 ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION

10.1 The NPERC appears to have an ambivalent attitude to adult education. In its perspective it acknowledged that "it would be plainly unjust if almost 250 million people in the plus 15 years age groups are left to spend their entire productive life without literacy, a powerful tool for acquiring knowledge and enabling effective participation in democratic polity of India. Clearly, like UEE, adult education with a strong literary component has to be one of the central items on the national agenda." However, in specific operational terms, the NPERC drew a distinction between UEE and adult education and recommended top priority being given to UEE in educational planning and resource allocation (R.No.185). The world over educational planning has moved away from a sectional view of 3…3 Š primary schooling, non-formal education and adult education to a holistic view. The UNESCO has been advocating the "dual - track approach," designed to promote simultaneously literacy and basic learning for adults and UEE for children. The UNESCO, in collaboration with UNICEF, UNDP and World Bank, had organised the World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA) in Jomtien, Thailand, in March, 1990. One hundred and fifty-five countries and all important bilateral and multilateral agencies attended the WCEFA. The declaration adopted by the WCEFA called upon member countries of UNESCO to meet the basic learning needs of adults and children wherever they exist. Therefore, R.No.185 runs contrary to the world- wide move towards a holistic view of educational needs. Further, it is based on a conceptual frame which posits a unidirectional relationship between adult education and UEE. This conceptual frame rightly points out that adult illiteracy arises from the failure to achieve UEE. However, it does not adequately recognize the inter- dependence of UEE and adult education. The feedback from informed observers in districts where the Total Literacy Campaigns (TLCs) have taken off successfully is that parents who were earlier apathetic towards sending their children to primary school are, after themselves becoming literate, demanding the opening of schools where they do not exist and insisting on regular attendance by the teachers so that their children receive proper education. Primary education can, so to say, ride piggyback on the advances registered in adult education. We, therefore, strongly recommend that the "dual-track approach" should continue to inform educational planning and that the special needs of women and of disadvantaged groups like SCs and STs should be specially attended to.

10.2 The NPERC separated adult literacy from adult education and underestimated the importance of adult literacy. It preferred sequence of activities which is a reversal of the one presently adopted by the National Literacy Mission (NLM). The NPERC proposed first creating an awareness of essential needs and issues like health, housing, nutrition and planning. After such an awareness is created, in the NPERC's View, the adult learner himself should be expected to ask for adult literacy as a felt

need; adult literacy, as an activity, should be a response to that felt need. The NPERC is indeed right in holding that adult literacy is a sub-set of adult education; however, it is rather doctrinnaire in rigidly separating adult literacy from adult education and belittling the intrinsic merit of adult literacy. Sequencing of when adult literacy should come in is rather artificial. Literacy provides a minimal entry point to education and thereby access to the world of information, communication and modernisation. Eventually, acquisition of literacy skills would help in raising the level of human awareness and in continuously upgrading survival and life skills. Empirical evidence has established that after attainment of a certain level of literacy, it is possible to move on to functional developmental 3¼3 Š issues. Adult education programme under NLM, and more particularly the TLCs, is being implemented in close link with developmental activities like immunisation, nutrition and health. The new pedagogy of adult education pays particular attention to these linkages. The basic thrust in TLCs is demand-generation making adult literacy a felt need. In the campaign cycle, the environment building phase is followed by the instructional phase and eventually by the continuing education and post-literacy phase.

10.3 The NPERC's recommendations (R.Nos.178 - 182) leave one with a sense of hopelessness about the massive adult illiteracy problem facing the country, a problem which is in the league of transcendent problems such as population and national integration. In the NPERC's opinion, there is, as it is, no tested and tried "ready-to-use" model. The centre-based model, which dominated the adult education strategy till 1989, is too defective to be redeemed. Its successor, the TLC, is not considered to be ready for universal application rightaway. Not to speak of its replicability, the NPERC is even doubtful whether lessons could be drawn from the "Ernakulam experiment" for application elsewhere. However, the NPERC sees in the Mahila Samakhya (MS) an attractive alternative model, whose application to adult literacy should be examined. The NPERC's prescription for the Eighth Five Year Plan was that NLM should go ahead with its planned literacy campaign while an independent study group would evaluate the programme of NLM as well as of alternative models with a view to arriving at an understanding of what may be the appropriate strategy to remove adult illiteracy in a quicker manner. In other words, the NPERC did not consider it possible to come to grips with the problem of adult illiteracy during the Eighth Five. Year Plan; its expectations were rather modest -- no breakthrough can be expected in the adult literacy scene and the only concrete outcome that could be hoped for is the development of viable and effective models.

10.4 The NPERC's perception of Mahila Samakhya (MS) as an alternative model is not valid. MS essentially implies creating a structure and system which will enable women to come together, discuss together, share the experience of their life, to identify their strength and weaknesses, to think critically and reflect and analyse the factors responsible for their discrimination and

to find the wherewithal to overcome them. In a number of districts where mass campaigns for total literacy were launched and where MS was in existence, the two programmes had worked in close and symbiotic relationship with each other. MS functionaries provided support for environment-building and provision of technical resource support including training. Therefore, Mahila Samakhya and mass campaigns for total literacy, far from being alternatives, actually support and supplement each other for furtherance of common objectives, viz., eradication of female illiteracy and women's empowerment.

10.5 The NPERC's approach to evaluation, as brought out in R.Nos.180 3ó3 Š and 182, is rather narrow and restricted. Evaluation is twofold in character, namely, 'formative' and 'summative'. The formative evaluation commences right from the stage of formulation of the action plan and its implementation at various stages; while the summative evaluation deals with evaluation of learning outcome at different stages and teaching-learning process as also with the impact of the programme on acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills, and on the overall quality of life of the learner. Such evaluation, in addition to being a tool of assessment and review of the status of the project, could also be a supportive tool to introduce correctives to improve the quality and content of the programme. Therefore, as suggested by the NPERC, one need not wait for the conclusion of the Eighth Five Year Plan for changing a model; if deficiencies are identified, the correctives could be introduced straightaway.

10.6 The developments since the submission of NPERC report in December, 1990, have established that NPERC had underestimated the significance of the "Ernakulam experiment." The Ernakulam experiment has since been replicated not only in all the fourteen districts of Kerala but in eight other districts in the States of Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharasthra and West Bengal and the Union Territory of Pondicherry. Many of these districts are way behind the Kerala districts in regard to levels of educational development as well as in socioeconomic characteristics. In addition, TLCs are now in progress in sixty-five districts in fifteen States and two Union Territories; of these, forty-four districts are covered in entirety while in. the others parts of the districts are covered. over ten lakh volunteers are now engaged in the TLCs in these districts. These campaigns do establish the TLC as a potent and viable model and that a significant breakthrough can be expected in the literacy scene during the Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-97) itself.

10.7 The NPERC would not have missed the significance of the Ernakulam experiment but for its conceptual frame. While the saying "Seeing is believing" is true, its converse "Believing is seeing" is no less true. It is well-known in social science research that the answers to questions depend upon the conceptual frame adopted -- the basic assumption, the categories used and the angle of vision. The conceptual. frame not only fixes figuratively, the mesh of the net that the analyser drags through the material in order to explain a particular phenomenon; it also

directs him to cast his net in select ponds, at certain depths, in order to catch the fish he is after. The NPERC viewed the success in Kerala on the literacy front as a result of more than a hundred years of sustained effort by various segments of society in promoting school education. The contribution of the historical legacy and social setting to the success story in Kerala is not denied but the salient features of the TLC model did make a difference and in ignoring them the NPERC had chosen to be selective with facts and to brush away the missionary zeal and heroic endeavours of about a lakh of volunteers. 3*3 Š In spite of a hundred years of effort in schooling about thirty lakh persons had remained illiterate and but for the TLC with its unique social mobilisation, forging of a broad based alliance between the district administration, NGOs and social activists, and the innovative use of the confluence of culture and communications, they would have continued to remain illiterate. What has been empirically demonstrated is that even in districts in other States which are educationally backward in comparison with the Kerala districts, it is possible to replicate the TLC strategy.

10.8 We consider the adult literacy programme to be of such overwhelming significance that during the Eighth Plan, together with UEE, it has to be given over-riding priority and adequate resource support. We do appreciate the proposal of Education Department, Government of India, to extend TLCs to 75 per cent of the districts in the country and to cover the remaining districts, with an improved centre-based programme which adequately stresses demand creation and mobilisation.

10.9 We have taken note of the recommendations of the NPERC regarding post-literacy and continuing education. However, We also cannot fail to notice the significant developments which have taken place in the last 3-4 years in the sphere of adult education primary education and non-formal education. According to information provided to us by the officials of the Ministry of HRD, nearly 15 million adults are acquiring literacy skills each year. Some of them not of the expected norms. In addition, a very large number, perhaps as much as 50 to 60 million children, complete primary education through the school system or nonformal programmes and are not able to continue their education. All these persons, namely, persons completing literacy courses and those acquiring primary education but not pursuing education beyond that level comprise the clientele for post-literacy and continuing education. Appropriate arrangements of post-literacy and continuing education will have to be provided in practically every village covered by Total Literacy Campaigns through modified type of Jana Shikshan Nilayams, Youth Clubs-cum-Library Units or other modes. Attention will also have to be paid to improvement of skills relating to work and personal lives of the people. It would be advisable to start planning for post-literacy simultaneously with launching of literacy campaigns in districts/blocks and to ensure that these facilities become available as soon as people complete their literacy course.