KANNUR: The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (KSSP), the biggest pro-Left NGO in the state, which has been a staunch campaigner for the World Bank assisted District Primary Education Project (DPEP), has now taken a seemingly contradictory stance in the case of yet another education project - the Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) - which is funded by ADB.
The Parishad state committee has criticised the project and urged the government to disclose ADB guidelines, which according to KSSP, would not suit the interests of the state.
The crux of criticism against DPEP was that it was a programme designed by market forces to destroy the learning process and reduce the education standards of the state. DPEP, which focused on student centred and activity oriented learning, did not attach significance to the traditional mode of learning process.
“Another key initiative launched by the LDF government was a radical revision of the school curriculum, taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the World Bank assisted DPEP. KSSP personnel, who had considerable insight and experience through their school interventions, were assimilated into the implementation teams and consultative committees,” KSSP’s former president Dr R V G Menon had said in a seminar paper ‘Science for Social Revolution’. The Education Department and KSSP had then argued that the new system would help increase learning and creativity.
However, a section of pro-Left thinkers, including V P Vasudeavan, S Sudheesh, Dr Azad and M N Vijayan had strongly criticized the then new educational reforms. They launched scathing criticism against the reforms under the banner of ‘Adhinivesa Prathiroda Samiti’ (The Committee to Resist Imperialist Invasion). The activists of Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist) were also engaged in intense campaign against DPEP. The critics were of the opinion that the then new curriculum and pedagogical methods would lower learning requirements and such a system was introduced as part of capitalist’s agenda to scuttle state’s educational developments and reduce education here as a mere system to create mediocre clerks who would not have deep knowledge in any subject. They demanded that extensive discussions should be carried out before implementing such a reform but that was largely ignored then, observe critics.
The KSSP, however, now observes that the courses offered through the ASAP suited the interests of market forces and calls for serious discussions. “It is learnt that the state government has decided to avail a loan to the tune of `600 crore from ADB for the ASAP. The professional courses offered under ASAP are designed to satisfy the requirements of market forces. “Serious discussions should take place about the professional education being imparted to the future generations in the state. The government should reveal the ADB norms to provide the loan as such loans would have many hidden strings,” KSSP president N K Sasidharan Pillai and general secretary V V Sreenivasn said.
The new stance of Parishad has indeed surprised many, especially the teachers’ collectives which raised similar criticism much earlier. “KSSP has no moral right to raise such a criticism as it is one of the members of the Philanthropic Consortium of ADB. KSSP, which earlier played the key role in implementing DPEP, is pursuing a double stance now,” said Rajan K, state committee member of the Progressive Teachers’ Forum.
However, KSSP general secretary denied the allegation and added that he was not aware whether Parishad was a member of the said consortium.