Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme

Eklavya is an Indian NGO based in maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh working in the field of education. It was registered as an all India in 1982. The organization is named after Eklavya, the protagonist of a story in the Mahabharat, for his determination to learn even in the absence of a teacher. Known as the student who cut off his thumb at a command from his guru, he was a young boy was unable to join his guru's school. Intent on learning, he kept his guru merely as an ideal and taught himself skills that made him better than his guru and his guru's favourite student.

The organisation traces the beginning of their educational programmes to an earlier programme called Kishor Bharati district of Madhya Pradesh. And popularly called the Hoshangabad Experiment or the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme. This education programme professed to contest many of the traditional ways of teaching sciences in schools, emphasising instead on experiments. They believed and successfully promoted the educational practice of learning by doing. The noted Indian populariser of science, Arvind Gupta, participated in this experiment.

Kishore Bharti was set up by Dr. Anil Sadgopal while he was at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) as a Fellow. He resigned in 1972 to set up Kishore Bharati near Paliya Pipariya village of Bankhedi block in Hoshangabad district in Madhya Pradesh. Organisation was meant to focus on a number of initiatives related to economic development activities. But within the first year, it also took up an initiative to work on science education at school level in collaboration with anoth), that led to Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program (HSTP)

HSTP can be traced back to 1972 when a diverse group of people consisting of scientist, engineer, educationist and social activist from two voluntary organizations Kishore Bharti and Friends Rural Center decided to implement on ground, an innovative and interactive model of school science teaching which till then remained on papers as part of policy directives. The primary objective of HSTP was to determine the extent to which the existing system of government schooling could accommodate the innovative changes for teaching science. HSTP thus was introduced in village schools to investigate whether it would be feasible to introduce the ‘discovery’ approach to learning science in place of the traditional textbook-centred ‘learning by rote ‘ methodology. In course of time, the concept of environment-based education was included as an integral part of science teaching. The idea behind HSTP was that experimental and field based study would help them to develop an inquisitive attitude. This it was hoped, would ultimately lead to children questioning the traditional social structure of the village society. This freedom gave HSTP an opportunity to change the way in which science was taught and replace the older teaching techniques with new innovative teaching techniques. It was for the first time in India that a state government accepted the role of a voluntary agency in experimenting innovations in curriculum and pedagogy in school education. Thus HSTP emerged as a pioneer of qualitative education reforms in formal education sector on a macro scale. The academics in the program were guided by a group of diverse people consisting of young scientist, educators and research students from various reputed institutes. The initial push for breaking the inertia was given by the groups from the All India Science Teacher Association (Physics study group) and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).They were joined in 1973 by a group from the University of Delhi which went on to take academic responsibility for the programme. IIT's, National Universities, Post Graduate colleges and various other institutes of national importance further contributed to the growth of HSTP. The collaboration between the university faculty and school science teachers for developing the curriculum for village school was a unique feature of this program.

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