ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the work of the Society for Integrated Development of Himalayas (SIDH) developing education in a Himalayan tribal district. SIDH originally aimed to bring mainstream education to remote communities, but gradually came to realize mainstream education was inappropriate, and that a more locally grounded education, stressing local values and priorities was more important and relevant to the lives people were leading. Mainstream education served to emphasize the inferiority of local people and increase their discomfort. SIDH chose to work with local people to develop a curriculum and a style of teaching that better reflected their own needs and concerns. SIDH continually tries to evaluate and monitor its work through small local research projects and investigations. A key series of research projects has been on the theme of family structure and the way that this influences participation across a range of activities. The chapter concludes with an examination of the damage wrought by modernity and ‘development’.
