In times of dispute between literacy methods in Brazil and the advancement of Artificial Intelligence in the world, here we are struggling to understand the multilingual literacy of children in tribal communities in India and tempted to consult the ChatGPT… but we prefer to talk to the linguist and folklorist Mahendra Kumar Mishra, who believes that artificial intelligence (AI) has potential in several areas, however the human mind and the production of knowledge are creative and imaginative acts with their own logic. AI is useful for organizing data and providing general programmed information, but the essence of a human is unique and reaches a depth that AI cannot.

The International rights are also human, as the education of indigenous peoples, for example. Here it is convenient to share the multilingual literacy experience in tribal communities and to understand an experience of India. Long before chatGPT I interviewed Dr. Mahendra Kumar Mishra who was the coordinator of the educator’s group of in education in Bubaneshwar, Odisha State.

I remember that I met Mishra through an email sent by him to me telling of his interest in incorporating Paulo Freire in his activities. That was at the beginning of the present millennium and personally met him in 2004 when we visited him in Bhubaneswar. He had just published the book Paulo Freire’s reflections on education and society (2003). Prof. Misha clarifies that the book was written in Oriya, the official language of the state of Odisha, which is spoken by 40 million people. The original name of the book is Siksha Samlap. Siksha means Education and Samlap means Dialogue. Siksha Samlap means Dialogue on Education, in which Paulo Freire’s philosophical ideas are narrated in an accessible language.

On that occasion, we traveled with Professor Albert R. Hemsi to participate and collaborate in the realization of a Seminar, like a culture circle, during the World Social Forum in Mumbai (1). It was a historical moment, in which the proximity between the pedagogical proposal of Paulo Freire and Mahatma Gandhi emerged with the presence of approximately 400 people from various countries, including teachers and community leaders such as Aníbal Quijano (2), Narayan Desai (3), Azril Bacal, Albert R. Hemsi, Salete Valesan and myself, among many others.

After 14 years, at the beginning of 2017, our third meeting took place, and again speak. Professor Mishra, considered one of the first Indian educators and researchers to incorporate the Brazilian Paulo Freire and his pedagogy in literacy, he encouraged us to attend a seminar on education with teachers who follow in this field. In general, the language was difficulty for me, but some time was spoken English. He told me about his work as a folklorist and consultant in multilingual education and I asked him about the axes of encounter between tribal education and Paulo Freire’s proposal, thinking about overcoming inequality and the existing historical heritage in India between castes and tribes.

Multilingual Education (MLE) in indigenous schools in Odisha is intended to preserve the children’s mother tongue and then move on to acquire a second language, such as Hindi or English. The critical literacy pedagogy, different from the traditional current, incorporates culture, language and narratives as basic human rights in the global context and in the local context, in Odisha.
The second meeting with Prof. Misha in Udaipur – Rajastan – in 2017 was an invitation by him to attend the Tribal Education Seminar (4) (5)

He reminded me that in 1999 there was a Global Reflect Conference held in Puri, Odisha State, which called for help to liberate people in disadvantaged situations: the women, the Dalits – the untouchables – the disadvantaged and people with some kind of disability. The opportunity for this colloquium was to work with education and pedagogy in tribal language, thus approaching Paulo Freire’s proposal.

For this purpose, he took from Paulo Freire four points to work with literacy teachers: identify social problems, of/in the group; it brought the utopia that the world can be transformed, and appealed to the group as a whole to believe that a utopia can be brought to the learning process; “that, although there are people who do not believe, the group that believes will contribute to change the world”.

Professor Mishra worked for the person / group to trust in a democratic dialogue, never imposing his ideas, but respecting the opinions of others in raising awareness and, from this point, move forward.

Mishra believes that in the dialectic between yes and no – between disagreements – unity and solidarity in the group will never be broken because disparate arguments; but if they admit the importance of debate, dialogue and disagreement in raising awareness. This way, he believes that with whom one argues, the bond will not be lost, and both will be able to walk together to reach further.

He considers that teachers and students will not find a good education in traditional school literacy proposals, because the caste system weakens the social place they occupy and the indigenous language is not accepted by the government; that is, this is the group in power does not accept this perspective “because some languages belong to power and others belong to the oppressed”. He understands that communities have an ecology and their own knowledge system, which was confirmed during language teaching from Paulo Freire’s perspective.

Mishra wonders: What did Paulo Freire say about language? “The Word is ‘world’; in Paulo Freire’s perspective, words have the energy to capture the set of knowledge systems in the world”. But there do not enter, their word has no place in the classroom or in the textbooks.

He believes that language, religion and caste truly have the power to unify, and also the power to divide. It will depend on the situation, of the political game. This is the question for the reader to think about: which educational project we want?

It is in his book Multilingual Education in Tribal Communities of Odisha (2022) in which Mishra takes up and deepens the axes we have systematized here and in the video interview.
Especially, in chapter 3, when referring to the curricular implementation of multilingual education in tribal schools in Odisha he asks himself: “What is a community?”

For him, the tribal literacy of children in Odisha is fundamental in schools with language minorities. The community seem as a culture creator and the revitalizing of tribal organization of the language. And all this collaborates in the elaboration of curricula, textbooks and in the teacher training module, and also in the development of other didactic materials, monitoring and evaluating. Finally, UNESCO is also present as a guide for Multilingual Education.

For the author, “the community is interested in sharing the teaching-learning process by including its culture in the curricular process and new themes that have emerged”. The teachers guided the teaching to obtain good results and the children recovered their voices; fear and shyness are shortening. They began to attend school regularly and actively participated in classroom activities. Other schools were also interested and inclined to adopt the new methods. The friendly atmosphere are diminishing the number of children that dropping out of school and increased everyone’s involvement in the learning process.

Mishra refers to Community Knowledge and Pedagogy in the classroom in Saora schools in Odisha and presents a case study based on a project by the Government of Odisha to educate Saora children in their mother tongue in traditional schools. In curricula and textbooks, Saora oral tales and myths are adopted, taught by teachers from the Saora community, which aimed to overcome the gap between family and school language and provide a meaningful dialogue with children. The stories are preserved from a constructivist point of view and examine how children construct new meanings from a given context.

Thus, the author specifies the theoretical framework, the sociocultural context, the problems and challenges of schools in Saora based on cognitive and social constructivism and life in society. The premise is if the content is known by a child in their mother tongue, they can better understand and acquire the text in a second language, Odia or English. Likewise, if the language is familiar to a child, he can easily understand the content because he knows the context.

According to Mishra, mother tongue-based multilingual education has been offered by the government of Odisha in 544 schools. Saora is a language among the ten tribal languages adopted in the MLE program. Odisha, adopted the tribal language as a means of instruction in ten communities: Saora, Santali, Munda, Oroam, Koya, Kui, Kuvi, Ho, Kishan, Juang and Bonda. The project started in 2006 and now the curricula and textbooks are mother tongue based and teacher training in these languages for Class-I and Class-V, with an adequate transition plan, reaching around 30,000 children.

In his book Multilingual Education in Tribal Communities of Odisha (2022) the author considers that in the stage of phonological development advancing to tribal phonetics is where children develop proficiency in reading from the mother tongue and a cultural way of learning mathematics, which turned out to be suitable.

For the reader, perhaps remains a controversy about which is the most appropriate reading or literacy method in each case. The phonic or the global based on constructivism?

Also, the author used to Rupantar, to refer, with that word, to “Transformation” (in Hindi: ‘roots’ and ‘routes’). The aim is the transformative training of Tribal Area teachers based on Paulo Freire’s premise that “Teachers and students must learn to read reality so that they can write their history.”

In developing the chapter, Mishra makes use of arguments: prejudices and disparities in society; the issue of attitude; the understanding of tribal children; the potentialities of the Tribal Language; how children learn; gender in the tribal community, and in these contexts, training outcomes.

Mishra consider that teachers questioned your own beliefs and values. They realized that, in addition to new methods to make learning more enjoyable, it was vital for them to understand tribal children, to know how they think and see the world. All issues raised in the pedagogical workshops were related to engagement with children, parents, community and tribal culture, not content or transactional activities in the classroom. Rather than being limited to the textbook, teachers developed a view of the world around them.

The author considers that they realized that the geography and natural environment of the village are science; the oldest men in the village are history; folklore is the language, and the expressive tradition and realities of their lives are their day-to-day arithmetic. They understood the importance of informal learning and how a child’s creativity is shaped by informal learning. The teachers introspected into their behavior and attitudes and realized the effect they had on the child’s psychology. Therefore, it is also up to teachers to create an atmosphere of learning and awaken interest in education. The school, belonging to children, should be a place where they can learn out of love and not out of fear and compulsion.

Prof. doctor Mahendra Kumar Mishra received the Unesco International Mother Language Prize in 2023 and his book introduces us to an experience that sought to bring the “Paulo Freire Method” closer to tribal education in the state of Odisha.

Here is this presentation of the book as an invitation to read it. We believe that we can contribute to a dialogue that allows us to think and reflect on the proposal for literacy / indigenous and/or tribal education in India, and also in other communities, also with the contributions of Paulo Freire.

Profa. Dra. Margarita Victoria Gomez.
http://lattes.cnpq.br/1559256476370569

Sources:
Gomez, M.V.; Hemsi, A. R. Interview: Mishra Mahendra K. Tribal education. Orissa, 2004. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WrBRANjVQg
Mishra, Mahendra K. Siksha Samlap. Baramunda, BBSR: Sikshasandhan, 2003.
Mishra, Mahendra K. Multilingual education in Tribal Communities of Odisha. Odiya Bazar, Cuttack-1: Sathi Books, 2022.

Notes:
1 Workshop on transformative education and global democratization (Paulo Freire Institute, NIGD, RC 10, CETAL, NKFFU, USF, Attac-Uppsala, ABF-Uppsala län) at the IVth WSF Mumbai, India, 19 January 2004.
2 https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/An%C3%ADbal_Quijano
3 Narayan Desai. https://wri-irg.org/es/story/2015/narayan-desai-1924-2015
4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WrBRANjVQg
5 First, in December 2016 we were invited and participated da First Biennial International Conference IACLSC 2016 Gandhinagar India com o paper Learning Communities: culture circles as a theory and methodological option. 2016. (Congress). Org. Sarat Kumar Jena, and then of the MLE Seminar.
He also coordinated the International Seminar “Open Education in the Global World – principles and contributions of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy and the concept of Rhizome. Indira Gandhi Open University, India, January 2017.