75 years ago my grandfather started a rural school in our small village in Kerala where I studied from 1957 to 1960. It...read about his experiment ...extract from a book by Duance Spencer Hatch(an American who spent a lot of time here with his wife in the thirties) published in 1938 by Oxford University Press.We are trying to revitalise this school.
THE STORY OF OOLLANNORE
ALONG a country road that follows a small brook in
the narrow Oollannore Valley, came a barefooted high
school boy. It was moonlight and after nine o'clock.
He was on his way home from teaching in a night school
of depressed class and untouchable children. He was
a Christian boy. His mother was watching for him
from the high cliff a little way out along the, road from
home. She had a complete clean suitshirt and
mundoo ready for him.
“Dip yourself in the brook, Keevarchen, and put on
these clean clothes ', she called. Every night when he
came from the night school he had to do this because
he had been with the untouchables.
She was a good Christian woman and a very good
mother : she was only training her son in the general
custom at that time concerning the untouchables. In-
deed, Keevarchen's father was even more carefuL
Every time he came from market he dipped in the
brook ; and the rule was that there must be a man to
watch so that, if necessary, this man could testify that
the dipping had been ' all over '. Even when he came
in from the fields where he directed the working of
farm labourers, he dipped in the brook before going
up to his house, for were not these labourers Parayas
and Pulayas, depressed and untouchable ?
That was thirty years ago.
This school boy was M. K. Varghese, the founder
and living spirit of the new Oollannore Rural
Reconstruction Institute which has been founded on the
six acres of the land surrounding the same old home.
The main school building and the smaller ones are
grouped around the old house on the bluff high above
the road.
Socialization in action is the outstanding character-
istic of the Oollannore project ; and at every function
the most striking phenomenon is that men and women,
boys and girls, of all classes and creeds, including the
former depressed and untouchables, all the people of
the Valley are there, moving happily together without
any sense of contamination.
I consider this Institute one of the most important
developments in the field of Rural Reconstruction in
the past two years. Its aim is so to reorient education
that the young people of this valley will not have any
abnormal discontent to make them want to get away
to the cities ; that the school shall so train them that
the majority should be able to return to the lands of
their fathers and live there a happy and successful
life. It is expected that in ten years time there .will
have come about in the Valley a complete upward
change toward a more abundant life, the school being
the social and educational centre for both old and
young. This is a new kind of Centre the School
Centre. All the teachers, who are well above the
standard of usual rural teachers, act as extension
workers in their spare time, much as our extension men
work out from Martandam Centre. This project is
an activity of the little Oollannore YMCA which works
under honorary, unpaid leadership as so many YMCAs
in our area do.
In addition to the benefits to Oollannore Valley, we
expect that this project will be an example which may
be studied and will have an influence throughout
India and beyond.
A system of education suited to the needs of rural
areas is a pressing need in India today. Probably all
educationists agree that the present system is unsuited
to such a rural country and that it is producing a grow-
ing problem of the somewhat-educated unemployed.
The wrong orientation of the present system has been
clearly pointed out by several expert committees and
several educationists.
The Royal Commission on Agriculture in India said,
* Unemployment is being accentuated by the present
system of education . . . agricultural-bias schools are a
remedy.' The Auxiliary Committee of the Indian
Statutory Commission supported this view saying that
the present system based on urban requirements is
wasteful and harmful. The Travancore t Unemploy-
ment Inquiry Committee reported that the present
system of education had neglected the formation and
training of character, and that its contribution to the
economic development of the State has been disappoint-
ing. They recommend that English and Vernacular
middle schools in rural areas should be converted into
agricultural-bias schools. The Travancore Educational
Reforms Committee recommended the establishment of
vocational-bias schools.
' After many years of experience and effort in the
villages of the Punjab/ says Mr F. L. Brayne, Rural
Reconstruction Commissioner, ' I am convinced that
there is no better or cheaper agency possible for re-
making Indian villages than rural uplift schools.' Dr
Kenyon L. Butterfield reported, in his Christian Mission
In Rural India, ' The real nucleus of rural uplift is
the village school. It should give the village boys and
girls an education that fits them for life in the village.
Adult education should be an important feature of the
school/
As I write the Government of Madras after a survey
of its whole field of elementary and secondary educa-
tion have issued a communique which points out ' the
defects in the present elementary education system and
its curricula, including the antiquated methods and
the divorce of teaching from environment. It empha-
sizes the need for rural bias
We hope that Oollannore will show the way. If it
is to do so the curriculum is very important. Obvious-
ly a school with its pupils taking part in agriculture
and gardening on these six acres of land, doing poultry-
keeping, bee-keeping, weaving, other cottage industries,
and domestic science, cannot do all these things
adequately and well, and at the same time keep on
doing all that is required in an ordinary school.
Mr Vargfrese and his fellow educators have drawn
up a syllabus which is just now being considered by
the Education Department of Government. It in-
cludes rural reconstruction subjects, domestic science,
enough fundamental subjects, and enough cultural
subjects to provide a good education for a happy and
successful life in rural India. The pupils come* to
Oollannore after four years of study in eight ordinary
primary schools in the area around. They stay at
Oollannore the fifth, sixth, and seventh years. If they
then begin life as farmers, business men, traders, or
home-makers, they may continue reading with the aid
of books from the school's circulating library, they will
have the benefit of the adult education and extension
programmes, and constantly visit the school as their
social centre.
'What about the small percentage of these rural
youths who really ought to go on to High School and
College ? ' After finishing the seventh class at Oollan-
nore, such a pupil may join the Second Form in an
English school and proceed straight on through High
School and College. Had he gone to the English
school in the first place he would have been in the
Third Form instead of the Second, but from being in
the Oollannore School, he has gained all the extra
richness of that fuller training. Even tnough he will
study a year longer before going to College, he will
have saved Rs. 24 in total fees, a big amount to poor
parents, since the fees at Oollannore are only Rs. 18
for three years, whereas in the First Form of the Eng-
lish School alone, of which he skips the fee, is Rs. 24 for
the year.
It is interesting to note that a larger percentage of
boys from the Oollannore school passed the regular
Government Vernacular School Examination than boys
from nearby vernacular schools. This is in line with
experience in other countries where pupils who spend part
time on vocational projects do as well in cultural subjects
as those who spend full time on cultural subjects.
The school provides a meeting-place for the officers
of the Government Agricultural, Industrial, Co-opera-
tive, and Public Health Departments enabling them
to come in touch with the rural people. The results
of the experiments conducted by these departments are
communicated to the people and translated into action
through the medium of the school and its teachers in
their extension teaching.
It is the remarkable co-operative spirit at Oollannore
that impresses everybody. When sanction for this
school was received two days after the state schools
opened for the year, they were not sure how many pupils
would come. The first day there was only one pupil
administered to by two high grade teachers in a room
in the old Varghese home. In a month there were
103 pupils. The very urgent need for at least a roof
to cover the pupils and the teachers was manifest.
Hindus and Christians of all castes and creeds and
conditions joined together, and in one day built and
thatched a very substantial shed, adequate in size to
house this growing school.
Then this co-operative spirit began to spread through-
out the whole Valley. Across the fields stood the
Jacobite Church without any roof; it had been
roofless for nearly twenty years. An eye-witness of
how the co-operative spirit took hold of this situation
writes : ' Though many people do not believe in
miracles in the twentieth century, yet a real miracle
was performed through the Oollannore YMCA. You
are aware of the great split that cut asunder the Jacobite
Church of Malabar, about two decades ago. You
know of the attempts made by Lord Halifax, Bishop
Gore, Bishop Pakenham-Walsh, and others, to bring
about peace in the Jacobite Church. The little roof-
less church which you have seen from the roadside,
do you know how that little church lost its top ? That
was due to the great split that took place in this
Jacobite Church twenty years ago. The parishioners
of Oollannore were so divided they did not thatch^ the
roof of the church building. The roof fell down, the
worship was stopped, and a small jungle grew up in-
side the church. Thieves could hide behind the
bushes. All these years there has been no Sunday
worship, no Sunday School worth the name, no spirit
of fellowship among the parishioners. Now you must
come and see what a great change has taken place. The
parishioners are united. They are one in mind and
spirit, the jungle has been cleared away, the restoration
of the church building is taking place in right earnest.
It is an inspiring sight to see all working as one, the
Hindus helping with the carrying of stones and other
materials. It is a sight on which angels in heaven
look down and smile. It came from the prayers and
the work of the YMCA members and the school/
The Hindu temple was in a dilapidated condition.
The Christian leaders called the Hindus together and
talked with them about this. They were all interested
in every institution in that section being well looked
after. The temple, like the church, needed a roof
The villagers recalled an old form of co-operation
between Hindus and Christians in connexion with the
temple tank which in olden days was annually cleaned
by all people joining together. So now they went to
work, thatched the temple roof, renovated and cleaned
up the premises. Out of this grew a successful appeal
to Government who have now taken over the mainten-
ance and care of this temple an assurance that it will
be well maintained in future.
The account continues : ' Oollannore village was
notorious for petty thefts. There were a "number of
young men in the village whose habit was to idle away
their time. They wasted the day in card play and
sleep ; night was the time of their activity. They
earned their daily bread by the nightly stealing of the
agricultural products of their honest neighbours.
Honest farmers gave up their cultivation because the
fruits of their labours were snatched away by these
nocturnal parasites. Now, a great change has taken
place in these young men. They frequent the reading
room and library ; they attend the fanners' classes,
night school, lantern lectures, moral and devotional
addresses. Personal contact, wholesome influence, and
the interesting model cultivation in the school com-
pound has further helped to bring a great change.
Stealing abandoned, these fellows get wages for some
of the work at the school, quite sufficient to maintain
themselves and to make small savings. With the sav-
ings they have begun to cultivate their own lands.
When the thieves took to cultivation, the honest
farmers began again to cultivate, and with redoubled
energy. There will be a plentiful harvest this year.'
Drinking was another curse of the village. ' The
leader of the half dozen confirmed drunkards was the
terror of the village ', a correspondent from that section
writes. * Now you must come and see this leader : he
is now a perfect gentleman, always doing some useful
work for the school. Our plan is to give him plenty
of work to do, to give him good company, and to pay
his wages in kind. He has now given up the drinking
habit and become a very useful man. The school has
created a healthy atmosphere in the villages so as to
make the wicked people feel ashamed of their wicked-
ness and gradually depart from it.'
The folk dances of the villages, which are different
in form from those in the Martandam area, but vigor-
ous and excellent ones, are being revived. Since the
school began to encourage them, those who knew them
have been going from village to village teaching them.
There was no hospital or qualified medical aid in all
that region. The Institute desired to run a dispensary.
A Canadian delegate to the World Conference visited
Oollannore and gave a few rupees to start a medical
fund. Then Dr Howard Somervell, the great mission-
ary surgeon, he who climbed Everest, accepted an
invitation to open the dispensary and to give one day
of his busy life to Oollannore. The usual opening
function is entirely talk ; this was a working opening.
He was to come at eight in the morning. The day
before, the sick began to come in or to be brought in.
Before the doctor arrived the school had registered
140 patients. By noon he had examined fifty cases and
he asked the authorities to send away fifty of those
registered, as he expected there would not be time for
so many. With his usual vigour he worked straight
on, eating a bit of bread and butter which they gave
him at noon, occasionally jumping out of the window
of the new building and racing round the compound
to get a bit of air. The people were deeply impressed
with his good nature and tireless energy. When the
teachers were annoyed at the great crowds pushing into
the place to see the doctor work, he was goodnatured,
mischievously throwing some water on them when it
was necessary to push them back. He examined
patients steadily until 9-30 in the night, and then drove
over a hundred miles back to his hospital at Neyyoor,
where more patients would be waiting for him.
Dr Somervell was so impressed with the needs of
the sufferers of this area that he has agreed to be a
regular member of staff, visiting periodically. The
school is now employing a young doctor and a com-
pounder. The dispensary administers to an average of
twenty persons a day. The doctor conducts hygiene
and first-aid classes in the school.
The Institute's Co-operative Society is of a new type*
The Valley is frightened of the very word ' co-opera-
tive'. The usual Co-operative Credit Societies were
established there. They were unlimited liability
banks ; borrowing was easy ; there was not ' all-the-
way supervision '. Many are in debt there today be-
cause of the failure of that kind of co-operative society.
Our Oollannore Co-operative had to start with teacher
members whose participation would create confidence*
The principle is that no money loans will be given*
The teachers receive provisions and other necessaries
of life the cost of which is charged against their pay.
Members other than teachers can do all their purchas-
ing and selling through the Society which supplies
them with such things as manures, seeds, implements,
yarn for their looms, beehives.
Two surveys have been completed but not yet fully
tabulated. One is the general survey conducted on
the ' sample ' plan under the direction of Miss L. C.
M. Ouwerkerk, Professor of Economics, H, H. the
Maharaja's College of Arts, Trivandrum, with the help-
of the teachers and other local leaders. They prepared
a special survey form and surveyed 62 families. These
62 families Represent under the ' sample ' survey system
620 families of the area.
The second is a dietary survey conducted under the
direction of Dr Akroyd of the Government of India
Nutrition Institute at Coonoor. For this survey it was.
necessary for a trusted surveyor to be present in every
house, of the twenty typical families, before every meal,
as they had to see the materials for each meal of the
day before cooking. When these findings are tabulat-
ed, we shall know somewhat exactly what these rural
people eat and shall be able to take steps for a more
nutritious* and better balanced diet. The Oollannore
surveys will be as useful as the surveys we have done
in other places and which we need to do wherever we
work. They have emphasized the fact that while the
expert surveyor is needed to direct, such surveys can
never be correctly made by outsiders, however expert,
without the co-operation of a number of local leaders
who have plenty of local knowledge and the confidence
of the people.
I was a bit anxious when I heard that Sir John
Russell, who had come to India to advise on Agricul-
tural Science, was to visit Oollannore, for he is a real
scientist, and we had not yet been able to do things
very scientifically at Oollannore. However, after the
visit Mr Varghese wrote : ' It was a grand visit. Though
the Director of Agriculture on arrival declared that the
time allotted at Oollannore was only twenty minutes,
Sir John and party stayed here for two hours. They
inspected the library, co-operative store, weaving works,
poultry, bees, and the demonstration farm. Sir John
had a long talk with the fanners who had assembled
here. He went rather minutely through the statistics
of the economic survey. He was alarmed at the
condition of the villagers. He said, " The Martandam
ideal as translated into action at Oollannore is the
right way and the only way for improving t'ne condition
of the villages. Though slow, it is a sure way." '
After one year of school the big shed was no longer
sufficient, for 250 pupils were in attendance. During
the past year, they have put up a very substantial school
building, and classes are being carried on in both the
big shed and the new stone building. The clay tiles
for the roof of the big new building arrived by river
in the picturesque, hand-poled wallams, but the river
was two miles from the building, and there was no
money to hire coolies to carry these tiles. About 150
Oollannore citizens came forward and carried the tiles
on their heads from the river boats to the Institute.
Scarcity of funds is the besetting problem. Mr Var-
ghese and his teachers say over and over again, ' When
we seem to be down to the lowest depths financially,
something providential happens/ I had advised
Varghese to keep his teaching job in the Government
School six miles away and to direct this institution in
his spare time. How could he support this large new
project without this monthly income? He has been
going ahead on faith putting all he could possibly spare
of his personal pay into the school. Yet the school
had such debts in Varghese's name that a month ago
he received notice from Government that unless by the
end of the month he paid off his debtors who had
made attachments against his pay, he would have to
leave his government job until his debts were paid.
Then in that dark moment there came from New York
a cheque in answer to an appeal I had made on the
Institute's behalf. This enabled Varghese to clear the
debts and continue to do his work in the High School.
The teachers at Oollannore are dedicating the years
here as a labour of love. They work without assurance
that there will be money to pay them, and for a small
amount when they were paid.
The Spencer Hatch Rural Reconstruction Institute
and School they have paid me the rare compliment of
naming the whole project after me with its fourteen
teachers doing extension service, the people of the
Valley co-operating, is one of the most promising of
our developments.
