WORK AND EDUCATION (SOCIALLY USEFUL PRODUCTIVE WORK)

Work, understood simply, is an activity directed toward

making or doing something. It also means making

one’s work or capabilities, or both, available for

someone else’s purposes for monetary or other forms

of return. A number of these activities are related to

producing food, articles of daily use, looking after the

physical and mental well-being of people, and other

activities related to the administration and organisation

of society. In any society, in addition to these, two basic

dimensions (producing goods and establishing smooth

functioning), various other activities also contribute to

human well-being, and in that sense are considered

forms of work.

Understood in this sense, work implies a

commitment to other members of the society and/or

community as one is contributing one’s work and

capabilities for fulfilling their needs. Second, it implies

that one’s contribution made through work will be

submitted to public standards of performance and

hence will be valued and judged by others. Third, work

implies contributing to the functioning of social life as

it either produces something that makes life possible

or helps in the functioning of society in general. Finally,

work enriches human life as it opens up new dimensions

of appreciation and enjoyment.

However, we must not forget that children are

often socialised into discriminatory practices and

values and that adults socialise children within the

dominant socio-cultural paradigm. It is important

to recognise that both adults and children are

socialised in the same way. We also have to remember

that work as forced labour is perhaps the most

demeaning of all coercions. There have to be adequate

measures in place to ensure that introduction of work

as an integral part of the curriculum should never

lead to a situation where work is thrust on unwilling

children, or that the ‘work’ itself is a hindrance to the

child’s education and normal growth and

development. Routine and repetitive activity carried

on for the sake of production or work that is

associated with the division of labour based on caste

and gender should be strictly avoided. Also, a teacher

making children work without him/herself

participating in the work is unlikely to achieve the

objectives of integrating work with the curriculum.

The inclusion of work within the school must also

never be used as the justification for the exploitation

of children.

Work is also an arena for learning for children,

whether in the home, the school, the society or the

workplace. Children begin to absorb the concept of

work as early as the age of two years. Children imitate

their elders and like pretending to do work. For

example, it is not unusual to see very young children

pretending to ‘sweep’ the floor, or ‘hold meetings’, or

‘build houses’, or ‘cook’. Work as an educational tool

is used by many pedagogies. For example, the

Montessori system integrates work concepts and skills

from the very beginning. Cutting vegetables, cleaning

the classroom, gardening and washing clothes are all a

part of the learning cycle. Beneficial work that is in

keeping with the child’s age and ability, and which

contributes to the child’s normal growth and

development, when introduced into children’s lives can

serve to enable children to learn values, basic scientific

concepts, skills and creative expression. Children gain

an identity through work, and feel useful and productive

as work adds meaning and brings with it membership

to society and enables children to construct knowledge.

Through work one learns to find one’s place in

society. It is an educational activity with an inherent

potential for inclusion. Therefore, an experience of

involvement in productive work in an educational setting

should make one appreciate the worth of social life

and what is valued and appreciated in society. Since

work defines some achievable targets and creates a

web of interdependence, it entails making efforts in a

disciplined manner, thus creating possibilities for greater

self-control, focusing mental energies and keeping

emotions under check. The value of work, particularly

skills that involve good finish, are undervalued as a

means of achieving excellence and learning

self-discipline. The discipline exercised by the material

(say, clay or wood) is more effective and qualitatively

different from the discipline exercised by one human

being over another. Work involves interaction with

materials or other people (mostly both), thus creating

a deeper comprehension and increased practical

knowledge of natural substances and social

relationships. All this is in addition to the usual physical

skills involved in learning a trade that may be turned

into a means of earning a livelihood. The aspects of

work mentioned here draw attention to the

meaning-making and knowledge-construction

dimension of work. This is the pedagogic function

that work can play in the curriculum.

Benefits of this nature can be drawn from work

only if it becomes an integral part of the school

curriculum. Pursued in an academic setting, work carries

the remarkable potential of generating new forms of

creativity and understanding while opening up the

possibility of transforming the nature of work itself.

This has become even more essential as in a majority

of families in India contributing to household work

and family trade is a way of living, but this pattern is

changing due to the pressure of school on children’s

time and the rampant competition in memorisation

of information. Academic activity tends to be

imprisoned within disciplinary boundaries. When

academic learning and work are simultaneously

collocated, there is a chance of greater creativity in

academic pursuits as also in the methods and tools of

doing work. A synergetic enhancement can take over.

That is how efficient hand pumps were designed.

High-flying polythene balloons used to burst while

going through the extremely cold stratosphere untill a

scientifically minded worker suggested that putting a

little carbon powder in the fabric would help to keep

it warm by absorbing sunlight. Indeed, all great

inventors were tinkerers who knew a little science.

Edison, Ford and Faraday belonged to this category,

so also those who invented the first pair of spectacles

or the telescope. There is little doubt that much of the

traditional knowledge of our potters, craftsmen,

weavers, farmers and medical men has come through

such pursuits – where these individuals were

simultaneously engaged in physical work and academic

thinking. We need to infuse such a culture of

innovation, curiosity and practical experience in our

education system.

However, schools at present are not geared for

work as a part of the curriculum in terms of

infrastructure or learning material. Work is necessarily

an interdisciplinary activity. Therefore, integrating work

into the school curriculum would require a substantial

amount of pedagogical understanding of how it would

be integrated with learning and the mechanisms for

assessment and evaluation.

Institutionalising work in the school curriculum

will require creative and bold thinking that breaks out

of its stereotyped location in periods of Socially Useful

and Productive Work (SUPW), something about which

all children and teachers are justifiably sceptical. We need

to examine how the rich work knowledge base and

skills of marginalised children can be turned into a

source of their own dignity as well as a source of

learning for other children. This is especially important

in the context of the growing alienation of the

middle-upper-class children from their cultural roots

and the central role played by the education system in

aggravating and accelerating this process. There is

immense potential for utilising the knowledge base of

the vast productive sections of society as a powerful

means for transforming the education system. Work

seen as a form of ‘valid’ knowledge allows one to

re-examine the invisibility of the contributions of

women and non-dominant groups to what is regarded

as valuable in society. Productive work would need to

find a place at the centre of the curriculum in order to

act as a powerful corrective to the ‘bookish’,

information-oriented and generally unchallenging

character of school education and, in turn, help relate

the latter to the life needs of the child. Pedagogical

experience in using work would become an effective

and critical developmental tool at different stages of

childhood and adolescence. Thus, ‘work-centred

education’ is different from vocational education.

The school curriculum from the pre-primary to

the senior secondary stages should be reconstructed

for realising the pedagogic potential of work as a

pedagogic medium in knowledge acquisition,

developing values and multiple-skill formation. As the

child matures, there is a need for the curriculum to

recognise the child’s need to be prepared for the world

of work, and a work-centred pedagogy can be

pursued with increasing complexity while always being

enriched with the required flexibility and contextuality.

A set of work-related generic competencies (basic,

interpersonal and systemic) could be pursued at all

stages of education. This includes critical thinking,

transfer of learning, creativity, communication skills,

aesthetics, work motivation, work ethic of collaborative

functioning, and entrepreneurship-cum-social

accountability. For this evaluation, parameters would

also need to be redesigned. Without an effective and

universal programme of work-centred education, it is

unlikely that UEE (and later Universal Secondary

Education too) would ever succeed.