Dear and Respected Friends,

Our best regards and warm greetings to you.

We hope this finds you well and safe.

We invite you to kindly join us in our Vishwaneedam Swadhyaya Sahachakra Chitta Ranjan Centenary Memorial Lecture on “Challenging Cultural Racism in Tribal Schooling: What Form for Adivasi Children’s Integral Education?” by Dr Felix Padel, Affiliate Scholar, University of Sussex, U.K.

We are grateful to you for your kind interest and participation.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you and with regards,

Sincerely Yours

Ananta and Randhir.

 

Date and Time: 14 Jan 2023, 7 to PM IST

 

Moderator: Professor Ananta Kumar Giri, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Chennai

Speaker:  Dr. Felix Wilfred, Affiliate Scholar, University of Sussex

Topic:   “Challenging Cultural Racism in Tribal Schooling: What Form for Adivasi Children’s Integral Education?”

 

Convener:   Randhir Kumar Gautam, GSDS, ITM University, Gwalior and Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming

Vote of Thanks:  Mrs. Minati Pradhan, Creative Writer and Poetess, Vishwaneedam Center for Asian Blossoming, Bengaluru

 Topic: “Challenging Cultural Racism in Tribal Schooling: What Form for Adivasi Children’s Integral Education?”  

Time: Jan 14, 2024 11:30 PM India

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86560434347?pwd=DWuI3wE1OO74F1YjVDcTMLIpE4jqSJ.1

Meeting ID: 865 6043 4347
Passcode: 332955

 

About Chitta Ranjan Das

 

Chitta Ranajn Das is a creative seeker, transformative thinker, and activist of our times who has written and worked on many aspects of human lives—education, philosophy, literate and integral human development, and social transformation. Das was born on 3rd October 1923 in Bagalpur in the undivided district of Cuttack in Odisha, India, and left his mortal body on January 16, 2011. Das is known to many of his friends, co-travelers, and the concerned public at large in Odisha and India as Chitta Bhai. Chitta Bhai has initiated many creative experiments. He founded Jeevana Vidyalaya—School for Life—in Champattimunda in the 1950s. He was a pioneer in the integral education movement of Odisha and translated major works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to Odia.  He nurtured both Agragamee,  Sikshadandhan, and Nava Pallava— creative efforts in education and tribal development in Odisha. He wrote and translated around 250 books, a majority of them being in Odia and some of these in English.

Swadhyaya Sahachakra (Co-Learning Circles of Self and Mutual Studies)

Swadhyaya Sahachakra (Co-Learning Circles of Self and Mutual Studies) is an initiative to study and learn together about self, culture, societies, and the world. Friends associated with this are eager to walk and meditate with new horizons of thinking and new movements of social and cultural change at work in our contemporary world. We study seekers such as Sri Aurobindo, Gandhi, Chitta Ranjan Das (a seeker and creative thinker from Odisha), and many others from around the world. We also present our writings and reflect upon our creativity together. We also invite seekers from different fields of life to share with us their lives, visions, sadhana, and struggles for creating a world of beauty, dignity, and dialogues.

 

Abstract of the Lecture

 

Challenging Cultural Racism in Tribal Schooling: What Form for Adivasi Children’s Integral Education?

 

Felix Padel

Chitta Ranjan Das is among the world’s great educationists who have offered alternative models of learning that are particularly suited for marginalized sections of society, for whom top-down models give a rigid, inherently unequal simulacrum of education. For children of ST communities, we need to start by recognizing the cultural racism implicit in the mainstream models. For example, India’s policy documents on tribal education have repeatedly recognized the importance of tribal languages and of bringing local culture – including agriculture/food production - into these children’s learning experiences. Yet in practice, tribal languages are still banned from many schools, while others get funding for multilingual education that brings these languages in only tokenistically rather than as a medium of teaching and discussion. The revival of tribal languages in New Zealand, Ecuador, North America, and elsewhere presents evolving models of how to complement models in India to transform tribal education into a far more positive experience, reflecting ST communities’ ideas and influence.