EDUCATION FOR THE TRIBES 

  • Education for the tribal people. as for anyone else in India has today become a matter of great importance. Ever since India gained independence a considerable amount of money and resources have been spent so that unprivileged, undeveloped and neglected tribal people could get a fair deal. It has been generally recognised that India being a welfare state cannot afford to leave a particular section of its population behind in the field of education, as indeed in any other field. This would be against the principles of democratic development of the country. There is hardly any necessity. therefore. to emphasise the need and importance of education for these people. These needs are felt by everyone every-where. An earnest endeavour is being made by all concerned at all levels to bring these less privileged people, the scheduled tribes. on the same educational level as that attained by the more advanced communities of India.
  • If one would consider the amount of money and manpower being utilised for, the purpose one could naturally expect that the tribal people would be able to shorten the gap in the educational levels that exist between them and their neighbouring communities within a very short period. But the reality of the situation tells a different tale. One would have to accept that the tribal societies have made slow, though steady. progress and today they are not what they were 20 or 30 years ago. But at the same time one feels that their development in general and their achievements in the field of education in particular are not what one would desire them to be. There is some snag some-where. In spite of the best efforts of the Central and State Governments. voluntary agencies and social workers, the tribal people have not achieved much educational success. There are many and varied problems which need urgent attention from those concerned in any way with the betterment of the tribal people.

Studies on Education :

  • Several significant and useful works have been done on tribal education.
  • Aiyyappan discusses about the major problems of education of the tribes and gave a number of suggestions regarding schools, vocationally biased Education, prizes and literacy programme for youth. N.V.N. Bapal, S.K. Bannerijee and MN- Basu have contributed much to tribal education.
  • Basu in his papers outlines the role of the anthropologists in imparting education to the tribal people. He focuses attention on the significance of mother tongue as the medium of instruction and emphasised the needs for scientific collection and vocabularies of tribal children. He advocates careful planning of tribal Education which may be done by a group of scholars who have actual experience of field work in this line. Similarly, P.C. Biswas also suggests a Board of Tribal Education consisting of experts on tribal affairs. He recommended that all tribal adults should be educated. KP. Chattopadhyaya suggests Syllabus after analysing the basic characteristic of Tribal system of education, . Das Gupta’ has studied a sample of 181 tribal students from different angles. N.K. Das Gupta has written a monograph on Santal education. T.C. Das9 has highlighted the problems of script and teachers and has given a scheme, for the education of Gond. There are many scholars who have tried to throw some light on the problem of tribal education. Mention may be made of Hilda Raj (1952). L-N- Karn lravati Karve”. S.K. Kaul”. etc., G.K. Kopikar discusses the problems in the Thana district of Maharashtra in his small brochure called the education of the Adivasis.
  • Tarabai Madok wrote a booklet based on her experiences of running an Adivasi school. Here it is worth while to refer to the National Seminar on Tribal Education in India held in 1967 at New Delhi under the auspices of the National Council of Educational Research and Training. The papers discussed in the seminar highlighted the existing facilities and ways in which they could be implemented. T.B. Naik’s publication on the results of a research project on the impact of education on the Bhills of Madhya Pradesh. probably gives for the first time full scale applied anthropological work in education. Some of the papers are useful which are contributed to the “sociology of Education in India”. Among tribal problems, Special attention has been given to the study or educational psychology – The National Fundamental Education Centre, now Department of Tribal Education in NCERT, established in l956, undertakes some researches in tribal education in addition to training the personnel of social education- A team of anthropologists have published papers from time to time on the basis of their field enquiries. Vimal Chandra one of the Regional Directors of Backward classes, made a historical view historical review of the progress of education among the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes. He suggests that there has been a considerable development in the field of education among the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
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