Abstract
IN a paper on “The United States United Com munities Bill from the Point of View of India's Educational Problems” read before the ninth All India Educational Conference in-December, 1933, Capt. J. W. Petavel, formerly lecturer on the poverty problem in the University of Calcutta, explains that the United Communities Bill aims at providing for the financing by the State of a system of modernised mutually co-operating co-operative colonies. In other words, it plans to bring into existence an organisation of people who would be customers to one another, and thereby independent of fluctuations in general trade prosperity. Capt. Petavel claims that co-operative colonies for education would be the easiest type to establish, and that in India they would enable an ideal educational programme to be planned. They would revive in a modern form the old Indian Gurukul education system as was strenu ously advocated by the late Sir Asutosh Mookerjee. In the educational colonies, three hours per day might be devoted to productive work of a suitable kind, which it is claimed is the first item in any ideal educational programme. Another three hours devoted to organised games would serve to develop muscle, alertness and disciplined co-operation. In the ideal programme there would be time also for instruction conveyed by drama, song and similar methods. Class-work need then occupy not more than four hours, leaving fourteen hours for rest and recreation. The colonies would be practically self-supporting, since the pupils would cultivate the land that would give them and those who taught them their food. In the Indian rural districts, the educa tional ‘united communitie's would be centres also of technical training of all kinds. They would be the seed farms, stock farms, demonstration farms and centres of rural reconstruction generally.
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Community Education and Training. Nature 134, 282–283 (1934). https://doi.org/10.1038/134282d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/134282d0