Incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge & Skills within School Curriculum
Authors:-Dr.Laxmiram Gope, Assistant Professor, & Sujit Kuiry, Research Scholar
Abstract-The quality of education reflects the quality of life. This quality is not only confined to a particular dimension, but it also has an expansive connotation. In the words of Bernard (1999), the rights of all the children to survival, protection, development, and participation are at the centre of the discourse, which covers all aspects of the school and its surrounding community. This means that the focus is on learning to strengthen the capacities of children to act progressively on their own through acquiring relevant knowledge, valuable skills and appropriate attitudes; this builds up a safety network permeated by a sense of security and healthy interaction. Primarily, the present paper focuses on the quality enhancement and skill development by incorporating community-centered indigenous knowledge within the school’s curriculum. In this paper, the researchers made a humble attempt to explore the components of indigenous knowledge within the community network space and thereby suggest the inclusion of community-based indigenous knowledge for the objective of an inclusive school curriculum through skill-development techniques and community-participative indigenous knowledge. An attempt has been made to determine why community-based knowledge is crucial for various kinds of risk management, which is situational knowledge, and is highly pertinent for shaping survival strategies within the community. Overall, researchers perceive that it is also helpful for re-constructing and re-orienting our ongoing education system because it has built-in cultural support and cultural value with ancient spiritual essence. With the help of document analysis and analysis of primary and secondary data the researchers sought to reveal that the indigenous knowledge cum community knowledge has many important aspects in respect of educational goals and it also helps to improve the educational instructional strategy. Even such community-centric knowledge is essential for the individual perspective, because it celebrates the diversity of learning. This study is an avenue for policymakers, educators, and activists associated with quality education to advance the vocational system in school education.
