago, a group of young science graduates started a programme to
improve the teaching of science in rural areas in the Hoshangabad
district of Madhya Pradesh. Eventually calling themselves Ekalavya,
the name of a mythological lower caste archery expert, the group
emphasised the importance of making science interesting and relevant
to rural children. In response to this initiative, the state
government at that time allowed them to try out their curriculum at
government schools. Thus emerged the Hoshangabad Science Teaching
Programme (HSTP).
Despite many successes and widespread
praise, on July 3 of this year the current state government closed
down the HSTP and stopped the teaching of the HSTP curriculum in
government schools. The decision appears to be based on rather
superficial reasons and has come in for much criticism from
intellectuals around the country, but so far there has been no
change in the government’s position.
HSTP focuses on science
education for students from classes six to eight. It involves
learning “by discovery, through activities and from the environment”
rather than “by rote”. Students and teachers are encouraged to ask
questions rather than taking what is written in books for granted.
Ekalavya also brings out a monthly children’s science magazine, a
weekly news feature service that supplies newspapers with articles
on science-society issues as well as a teachers’ magazine focused on
the needs of elementary school teachers.
HSTP solved two
problems for schools in rural areas – poor educational standards and
widespread student and teacher disinterest in science, the latter
being largely the result of the course content and uncreative
pedagogical methods. Due to their emphasis on making the subject
relevant to children and the utilisation of local means, HSTP
managed to evade these in a creative fashion. The effort attracted
the interest of many scientists and professors from institutions
like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Indian
Institutes of Technology. HSTP eventually covered hundreds of
schools and tens of thousands of students.
Ekalavya is part
of a larger people’s science movement (PSM) in India and around the
world. Groups that are part of this movement try to use science for
social change and empowerment. Science is seen not just as the
collection or dissemination of “scientific facts” but as a way to
make sense of the world we live in.
The world, however, does
not consist of only inanimate objects and thus their purview
naturally extends to social sciences as well. As K P Kannan of the
KSSP (Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad; literally, Science Writers’
Forum of Kerala), an early and prominent group in the movement, put
it: “Experience showed a natural science content in every social
issue and a social science content in ‘science and technology’.
Imbibing and inculcating the method of science to understand not
only the physical reality but the social reality as well and
attempting to raise relevant questions in order to find solutions to
social problems is what gives science an activist role.”
As
part of their work, groups belonging to the PSM have conducted
important campaigns on environmental and developmental issues. A
significant intervention was in the case of the 1984 Bhopal disaster
when lethal methyl isocynate (MIC) gas leaked from a Union Carbide
plant into the densely populated city. Hundreds of thousands of
people were seriously affected; the number of deaths so far is
estimated at several thousands.
At that time a number of
people’s science groups came together to support the victims through
technical, medical and scientific information. Challenging the
government’s efforts at concealing the extent of the damage,
Eklavya, for example, commissioned independent scientists to monitor
Bhopal’s fields, gardens and water supplies for MIC breakdown
products and published a “people’s report” on public health concerns
in the city.
The combination of being involved in both
constructive activities like education and in confrontational
activities like documenting the damage due to the Bhopal disaster is
typical of the philosophy of PSM groups as well as several other
social movements. By engaging in both sunghursh (struggle) and
nirman (constructive action), these try to posit a vision of an
alternative to the present social, political and economic order that
is more just and democratic.
Given the interest of PSM
groups in altering the social order in a more democratic and
progressive direction, it should not be surprising that they have
faced much opposition from rightwing religious groups. In October
1988, for example, the KSSP had organised a series of events all
over the state of Kerala as part of a Children’s Festival. This drew
the ire of a variety of religious political groups – the ABVP (the
student wing of the BJP), the Muslim League and Christian Church
managements. A group of KSSP activists were even physically attacked
by uniformed members of the RSS.
Such examples are by no
means limited to Kerala or even India. In the US, for example,
fundamentalist Christian groups have tried to prevent the teaching
of the theory of evolution. Based on his long experience with such
matters in Pakistan, Pervez Hoodbhoy, Professor of Physics at
Quaid-e-Azam University, has observed that “The ‘trouble’ with
science...is that it is predicated on the primacy of reason on the
one hand, and experimental verification on the other. It recognizes
no authority except its own internal logic, has no sages or
prophets, and its truths transcend geographical boundaries, cultural
divides, and faiths. Finding these facts distasteful, some have
insisted on pursuing the chimera of ‘Islamic science’ even at the
end of this millennium.”
The cancellation of the Hoshangabad
Science Teaching Programme and the undermining of a rare example of
a success story in primary education is another instance of the
onslaught of religious, rightwing forces. What is unfortunate is
that the administrative decision was actually taken not by the BJP
but by a Congress government; it demonstrates how widespread these
ideas have become and the danger they pose.
