NOTE 67
be redundancy for a good number of trained and experienced workers lead" ing to further unemployment. This type of work-experience has a place in economics short of manpower resources but seems quite unsuitable for a country like ours. There is also the risk of amateur school children wasting a huge quantity of raw materials which are already scarce in the country. These products are likely to be inferior in quality. The purchaser is hardly likely to get his money's worth. Therefore such an experiment would prove futile under the present circumstances.
The nation should learn from the failure of Basic Education which tried to combine the aforesaid two objectives together. The craft was introduced not only as the medium of instruction but also for making schools self-sufficient if not fully then partially, by the sale of goods made by students. But the handicrafts selected for this purpose were economically obsolete and socially irrelevant. As there is no tendency now to go back to the craft-producing society, the work-experiefice which a man gets in Basic Schools makes him economically misfit and backward-looking. He remains isolated and alienated from the mainstream of economic life. His vocational education and work-experience serve.no useful purpose.
The superstructure of Basic Education was built on the ideal of' economic self-sufficiency. This ideal, it is now felt, has become unrealistic. If it is still held) the apprehension is that it may lead to a furthct deterioration of our already low standard of living and develop a negative attitude towards life and its problems. In the long run it would weaken the bonds of our national solidarity as economic interdependence and prosperity are the major factors of social cohesion. A marriage between the philosophies of asceticism and socialistic affluence is not desirable even for the sake of convenience. / Then why not have a realistic approach? Whatever work-experience is proposed to be given to students should t^e conducive to our goals of socialism, industrialization and modernization.
Man's social existence is governed by the forces of production in the society. The tools and equipment which he uses for the productive purposes determine his values,'beliefs and attitudes. India is on the road to modernization. A community which wants to modernise itself should modernise its tools and techniques of production. A society using -primitive means of production remains primitive in its outlook and mental habits. The means of production and the techniques which have been recommended by the Basic Education scheme were primitive, out-dMted and outmoded. Attempts for their redeployment would reverse tte process of socialistic modernization and confine the country to the level of self-subsi-stent economy based on the Gandhian concept of .the "desireless man^\
In place of primitive tools of production modern scientific equipment should be used in schools for providing work-experience even thoQ^h our motive is economic. Living in an age of technology, -the students of today should be acquainted with its techniques. It will add more meaning