49 servicing and repairs, electronics, agriculture, photography, leather work, typing and tailoring. This part will consist of practicals only, no theory or written paper, and the assessment will be internal and cumulative at school. The traditional system of evaluation will also be reformed. There will be no pass or failure as such. There will be Grades for each subject—5 Grades in all, G-1, Outstanding; G-2, Very good; G-3, Good; G-4, Fair and G-5, Poor; and this will be a surer guide for employers who look for special proficiency in their own special trade and also for admissions to higher professional or technical courses. Forty years ago, Mahatma Gandhi advocated Basic education or work-centred education or learning through doing. He said that in a poor country like India, where 80 per cent of the population is agricultural and another 10 percent industrial, it is a sin to give a purely literary or liberal education. The traditional education has a negative role, it makes pupils more unemployable, a farmer's son who passes B.A. and M.A. becomes unfit for unsophisticated farming; the housewife's daughter who passes M A. looks down on housewifery and is all for a white collar job, which is in such short supply. It is anti-national to continue such a system. The work-centred education will develop self-reliance and self-confidence through earning capacity instead of a feeling of helplessness without a routine job. It will instil dignity of labour found in all advanced countries but absent in India; it will produce the spirit of initiative and enterprise that will create openings and opportunities where there are seemingly none. Of course, mere education will not end unemployment; that depends on economic development and many other factors. But it will make our young men and young women fit to face new challenges in life and to trans 4
