BANGALORE: The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) appears to be learning the lessons the hard way and that too spending huge amounts to teach Kannada!

As a part of its new experiment, the SSA has done away with traditional material like books, slates and pencils and will be giving a set of 60cards in a jute bag to each child. It has already readied 4 lakh sets by spending around Rs4crore.

The experiment has been taken up in ten educational districts of Gulbarga, Yadagir, Raichur, Koppal, Bellary, Bagalkot, Bijapur, Chitradurga, Chamarajnagar, Kolar and Chikkaballapur. If there sults are encouraging, it would be extended to other districts.

The cards are divided into two sections. The first section has serial number 1 to10 and the other has from serial number 11 to 60. “The first ten cards will have only pictures on and the student will have to identify them. After that, simple words will be given to the students to read.

As they progress, they will get poems and stories to read,” said SSA Director N H Sathyamurthy. Students will be given one card at a time. The officer added, “The card system has been introduced only to create curiosity among the students, to know what the next card holds for them. To maintain suspense about the next card we did not bring out a book format,” the officer added.

The SSA plans to teach Marathi and Urdu in the same way, Sathyamurthy added. A critic of the ‘Innovative’ SSA said, “Students will not preserve the cards, so it cannot be passed on to others.” Educationist Dr Niranjan Aradhya opined that joyful learning can be only through imitation. “We need to accept that imitation is the best way of learning. Why do you need flowers on the cards when there are plenty in the garden?” he questioned. He also ridiculed the idea of giving printed material to the students. “We are prescribing everything, which is the biggest enemy of personality development, individuality, creativity and spontaneity,” Dr Niranjan added.