HSTP METHOD OF TEACHING SCIENCE FACING CLOSURE

(article in http://www.thesynergyonline.com/general.htm)

By Deepak Arora

NEW DELHI, MAY 11: IMPARTING education and that too of the right kind is one of the core issues governing the concerns of global think tank. The right to be curious and the right to ask is a basic instinct in a child. To brush up this curiosity for a creative bent of mind is what education may be all about. Surely, the Wright Brothers questioned and thus the first airlift by mankind resulted. Be it the steam engine, the bulb or the penicillin drug, behind each invention lays the brain of curious child that cultivated into an inventive brain.

There is a popular method of teaching science called the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme (HSTP), which was launched by two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in 1972 in Madhya Pradesh. This method of teaching is now being put to an end because of vested political interests that are forcing closure of HSTP, which is being successfully implemented in over 1,000 rural schools in 15 districts of Madhya Pradesh.

The programme was launched way back in 1972 in 16 rural schools of Hoshangabad District after seeking held and approval from the Regional Colleges of Education, Bhopal, NCERT and the Government.

The programme, which is being run by Eklavya, is being conducted in all the 650 schools of Hoshangabad, 250 schools in Haarda district, and one school complex each i.e. 7 to 10 schools in 13 other districts of Central and Western Madhya Pradesh, according to Mr Kamal Mahendroo and Mr Rajesh Khindri of Eklavya.

The HSTP spokesperson said that the programme not only grants the need for plurality of approaches, but also allows the need for space for innovation at any personal forum that is available to the student. It also gives space for further development of innovative education.

They said the students are taught through the doable and interesting experiments. For example, to teach the concept of gravity the students are asked to throw balls of different sizes from different heights.

To understand the concept of a lens, the child is told to take a fused bulb. He breaks the base of the bulb slowly with a stone so that the bulb doesn't break. He is asked to take out the wire from inside the bulb so that only the outer glass of the bulb remains. He then fills in some water in the bulb and tries and read the textbook with it. In this way each and every concept of science is explained with the help of an experiment, which the child has to perform himself.

With the help of such experiments, Mr Kamal Mahendroo and Mr Rajesh Khindri said the child is able to understand his actual environment with a deep understanding. With this, there is not only growth in his curiosity levels, but he also begins to question what we take for granted. The HSTP is conducted amongst the students from Class six to eight.

In February this year, the District Planning Committee (DPC) of Hoshangabad decided to close the HSTP. However, this step created a lot of tension amongst the students and the teachers. When the issue was discussed with the Chief Minister, Mr Digvijay Singh, he appreciated the HSTP and its achievements and recommended that its positive aspects should be incorporated in the curriculum at the State level. He asked the DPC to review its decision. Nine out of twelve DPC members have now asked for a review of this petition.

A review meeting, which was to be held on March 31, could not be held due to sudden ill health of the Minister-in-Charge, Mr Ajay Mushran, who was rushed to Jabalpur and then to Mumbai for treatment. A Cabinet reshuffle of April 18 saw a change and now the Minister-in-Charge of the Hoshangabad district is Mr Harvansh Singh, who is also the Forest Minister. However, no meeting has been held till date to review the issue.

Over the years, the HSTP method has received kudos from some of the top intellectuals and political leaders, including the then Prime Minister, Mr P V Narasimha Rao, and the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Digvijay Singh.

In a seminar called ‘Education for all’ in New Delhi, the then Prime Minister, Mr P. V. Narasimha Rao, commended HSTP for its achievements in the field of education. The Ministry of Human Resource and Development evaluated HSTP as one of the best assets our education system has today.

Not only has HSTP been honoured with many national awards but also other organizations working in the field of education in States like Gujarat, Rajasthan and Mumbai have gained inspiration from it and have initiated similar efforts in their own modest capacity.

The programme also has several firsts. It was for the first time in the history of the educational structure in India that a non-governmental agency was permitted not only to make pedagogical interventions such as teacher training, curriculum renewal, textbook revision and evaluation, but also revamping the whole methodological framework of science teaching.

Their fundamental objective was to build a whole new world of scientific enquiry based on small doable, interesting experiments. The basic idea was that children should be able to do experiments with locally available materials, observe, tabulate and analyse the results of their experiments and thus build a solid foundation for acquiring a conceptual machinery that would make them independent learners.

It was a tough task to establish a programme, which required professionals from each aspect of science, and that too in a State where children could hardly read or write. Whatever little they knew consisted of what they had rote-learned during their primary schools.

Hence the need for talented and skilled educationists led HSTP to form resource teams, which comprised faculty members and students of the University of Delhi, IIT Kanpur, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, National Institute of Immunology, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and many other renowned institutions.

The process of refurbishing the science curriculum was initiated by introducing carefully written textbooks, which were based purely on experiments. In each classroom these textbooks were supplemented by a kit, which consisted of easily available things such as glasses, matchboxes, thread, magnets, buttons, balloons and inch tapes.

The students were to form groups and perform each experiment in consultation with their group members and teachers and then note their findings and conclusions in their kit notebooks. Various teacher-training camps were conducted in different parts of the State where these professionals conducted experiments with the teachers for their conceptual clarity.

Mr Kamal Mahendroo and Mr Rajesh Khindri alleged that some of the members of the District Planning Committee (DPC) of Hoshangabad, who are bent upon closing this programme, have given frivolous arguments based on fictional supposition.

Some of these anti-HSTP group persons have argued that it is cruel on the HSTP children to be expected to collect leaves to perform experiments. Perhaps people don’t realize that children collect and classify leaves to understand the nature, variety and structure of the plants around them. These persons further alleged that the HSTP children are moulded in a curriculum, which is different from the rest of the country and hence the students might face difficulties in the national competitive exams.

On the other hand according to a study conducted by Dr. Arvind Gupte where he analyzed the PMT, PET and VPPT results for the year 1996-98 it was noticed that the rural students of HSTP in Hoshangabad were far ahead of all the other non-metropolitans of the state and only some big towns like Bhopal and Indore were ahead of them.

It was also noticed that in 2001, 84.5 per cent of the HSTP children in Hoshangabad and 94.1 per cent of students in Harda cleared the science examinations. Moreover 90 per cent of the HSTP curriculum is the same as what is taught to other students.