Handcrafts
Traditional and colonial forms of education had emphasized literacy and abstract, text-based knowledge which had been the domain of the upper castes. Gandhi's proposal to make handicrafts the centre of his pedagogy had as its aim to bring about a "radical restructuring of the sociology of school knowledge in India" in which the 'literacies' of the lower castes--"such as spinning, weaving, leatherwork, pottery, metal-work, basket-making and book-binding"--would be made central. The other aim of this use of handicrafts was to make schools financially and socially independent of the state—an even more radical concept. Thus in his influential article on education in Harijan in 1937 he argued: "By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in child and man-body, mind and spirit. Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means by which man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is no education. I would therefore begin the child's education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins its training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting."
Read more about this topic: Nai Talim