ABSTRACT
Mahatma Gandhi believed that a process of education centred around crafts could create a meaningful context for the learning of letters. He called it 'Rural National Education through village handicrafts' in the foreword of the curriculum of the scheme that Dr Zakir Husain termed 'Basic National Education'. Anand Niketan was a village school founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1938 in the Sevagram ashram premises. In a gardening class, a teacher was helping a student prepare soil with a large fork. Two looms were to be set up in the spinning room and students were to learn it as and when they got time. During the summer vacations, two teachers had gone to Guwahati for ten days to learn weaving. Science in craft-centred education is seen 'as an approach to knowledge'. They planned to introduce weaving in Class VII in January.
