Gandhiji's Basic education

Notes on basic education or wardha scheme of Gandhiji.

1. GANDHIJI’S
SYSTEM OF
BASIC
EDUCATION.
Abhishek PB
English

2. INTRODUCTION
▪Basic Education or Wardha Scheme of Education is a national system of education put
forward by Mahatma Gandhi in 1973 as a revolt against the sterile, book-centered,
examination oriented system of education propagated by the British.
▪This system is called by the name 'Wardha Scheme’ because the salient features of this
scheme of education was first presented by Gandhiji in the All India National Education
Conference held at Wardha (Maharashtra) on the 22
nd
and 23
rd
of October, 1937.
▪This scheme of education is also known as Basic Education or Wardha Scheme of
Education or New Education or Nai Talim.
▪Gandhiji used the term basic to describe this scheme of education because it is
intimately related with the basic needs and interests of Indian children.
▪It is an educational scheme for common man who constitutes the base or backbone of
our country.
▪Basic Education or Nai Talim was based on the fundamental principle of “ learning by
doing”. Gandhiji believed on action and hence his concept of basic education can be
classified as activity method or practice method.

3. FEATURES OF BASIC
EDUCATION
1.Free and compulsory education from the age of seven to fourteen years.
2.Mother tongue as the medium of instruction.
3.Craft centered education.
4.Development of Creativity and Critical thinking.
5.Importance of Moral education.
6.It aimed to achieve the harmonious development of the child’s body, mind, heart and
soul.
7.The ideal of Citizenship.
8.It is self – supported through some productive work.
9.Awareness on Social services.

4. MERITS
▪Life - centered education .
▪Self- supporting . “ Earn while you learn” is another feature of the plan
▪The craft centered education will give greater concreteness and reality to the
knowledge acquired by children.
▪It was a need based education which curtailed rural unemployment.
▪Basic education takes into account the needs, interest and aptitude of the child.
Thus it is essentially child- centered.
▪Gandhiji’s scheme was highly practical as it starts with action rather than reflection.
▪Ultimate aim to create an social order where there is no unnatural division
between 'haves’ and ‘ have-nots’.
▪Basic education provides for the inculcation of an attitude of truth to children.

5. DEMERITS
▪The over emphasis on crafts and productive activity has often been criticized as
child labour.
▪It neglects education in terms of personality development and development of
higher mental abilities.
▪The craft – centeredness has resulted in enormous wastage of material and small
children are not in a position to produce anything worthwhile.
▪Schools would degrade as trade centres
▪It may arrest the child’s spontaneous development.
▪The call for correlation becomes forced and unnatural
▪The basic scheme overlooked the possibilities of higher intellectual development
of children.
▪Making handicraft as nucleus of teaching will amount to throwing the country
further behind in this age of science and technology.

6. THANK
YOU!