By Glenn C. Kharkongor
Frontline magazine carried a pictorial article on a tribal school in Nagaland in the Oct 25, 2025 issue. Titled “Badze Leshuki, Nagaland’s Rooted Classroom”, it described a school for Angami children in the forest near Kohima. Badze means “spaces where people sit to chat, rest, and recuperate” and leshuki means “school”. Badze also refers to “conversing”, according to Theyie Keditsu, the founder of the school.
Dr Theyie is well-known for her passionate promotion of mekhala, the traditional weaves and textiles of Nagaland. She set up the Centre for Indigenous Knowledge and Alternative Learning to Promote Naga Culture in 2013. A poet and college teacher, she started the school in 2022, and regards the New Education Policy 2020 as an empowering document.
The curriculum is rooted in the indigenous knowledge systems of Nagaland. It is designed around agricultural cycles and the seasons. The children tend vegetable patches and jhum fields. They cook meals and wash dishes. Every meal is a lesson on the vegetables, fruits and grains of the day. They sweep, mop and dust, and clean the toilets. Much of the learning is outdoors. There is no homework.
Examples from Tamil Nadu and Odisha
The Vidyodaya Model School, in the Gudalur valley of Tamil Nadu, is close to the Bandipur National Forest. The area is home to the Paniya, Kurumba, Kattunayaka and Irula tribes, some of whom live in the forest. The school, founded 34 years ago, caters to tribal children who found little use for government school education.
The school incorporates tribal history, culture, songs and stories in the curriculum. Children are encouraged to speak their languages and dialects. Group work is encouraged rather than individual work, but each student may work at their own pace. Co-curricular activities are given equal importance, and assessments are based on a holistic model.
When some of us visited the school, we found friendly, confident children. They were seated on the floor and kept their books on low tables. Some of the learning materials have been written and illustrated by the teachers and children, like “The Food Book”. More than 3,000 children have so far studied in this school.
Mitra Residential School, in Kachapaju, Odisha is located in the Niyamgiri Hills, home of the Mal-Kondh tribe who speak the Kuvi language. The dream of the tribal elders was to have a school where their language, culture and traditional ways would be respected and nurtured, and children would grow up proud of their parents and community. The people of 16 villages formed an association and started the school in 1998. Two families provided land. All the villages undertook manual labour to erect the first building.
I visited the school a few years ago. I watched as the tribals broke stones for the road to the school. They used the ancient method of making holes in a line on the boulders, filling the holes with dry straw, then lighting the straw. Cold water was thrown on the hot boulder, cracking it into pieces.
A decision was made to celebrate and prioritise the Kuvi language, encouraging its use in informal and formal communications, composing songs and stories and printing books written by children, teachers and community members. Students from the school have become teachers, doctors, nurses and engineers.
The school calendar is based on the days of the weekly markets, which are holidays. School vacations are scheduled around tribal festivals. While the conventional curriculum is used, agriculture, health, arts and crafts are added. There is much music, dance, drama and nature walks. Periodic evaluation of the school and its curriculum is conducted by tribal leaders.
A system in need of overhaul
The Meghalaya State Education Commission Report 2025 seems to have sidestepped these aspects of school education. The word ‘tribal’ appears 27 times in the report but these mentions pertain mainly to demographics, geography, or schemes. On page 25 we find this quote, “Under NEP 2020, Meghalaya is moving towards using the home language as the medium in foundational years, at least in oral and bilingual forms, to make education more accessible to tribal children. Textbooks in Khasi and Garo for primary classes are being developed and the curriculum also includes tribal history, folklore, and indigenous knowledge, which helps validate students’ cultural identity within the school system.”
Just to validate one’s cultural identity is a rather narrow view of tribal education. Phrases like “moving towards” and “being developed” indicate the slowness of progress. When are we going to have something new and relevant to showcase to our people? Meanwhile students from our community are exploited elsewhere.
In March 2025, two students from Meghalaya died at Gokula Educational Trust in Bengaluru due to suspected food poisoning, 22 students had to be brought back home. A few days ago, 24 girls were rescued from Sowmya Kesanupallii Student Home in Karnataka. These girls, aged 8–13, mostly from daily wage earner families, were promised a quality education. They only had to pay the cost of travel. The girls were served stale and unhygienic food, and had to fetch water from a river. They sometimes ate from dustbins, and were often beaten.
In schools in Meghalaya, it is a common practice to withhold promotion unless fees are paid. This results in the humiliation of young children and loss of precious self-esteem. Such outdated practices reflect our broken system. We continue to pursue a school education that is still largely rooted in Macaulay’s devious scheme.
Ideologists, whether political, religious or cultural, all know that the best way to obtain control of a human being’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours is to influence their early learning environments. The home, place of worship, and school are the locales in which cognitive, social, and moral formations take place. These early influences carry their own power and authority, and are not easily shed or tempered in adulthood. Most individuals remain captive to these for life and then pass them on to their next generation.
Recommendations from statutory bodies
The NCERT National Curriculum Framework as far back as 2005 and the National Focus Group on SC/ST Children stated that mainstream, textbook-centric education is inadequate, even damaging for tribal children. It was recommended that their education should adapt to their language, culture, community context and lived reality of tribal children. They not only need learning that connects to life outside school, but also dignity and identity. NCF 2005 advocates “learning without burden,” making learning a joyful, meaningful process rather than a burden of memorization and exam pressure.
The National Education Policy 2020 uses the word ‘tribal’ 13 times and goes much further. A reassuring passage calls for “inclusion of traditional Indian knowledge including tribal and other local knowledge throughout into the curriculum, across humanities, sciences, arts, crafts, and sports…Teachers must be grounded in Indian values, languages, knowledge, ethos, and traditions including tribal traditions.”
Another passage states, “tribal knowledge and indigenous and traditional ways of learning, will be covered and included in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, yoga, architecture, medicine, agriculture, engineering, linguistics, literature, sports, games, as well as in governance, polity, conservation. Specific courses in tribal ethno-medicinal practices, forest management, traditional (organic) crop cultivation, natural farming, etc. will also be made available.”
Our state board should take up these oft-repeated recommendations, and consider the examples of successful tribal schools elsewhere in the country.
