World Ethic Day: Implications for rural and tribal education

The first World Ethnic Day was celebrated by the Mumbai-based groups to promote ethnic products and appreciate unique ethnic heritage, old civilization, anthropology, art, and culture. The event has become global now and each year celebrated on June 19.

According to organizers of the observance, on this day people celebrate the rich culture wearing ethnic outfits and display their collection of ethnic artifacts, relish ethnic food and enjoy folk, rustic and ethnic music as well as tribal art. It is also an occasion for educational and societal institutions to afford an opportunity to students to revive love and respect for cultural diversity, traditional arts and history.

I had been promoting the indigenous psychology basing of tribal education in Rajasthan since the bane of the present day school education is that it subscribes for uniformity and similarity which leads to exclusion and learning inequity for children in tribal and ethnic groups. The respect of diversity and native context are often ignored.

Therefore, there is a need to apply the principles of indigenous and cognitive psychology to education to maximize its outcomes by making it more relevant to the natural context of students. The teachers working in interior villages and tribal areas need to indigenize the approach to learning and evolve interventions for transition of students to their native context to the school context as a part of action research for self-development as professionals and indigenize the approach to language learning, especially, in rural and tribal areas.

The knowledge of ndigenous psychology, that is based on scientific study of human mind and behaviour that is native and designed for its people, can be helpful. When seen from the educational view point, the instructional practices require to take cultural and contextual compatibility into account for the transaction of curriculum.

Thus, for in-service training and capacity building of teachers, indigenous psychology should be treated both as a discipline and a method. Learning from local culture and context of children becomes essential for the teacher

In rural India, transition from home-language to school language is an issue that needs to be addressed by using the methods of indigenous psychology by cultural linkage through folk songs. Such an intervention was tried by CULP-NGO in Rajasthan which helped rural and tribal children to have smooth transition from school language to home language.