Scientific Attitude, A Situational Appraisal among Secondary School Tribal Students of Kerala

Abstract

India, as a land of diversity has the concentration of tribal people mostly in all states except Punjab, Haryana and union territory like Chandigarh, Delhi and Puducherry. From the National Census Reports, it can be seen that there are mainly 36 main tribal communities in the state of Kerala and the population of them numbering to 484,839. The tribal communities all have a unique culture, tradition and practices of their own. The beliefs of each tribal community are different. The livelihood patterns are different, the economical standards are different, the occupation and the social stratification are different. All the communities have their own set of ethics and practices different from others. In Kerala the main communities include Paniya, Kurichchya, Kuruma, Kattunayakans, Uralies etc of Wayanad, Irulas of Attapadi, Muthuvans, Malayarayan and Uralies of Idukki and Kottayam and Kanikkar of Thiruvanathapuram. Though these are the major communities in Kerala, there are sub communities among them. Apart from there major communities Kerala also have 5 particularly vulnerable tribal group communities (PVTG) and they are considered to be primitive considering their stage of transition into modern society. Earlier they were referred to as primitive tribes but later Dhebhar commission renamed them as Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG). They are termed as Kattunaikans of Wayanad, Koragas of Kasargod, Cholanaikans of Nilambur Valley and Malappuram district, Kurumbar of Attapadi and Palakkad districts and Kadars of Cochin based on their tribal descends. The present researchbstudy is conducted in the PVTG tribal children studying in residential tribal Asram school which is fully functional under the supervision of Kerala State Government. From the study it was concluded that there are different levels of Scientific Attitude among secondary school tribal students. There is no significant difference in Scientific Attitude among secondary school tribal students for the subsample based on gender of the students.