• The Congress had organized a National Conference on Education in October 1937 in Wardha.

• In the light of the resolutions passed there, Zakir Hussain Committee formulated a detailed national scheme for basic education.

• The main principle behind this scheme was ‘learning through activity’.

• It was based on Gandhi’s ideas published in a series of articles in the weekly ‘Harijan’.

• Gandhi thought that the western education had created a gulf between the educated few and the masses, and had also made the educated elite ineffective.

• The scheme had the following provisions:

(i) Inclusion of basic handicraft in the syllabus;

(ii) First seven years of schooling to be an integral part of a free and compulsory nationwide education system (through mother tongue) ;

(iii) Teaching to be in Hindi from class II to VII and in English only after class VIII ;

(iv) Ways to be devised to establish contact with the community around schools through service; and

(v) A suitable technique to be devised with an aim to implementing the main idea of basic education — educating the child through the medium of productive activity of a suitable handicraft.

• The system, rather than being a methodology for education, was an expression of an idea for a new life and a new society.

• The basic premise was that only through such a scheme could India be an independent and non-violent society.

• This scheme was child- centred and co-operative.

• There was not much development of this idea, because of the start of the Second World War and the resignation of the Congress ministries (October 1939).