DRAFT NATIONAL POLICY ON 
EDUCATION, 1979
 

Preamble

1.1. An ideal system of education should enable individuals to know and develop. to the fullest, their physical and intellectual potentialities and promote their awareness of social and human values, so that they can develop a strong character and live better lives and function as responsible members of the society. It is by transforming the human being that social transformation can be brought about.

Aim

1.2. The aim of education should be the growth of the individual through truthful life without detriment to the welfare and progress of society and our cherished ideals of freedom, equality and social justice. To this end it should strengthen values of democracy, secularism and socialism. Education should promote national unity, pride in our cultural heritage, and faith in the country's future. The effort must be to inculcate scientific and moral values and to facilitate pursuit, of knowledge.

Content

1.3. The content of education at all levels needs to be recast so as to make the education process functional in relation to the felt needs and potentialities of the people. Emphasis should shift from teaching to learning, the role of the learner being more crucial. Gandhiji's ideas and experiments in the matter of education, his introspective approach to all learning, his insistence on the co-

relation of hand and heart leading to

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complementarity of intellectual and manual work and on the social responsibilities of education have enduring relevance and are therefore vitally necessary and useful. Community service and participation in constructive and socially useful productive work should be an integral part of education at all stages so as to foster self-reliance and the dignity of labour. Moral education should form part of the content through inter-related curricular and co-curricular programmes in all subjects and should be the responsibility of all teachers and the entire institution. The content should also include the lives and teachings of great national leaders and the history of freedom movement.

System

1.4. The present system of education must be reorganised in the light of contemporary Indian realities and requirements. Subject to the nationally agreed basic concepts of freedom, equality and justice, the system should be flexible and responsive to varying circumstances. Every effort should be made to pursue excellence, without losing, sight of the ideal of equality. The system must endeavour to narrow the gulf between the educated classes and the masses and overcome feelings of superiority, inferiority and alienation. With flexibility in the choice, content and duration of courses, the Student can choose his own time and channel of study and progress at his own pace. The educational institutions and the community should help each other, the teachers and parents cooperating in providing knowledge and skills and a better future for the children. The school should be closely associated with the development activities of the area.