An Old File: my views on education

I was going through some of the older mails and I came across this mail to Prayas group in response to a very serious discussion going on at that time. I think this was my original and consolidated thought and I want to share it now.
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In our last meeting, I said that we need to observe the failure reasons of our common schooling system FIRST as it is not the case of only 10-15 kids of Evening school of IIT or 400-500 kids of Opportunity school or some thousand students of Kanpur or few crore students of India. It is a common phenomena through which every single child goes through. Now is it the appropriate process, is it the right methodology through which 80% of them are going through or rest have no access even to that. It may appeal sound or even more demanding, more challenging to deal with underprivileged children or migrant labour children or handicapped children, but would that serve any purpose to the common phenomena. What I mean, is that whenever any of us go to any Juggi or any village or railway station or MT section or canteen or just pass through GT Road, definitely observe the pity situation around. You go to any school, you observe the lack of understanding about the whole learning process. Hardly few teachers know the pulse of learning.

Now the pulse in itself includes so many things that people may dedicate themselves to explore the things within. But some of the major techniques, which have come out from the last researches need to be quoted here.

Child psychology, free discipline, rooted curriculum, parental awareness, effects of punishment / awards on child’s growth, interactive education concepts are some of the major findings which require our attention at this stage. ( By ‘at this stage’ I mean the stage when we have got enough exposure to nearby schooling system and can comment on it without having any biases to anything) .Right now we are good in number and our team is motivated enough to try out some alternative solutions, so my proposal is to take these abovementioned points into considerations.

Suppose we find that the situation of Apna School children is worse than the children around IIT, we can find tomorrow that the situation is much worse for the migrant labor children at brick-kilns or rack-pickers or employed children or orphans or handicapped ones.. This series is so long that one can not start with the reason that these particular children are relatively in much adverse condition. Also the idea of sending these children to a mainstream school after an year or so, does not appeal at all.. because that is more than sufficient reason in itself we are thinking to close the dealing with evening school children…I think that whatever we do is definitely going to be localized, but we must think of the general solution, applicable to most of the children.

Since most of the children in villages and even in city, are attached to the government schools, we should think of some solutions in context of government schools. We would have to work hard to prevent migration from villages to small cities, from small cities to big cities, and from big cities to foreign countries. That is one of the areas, some of the educationists in our country are working on. They call it ‘Rooted education phenomena’. We would have to come out with a good number of good citizens for our social growth. Right now we are even not in the condition to think some alternatives to be implemented. Because our power structure does not allow it. That’s why few of the activists force on power politics. It is very true that we need to have power for implementing the alternative educational / learning system at mass scale, given the assumption that we will achieve alternative education system before alternative power structure. But where is the alternative?

We always talk of doing good for a smaller section. We don’t talk about its generalization. I think that we are not estimating ourselves judiciously. This is the time and we are the people, who have to bring out the alternative system. We have to come out a better learning process for a child, for a youngster, for an adult and for everybody else around.

We would have to do enough experimentation with every kind of children, with every kind of parents, with every kind of activists, with politicians, with educationists, with the curriculum and what not. At this time we can not concentrate only on a smaller section, we need to write down our views. We need to supplement ourselves with the better techniques of learning. People are even thinking of ‘No Schooling’ concept. We need to understand why they are saying so and what is the alternative offered. What are the different practices of learning everywhere in the world? What ‘John Holt’ has to say on ‘Child Psychology’? What ‘Giju Bhai Badheka’ has to say on ‘Child Psychology in Indian context’ ? What ‘Gandhi’ and ‘Ravindra Nath Tagore’ has said about the educational structure in India? Why ‘Mackalay’’s educational system is not suitable in today’s context? What ‘A.S.Neil’ has to say on ’Free Discipline’?

What really these ngos are working on? Vivekanand put the point of ‘Education for all’. But is this the education,we want to offer to our further generations? Definitely there is a need of Quality Improvement. There are government schemes, there are NGOs working on these issues. But we would have to make some rational judgements before going into actions.

How we can start ? (A possibility)

1. visit to ngos
2. study circle on education
3. visit to govt. schools
4. talking to parents
5. start an vocational training center

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