Nestled in Sakad village, Madhya Pradesh, India, Adharshila Learning Centre aims to provide adivasi children with a strong foundation. The centre aims to provide an inclusive and interesting education relevant to student’s lives. Students learn through experiments, observations, songs, theatre, student-teaching, farming and community interactions, apart from the regular reading and writing. Challenging the mainstream exam-based education system, the centre is also an experimentation ground for different ideas that will foster students’ creativity, confidence, and consciousness. In the past month, students at the centre have initiated a new project, one that has provided both awe and challenge.

Children’s Space vs School
Adharshila is abuzz with energy. It starts at eight in the morning and children have to be dragged out at five or six in the evening. Since the last three weeks, children have been fully engaged, making small box like rooms for themselves, using anything they can lay their hands on – twigs, gunny bags, plastic, cloth, ropes, anything old.

They are sitting in these rooms, eating, playing, chatting, reading, and writing, and drawing. But mainly they are building the room, already repairing, rebuilding, changing location, and decorating.

It started as a fun game, but now it’s a full time activity. It is no longer a game for them, as the kids have brought in water pots for cool water, made space for washing clothes, a common open space with park – like benches, and racks for books, clotheslines, curtains, and small brick enclosed verandahs. Even a dry latrine is under construction. Outside one of the homes, a Subabool sapling and an aloe vera plant have been planted and are being drip irrigated (a suspended plastic bag filled with water with a small hole). A chalkboard with the school chants and all of the residents’ names is placed in full view. As soon as the kids heard a story of a boy in Africa who brought electricity to his home and village making a wind mill out of waste, they started to ‘make current’ from gobar (dung). No two houses are the same and there is a steady flow of visitors to one another’s houses. There are three hamlets – Tower, Papita (papayya), and Boyda (hill) – with 2-5 houses in each hamlet and 4-5 students in each house. In all about 40 children are involved in this activity.

But it is not entirely a rosy picture. There are fights over what belongs to whom, damage to each other’s huts, and also to public property, at least two new trees and hedges were broken, new bricks were taken away for construction, one almirah and the basement were ransacked for material.

So, a meeting was held to frame rules. Everybody had a say and about 20 rules were framed. While these rules solved the problems between the children, the teachers and the senior students were still apprehensive and resisted this behaviour from the children. One day, the teachers were very upset as nobody turned in for ‘school’. They had to pull out the children from their huts and send them to class.

For the teacher, the worry is how to manage the school curriculum when all the students have gone off in different directions, each doing a different thing. Before the establishment of this children’s village, the bell-guided the school structure and there was a set pattern – morning prayer, class, breakfast, class, lunch, class… But now, we had got rid of the bell, because it went against the students’ flow of work in their new spaces. Again, there was opposition to this, and the question remained… how to add the school stuff in the context of what the students have themselves created?

So we had a meeting to explain the importance of this activity and generate ideas on how to incorporate the ‘learning of subjects’.

We tried to tell our teachers that this was the best possible thing that could have happened. The children were doing something continuously for 12 hours, without being told anything. We had to now think how this initiative could be extended to what we call studying or learning.

The children were learning how to use freedom creatively, deciding what they wanted to do, and pursuing their ideas without anyone telling them what to do. They were learning self discipline. And they were learning more than they would have if we tried to teach them these things.

While the teachers were happy with this, they wanted to know what would happen to the English, math, science, etc., that these children are supposed to learn. So we drew up some more rules –

For teachers
1. Go by their (children’s) plan for a while.
2. Go to their huts and record what they are doing.

For children
English exercises
1. Where do you live?
2. Who lives in your house?
3. When did you build your house?
4. What is your house made of?
5. What is in your house?
6. What are the names of trees by your house?
7. What are you doing?
8. What are you doing in the hut?

Activities
1. Survey the village and the hamlets and make a list. Find out who lives where, the number of people in each house and total the number of residents.
2. Make a map of the village.
3. Plant a medicinal tree by your house.

Maths
1. Take measurements of your house, find it’s area.
2. Worksheets at different levels that students do independently and move up as they successfully complete a level.

Each of these activities was written on a card and the children were free to take a card and do the work indicated any time they wished to. On completing a card they had to show to the teacher who would correct it and check it against her list.

The students have been continuously and independently beautifying and ideating for a month now, every day, along with the rest of the school activities – cooking, farming, theatre, singing. And the reading and writing is alive and well, as the houses are a favourite place for quiet (and uninterrupted by bells & teachers) study. They read, sing songs, make lists, tell stories, play cards, sleep, eat… the list goes on.

… I’ve heard that the physical environment is a major conditioner of behaviour. From observing and interacting with the children and their spaces it is evident that the kids hold a sense of ownership over their house, their work, their days. Hopefully this will help them take control of their lives in adulthood. One thing that can be surely seen is the drive they have in this new project, and there is potential for much more…..

On a Monday, the teachers forgot all the meetings and rang the bell. They collected all the children and asked them to go to class! Some children didn’t go. They were tucked away in their new houses. Again, a meeting was held.

Now a bargain has been arrived at. Sometimes the children have to go to their level groups in English and math. Sometimes they can sit and do whatever they want. At other times they are given activity cards and they can choose to do them whenever they want. We are creating more spaces and activities that they can go to. For e.g., there are two boxes with books and a cupboard with some games. Children just go there, take out things on their own and keep playing or reading. We are trying to create more of these self service counters.

We feel that this is a good thing and will continue working out compromises with the children. This approach has generated a totally new concept of learning within a school environment and we are now working out a different architectural concept for this approach.

A school with a difference

Adharshila Learning Centre was founded in June 1998. The centre is run by the organization Veer Khajiya Naik Manav Vikas Pratishthan and was titled “learning centre” by founders Amit and Jayashree Bhatnagar to emphasize its difference from regular test-based schools. The flexible curriculum and holistic approach focuses as much on academics as it does on practical application and awareness. With volunteers coming from all over the world, the children get a wider exposure through their interaction. The learning centre has given opportunities to those students who didn’t accept the mainstream test system and has shown that alternative methods of learning can achieve the same, if not better, results. The children of Adharshila get to conduct ‘Baal Melas’ in other schools to involve the children there in music, games, experiments, and activities. Music and dance is a big part of their lives. The children’s evaluation entails their revisiting all that they’ve learned the past year without being given any marks or grades. When the year has passed, the teachers stay back to review the work done and get ready for the next .Students passing out of the centre have gone on to get married, study further, or come back to work at Adharshila.

To more about the school, visit:
http://adharshilask.tripod.com/adharshila.html.
http://adharshilalearningcentre.blogspot.com/.
Phone: 0 94259 81606

Anyone with an idea interested in coming and working with the students? Calling engineers, architects, artists, muisicans, teachers…

Amit and Jayashree have been working with the adivasis in western Madhya Pradesh for the past 30 years. They started the Adharshila Learning Centre, a residential facility for adviasi children in 1998.

The authors can be reached at adharshila.learningcentre@gmail.com.

Reviewing and Re-prioritizing
In the spirit of such sustained engagement, the ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth and the ICICI Centre for Elementary Education recently held a consultation (November 16, New Delhi) that brought together senior bureaucrats from the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the National Council for Teacher Education and the NCERT, representatives from civil society groups, teacher educators, and multilateral funding agencies and academics. The group was charged with taking a critical look at ICEE’s initiatives in education, particularly with reference to teacher development in the states. While perspectives varied across the group in terms of the specific methods and means of empowering and equipping teachers and adding to their numbers, there was general agreement on the fact that standards need to be set, maintained, and monitored across the country. The role of universities in constructing and upgrading syllabi, and in ensuring that constituent colleges maintained standards, was stressed. Several SRC representatives bemoaned the fact that many institutes offering teacher training were no more than shells, with no infrastructure or faculty. Mr Sudhanshu Joshi, President, ICEE, summarizing this aspect of the discussion, noted the need for a broader policy which should improve, regulate and enforce the functioning of such institutes.

Another major point of discussion was the urgent need to build the bank of resource materials for teacher educators. While plenty of thought and effort has been going into making good materials available for children, teacher education has received less attention. ICEE recognizes this as a priority and has been working closely with state governments to help correct this lacuna. Teachers, particularly those who work in rural schools or in remote areas, feel not only geographically isolated but also professionally disconnected from the larger context of education. This can be corrected to some extent with better continuing education programs and other means of ongoing professional development. Talking about the need to broaden the understanding of in-service teacher training, panellists remarked upon the need for mechanisms to facilitate interaction among teachers in the form of mentorship, teacher forums. While most members of the group expressed scepticism about the role of technology in solving any of these problems, some did feel that technology could be used at least to break this teacher isolation and alienation.

It was refreshing to see that the discussion went beyond the mouthing of platitudes to some serious and constructive criticism of the system. State representatives minced no words in pointing out where government schemes and initiatives had failed, and went further, in making suggestions on how these failures could begin to be addressed. Mr Vikram Sahay of the MHRD, while accepting that there was a long way to go in teacher development, both in terms of quality and quantity, noted that the government was making serious efforts to correct their course. A new “Teacher Development Index”, to be released soon by the Ministry would provide a measure of effectiveness of initiatives, and could be used as a baseline and a continuous monitoring tool.

Reflection and Renewal
On quite a different note, the 11^th Partners’ Forum (Bangalore, December 20 – 22) convened by Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS) featured a discussion on history, its meaning and its teaching, that ranged over two and half days. Two “expert” presentations formed the core of the meeting, around which participants debated meanings and methods of history. Participants from among the WATIS partner organizations included teachers, teacher educators, resource organizations, materials developers, writers and others involved in school education. The two invited experts were Professor Neeladri Bhattacharya, a historian from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Professor Kanche Ilaiah, political scientist and Dalit scholar, from Osmania University, Hyderabad.

Beginning with an interrogation of what history means, and what its materials and methods could be, Prof Bhattacharya raised a lively debate on past and present approaches to history and their validity and perceived legitimacy, and of course the impact of these changing views on its teaching. Without completely having resolved any of these issues, the group moved into an exploration of alternative views of history, flagged off by an impassioned yet critical talk by Prof Ilaiah. Asking participants to think through questions of strategic inclusions and exclusions in history texts and teachings, Prof Ilaiah disturbed conventional understandings and provoked further thinking on such questions as how caste and religion play out in the “battleground” of the classroom. An additional perspective was provided by a practitioner”, Shankar Jagannathan, who spoke on the history of economics as a discipline – both the “doing” of it and the “making sense” of it.

Further complicating – or problematizing – our understanding of the realm of history, Subramaniam of Ekalavya focused participants’ attention on three main questions: What is the object of historical study? What is its objectivity? What is the purpose of history? Grappling with these and related questions had the participants engage in sometimes heated exchanges about objectivity and subjectivity, the dangers of relativism, and the value of fact in the face of different interpretative approaches.

Venu of Centre for Learning, Bangalore, brought the discussion back to the realm of the classroom by asking (again) three questions: What is the nature of history? How is history done? How do we teach history in the classroom?

These are after all the basic concerns of the teacher of history or the teacher of any other subject who must take a historical perspective. Issues of advantage and disadvantage, visibility and invisibility in public and communal memory, legitimation or negation of stories and mythologies… these are all issues of crucial importance, often under- emphasized in both history curricula and teaching practice. Participants shared perspectives on and experiences of teaching history, and explored the questions raised in relation to their own teaching and learning contexts.

The WATIS Partners’ meet is not, in the organizers’ own words, “outcome oriented”. It serves mainly as a space within which participants explore questions that drive their practice and share experiences. Sometimes, answers emerge from the discussions, and at other times, more questions that beg further thought and discussion. But as one participant put it, the meeting also offers the opportunity to think and talk outside the confines of a routine, besides being a place where friendships are renewed and new ones made.

A typical rainy day… the kids of Apna Vidya Bhavan gather round me to hear the story of Peter Pan. Their faces are a treat for my eyes. As I expected them to, by the end of the story, they ask me, “How do we go to Neverland?” Before I could answer them they bombard me with their creative answers
“By climbing mountains.”
“Making ropes out of clouds.”
“By swinging to the moon.”
I tell them, “You already are in Neverland!”

Children’s story writer, Aroop Kumar Dutta

With a whopping collection of 1000-odd books, contributed by the Om Prakash Foundation, USA, this modest but wholesome collection will put most of the libraries in the cities to shame.

The philosophy behind the library and the school itself is interesting. The motto of the Apna Vidya Bhavan, an innovative educational initiative inspired by Swami H.H. Anubhavananda, an eminent spiritual saint of our times, is ‘Grow Wise’. The founders believe that education should be ‘formative rather than informative’. Rashmi Krisikro, Bursar of Apna Vidya Bhavan says, “At school level, the imparting of subject knowledge isn’t as important as kindling the spirit and the passion for the subject. The trick is to get the child to say ‘I love maths’ not just ‘I know maths.’”

In the same way, a book is not something that should be forced upon a child. No one has ever heard of a child being taught to appreciate a flower, or the beauty of the night sky. If that were done, then a flower would be the most repulsive thing. Each child should discover the pleasure of reading for himself/herself. All we need to do is to expose them to books and let each child take his/her own time with them. That is why no student in Apna Vidya Bhavan is forced to read but only encouraged to be with the books. Feel the pages, relish the scent of old books and fresh print. “We are even allowed to just look at the pictures without reading them”, says a relieved boy. Adds Ms. Neelima Bora, his teacher, “He will not even realise when he stops looking at the pictures and starts reading.”

The books in the library are not at all like the ones that you normally expect in a rural school – shabby, dog eared, torn at the climax of the story. Neither are they cheap re-prints of classics by obscure publishers with tacky illustrations. The books here are as attractive as chocolates and sugar cubes All the books are by high profile publishers like Bloomsbury, Walt Disney, Scholastic, Golden Books, Harper Collins, Puffin, Usborne, Lady Bird, etc.

There is a sizeable collection of books that have won International awards like the Phoenix Award, the H.C.Andersen Medal , the Caldecott Medal , the Carnegie Medal, etc.

And what books for beginners! You have books that sing songs; books about animals where you just don’t see the pictures but also get a feel of their skin textures.

What is commendable is the way these library books been have integrated with classroom learning. There is no separate library room. The books are divided into levels and are kept on open shelves in the corresponding classes. But the children can start reading at whatever level they feel comfortable. The readers themselves are in-charge of the maintenance of the books. No closed cupboards or locks! And the books are not meant just for the students of the school. Anyone from Wakro town can walk in on a weekend afternoon and sit there browsing the books and the magazines!

Library books are a part of the lessons in Apna Vidya Bhavan. So when they learn their lessons, say about Kalpana Chawla, the teacher immediately supplements it with a picture essay of astronauts in space. Science and Geography lessons make much more sense to children when they see the things they learn about. During my stint with the Apne library, my English classes would get longer because the kids would invariably unearth the unabridged glossy version of the lesson we would be doing. Even I would prefer that to the textbook.

Once, holding up her Roald Dahl, a student exclaimed, “I wish I had to read this book for tomorrow instead of that boring lesson”. Struck by her remark, I thought, “Why not!” Curriculum planning must involve people for whom it is meant. NCERT has clearly laid out the objectives and the skills to be fostered. Every teacher can creatively tweak the content. Certain stories that might be appropriate for children in the cities would fail to interest children from the tribal areas. So the children can themselves choose a book from the library and swap it with a lesson. They can select the pages or have the entire book. With the help of the teacher they could even make the questions and the exercises. This worked very well in our small 7^th standard class.

Children enjoying a story book at the library

The Apne Library is open to the public on weekends. It also conducts regular book exhibitions, competitions like story-telling, book reading, etc. Such competitions have worked wonders with their self-confidence. They have not only participated but won competitions both at the district and state levels. It is remarkable to see that some of the kids are already turning into authors and poets themselves. Says Chowkianso, class 5, “When I grow up I want to be an author or a scientist. I love to write in Mishmi, my language. It is hard to do that because we can’t write Mishmi” (Most languages in Arunachal Pradesh have no script). His songs, which he composed himself, are a big hit in the school. Some children already have dreams of establishing libraries in their own villages when they grow up. Says Amonlu – a class four girl, “It is so boring in our village. It will be really nice to have a book for a friend.”

The library movement also encourages visits of distinguished literary personalities like Arup Kumar Dutta, the famous author of the ‘Kaziranga Trail’. Mrs. Surekha Panandikar, Head of the All India Children’s Library Movement of AWIC, has warm memories of her visit to Apna Vidya Bhavan. The National Book week is a festival for these kids.

AWIC Youth Library Network has 13 mini libraries in many villages across the Lohit region of eastern Arunachal. The Library Network stands as a unique partnership of a national organisation of writers, a state government agency and a network of grass-root level organisations and volunteer-groups involved in promoting good reading habits for the educational empowerment of rural tribal children. Conceived by the AWIC, New Delhi, and supported by the Lohit district administration and the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, the Network is monitored by the Vivekananda Trust. The movement is making waves, cultivating a new generation of young book lovers. The network has won many accolades, and patronage from the locals, the government officials, the army, and most importantly from the children! The patrons’ sentiments were effectively summarised by Gen. (Retd) J J Singh, Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, “An excellent Library for the future leaders of our country. May God Bless you with knowledge and wisdom to make India proud.”

Inauguration of Wakro library by Lt Colonel V S Malhotra and Satyanarayanan Mundayoor

Of course the Library Network has been encountering the same problems that dog such movements across the country – lack of funds and dedicated volunteers, community lethargy, etc. Introducing reading to a community with a purely oral tradition is a special problem in tribal areas. All these problems are in addition to the fact that children are more readily drawn to the cable television and video games.

As I close my copy of Peter Pan, I wonder, “Is there a way to stop the art of reading from dying?” I look at the kids still enacting scenes from the book and smile. Maybe if we as teachers and parents continue to expose them to good books and think of ways of making reading an interesting activity, despite their initial reluctance, we will see them grow up reading books.

The author is an M.Phil student of Linguistics in Hyderabad. She worked as a teacher for six months at the Apne Library, Wakro, Arunachal Pradesh in 2008. She can be reached at shriekutty@yahoo.co.in.

What might Kabir, a 15^th century saint-poet, have to offer present day schools? This question has been central to the Kabir Project’s recent explorations in the field of education. As part of our ongoing work with schools and interactions with educators, we have mapped out some broad areas to explore further and build on the developing insights. Instead of making a package for instant delivery to schools, the emphasis is on building relationships with them and coming up with ideas suited to the needs, context and culture of each school. The resources we draw on include the poetry of Kabir, the musical renditions of it by various folk and classical singers, the Kabir films made by Shabnam Virmani, children’s books, and anything else that we can lay our hands on. There is a strong intention to collaborate with other organizations and initiatives dedicated to peace, nonviolence and harmony.

Kabir and Diversity
While Kabir’s poetry grew out of his response to the concerns of his time, it continues to speak to us in the present day. The critical spirit of his words is a refreshing change from empty gestures of solidarity that come in the guise of proclamations about all human beings being part of one large family. Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai, Hum Sab Hai Bhai Bhai is something we often hear as part of national integration speeches, but how often do we initiate conversations about these differences in school? How can we embrace when we are not prepared to engage with ‘different-ness’? An appreciation of a shared humanity that binds us all can come only from interrogating what led to these divisions in the first place. This brings us to exploring the territory of labels, stereotypes, selfhood, othering, caste, religion, and so on. Our aim is to encourage children to examine the nature of conflict, its causes and how it can be overcome. And this seems especially important in a world where polarities are rigidly marked and identities are quickly consolidated, on the basis of something as fleeting as thought and opinion. We recently showed Shabnam Virmani’s film Had-Anhad to students at Shishuvan school in Mumbai, where it opened up discussion about popular perceptions and stereotypes regarding Pakistan, and the source of these – newspapers, films, and parents. Listing out the images that Pakistan conjured up in their minds was easy, but it took them a while to interrogate where these images came from.

Our discussions of diversity also extend to Kabir himself. There is not one single Kabir, but many Kabirs. He has been appropriated in sacred and secular spaces. His poetry is sung in folk and classical idioms. Visual representations of him vary widely. There are many different versions of stories surrounding his birth, life and death. However, this multi-faceted reality does not feature in the textbooks that children read, where the life story of Kabir is framed in a fixed, rigid way. Students do not get a taste of the multiplicity of Kabirs that flow around them. At a recent workshop with Rajghat Besant School in Varanasi, a student remarked, “I had just heard that Kabir was born to Muslim parents and brought up by a Brahmin widow. After watching Had-Anhad, I have been exposed to such varied perceptions – Muslim, Dalit, and Hindu.” Students may get thrown off by competing versions of reality because they are usually served only one version as the truth. However, it is vital that we expose them to the idea that history is not fixed and final, but always framed by the persons narrating it. And that reality is a complex thing, it is not black and white or clear-cut.

Kabir and Ecology
While environmental education has become a buzzword in schools, it is approached mostly through the lens of science. The assumption is that of human beings and nature as separate entities in conflict with each other because of competing priorities. We want to infuse this space with the energy of mystical poetry and folk traditions that enable us to see the place of human beings in a deeper, connected ecosystem. What sparked off this idea was the story of a brave little parrot dousing a raging forest fire, which we encountered in a Kabir bhajan sung in Rajasthan. This song strikes an instant chord with students and teachers. It inspired students of Shibumi school in Bangalore to come up with some beautiful paintings and even a theatrical interpretation of the story. Research around that story led us to various versions told in cultures around the world.

As we began to develop the idea of Kabir and ecology, it occurred to us how much of the wisdom that flows through his poems is drawn from the environment around him. Images of nature abound in his poetry, and he exhorts us to see the relationship between inner and outer ecologies. The mess that we have made of our surroundings is perhaps a reflection of the mess that lies inside of us. And we perhaps don’t care enough for the environment because we see it as separate from us. The poetry of Kabir and other mystics also urges us to question values like acquisitiveness and competition that have become such an integral part of our lives that we have lost the ability to see how our actions impact our inner and outer worlds. Vishakha Chanchani, artist and illustrator who is currently working with the Kabir Project, facilitated a Kabir and Ecology workshop for middle school students at Rajghat Besant School in Varanasi this September. The strength of her methodology lay in that she led the children to explore these ideas not only through discussion but also through hands-on work with paint, clay, thread, water, found objects, and other materials.

Bringing Kabir alive through music
The Hindi classroom has traditionally been the space in which most students encounter the poetry of Kabir. This space can be redeemed from the drudgery of how poetry gets taught in our schools – where poems get looked at as artifacts produced by some creative genius, meant to be memorized by low mortals who can barely get at the meaning through a simplistic paraphrase. We want teachers and students to appreciate the fact that poetry is not frozen in textbooks but often quite rooted in people’s everyday lives.

Engagement with poetry need not be a complicated literary task. The joy is in discovering how poems speak to us in our own situations. Our attempt is to introduce students to the rich folk singing traditions that bring alive the power of Kabir’s poetry in languages like Malwi, Kutchi and Marwari often subsumed under the label of ‘Hindi’ , yet different from the language of their textbooks. There is a different quality to the engagement and enjoyment that is possible through an exposure to the folk music traditions of India that have carried this poetry to us over five centuries. We work with various singers – Prahlad Tipanya (Malwa, Madhya Pradesh), Kaluram Bamaniya (Malwa, Madhya Pradesh), Moora Lala Marwada (Kutch), Mahesha Ram (Rajasthan), and Mukhtiyar Ali (Rajasthan) – to bring the poetry of Kabir alive through musical performances in various folk and semi classical styles.

Several schools have invited them for special assemblies and concerts. Not only is this an opportunity to interact with singers but also to learn songs and delve into their meanings in ways that textbook teaching does not allow for. Sometimes, the music teacher teaches students a Kabir song or two beforehand so that they can sing along with the singer. When poetry becomes music, boundaries start getting erased. Students and teachers often sing along or break into spontaneous dance. Musicians also invite children to the stage to come and sing with them.

Teachers have also creatively used the opportunity of live performance in other ways. For instance, at Mallya Aditi International School in Bangalore, there were classroom discussions with students about identity, religion, caste and plurality prior to a live concert of Prahlad Tipanya in their school. We heard of sixth-grader Shiv Patil’s response to this from his mother Bela. Shiv was moved by the songs and their translations. He loved the idea that God resides in all of us, and that the religious labels we wear do not matter. The night after the performance, when his (Jain) family was reciting prayers, Shiv refused to utter the line ‘Jainam Jayati Shasanam’. He told his mother that the idea of one religion being the best and ruling the world does not sit well with him, and that they should not sing it henceforth.

Workshops for teachers
We have done a few ‘Learning with Kabir’ workshops with artists, youth activists, educators and community workers. These have been residential immersion programmes designed to get participants to engage with the poetry, music and ideas. We have found that this is often a rich personal growth space for participants. In the case of teachers, an inspirational space of this kind would be significant if they are to share Kabir with students in a deeply felt and meaningful way.

We have received a few invitations to facilitate a component on Kabir as part of teacher training/development programmes. Perhaps the importance of this is being felt with the new spate of research on teacher beliefs and attitudes – knowing that teachers are not simply subject experts, but individuals with their own ideas and frames of reference depending on their socio-cultural backgrounds and life outside school. A general exposure to Kabir is then something we imagine to be a trigger point for teachers for self-examination in their own lives and to think about ideas regarding life, death, impermanence, peace, nonviolence, living with differences and such. We hope this awareness would extend into thinking about their own roles as teachers and mediators of ideas, and the other roles they are expected to fill, their clashing priorities, their own practices as teachers, their attitudes towards children belonging to communities other than their own, etc.

Rural support programme in Malwa
The Kabir Project has built close friendships with folk singers in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh. This has now translated organically into a rural support programme intended to inject fresh energy and enthusiasm into oral folk traditions through community-led initiatives and outreach work with schools. We are partnering with folk singers Narayan Singh Delmia and Kaluram Bamaniya for indepth and frequent engagement with two schools in Dewas district, and this process is being supported locally by the NGO Eklavya. The learning of songs and playing of instruments would be accompanied by workshops using creative methodologies that would engage the children in a non-pedantic, lively manner. The children’s mandalis would be given the opportunity to interact with senior folk musicians from Malwa and outside, and also to present their own music at village programmes and other forums.

About the project

The Kabir project brings together the experiences of a series of ongoing journeys in quest of this 15^th century North Indian mystic poet in our contemporary worlds. Started in 2003, these journeys inquire into the spiritual and socio-political resonances of Kabir’s poetry through songs, images and conversations.

We journey through a stunning diversity of social, religious and musical traditions which Kabir inhabits, exploring how his poetry intersects with ideas of cultural identity, secularism, nationalism, religion, death, impermanence, folk and oral knowledge systems. The core inspiration of the project is music, and Kabir comes alive in 4 documentary films, 10 audio CDs and poetry books through the power of song. The four films are titled Had-Anhad, Koi Sunta Hai, Chalo Hamara Des, and Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein.

This is a 6-year initiative undertaken by filmmaker Shabnam Virmani as an artist-in-residency project at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation, New Delhi.

Apart from the films, CDs and books, the true spirit of the Kabir Project lies in the taana-baana (warp & weft) of social networks and friendships built over these years between the singers, scholars, activists, artists, illustrators, students, music lovers and lay persons who have been woven together through student labs, festivals, workshops and other exchanges. Folk singers Prahlad Tipanya, Mukhtiyar Ali and others have become deep friends, giving the project its soul force. Our advisors include scholars Linda Hess and Purushottam Agrawal, poet Ashok Vajpeyi, and singer Vidya Rao.

The project is growing rapidly in many ways, with cultural groups, educational, social and community-based institutions and individuals taking the initiative to organize workshops and interactive events that include the films, folk singers, live music concerts and discussions.

In the next phase of the project, work has begun towards constructing a multi-media web-space to browse the music, poetry and ideas of Kabir. This web-space will be co-created with the involvement of folk singers, along with innovative social experiments to vitalize the Kabir oral traditions at the village level. Exploratory workshops and school-based interactions have begun to explore ways in which the power of Kabir’s poetry can be brought alive in education.

The author runs People in Education, an online group that connects a diverse bunch of people committed to education, and provides a forum for sharing of resources and experiences. He can be reached at chintangirishmodi@gmail.com.

The Bakul Foundation is a testament to what ordinary people can do if they want to. The foundation was set up to help people realise their power and role in bringing about a change in society. Bakul has and continues to harness the energies of students, retired persons, homemakers, and working people towards the social development of the community. So Bakul is basically a movement for volunteerism. The advantage of focusing on volunteerism is that the work is done with enthusiasm and passion and more meaningful intervention happens.

The Bakul Foundation is trying to demonstrate that if everyone comes together with their little contributions, not only can we bring about a change in the lives of others, but we can enjoy tremendous benefits as well. In the Bakul Model, every participant is both benefactor and the beneficiary.

One of the foundation’s first initiatives was to bring together a thousand people to set up a children’s library in Orissa because there were no good children’s libraries in the state. Moreover, we realised that there were quite a few initiatives on teaching children from disadvantaged groups but what all of them lacked was books and thereby avenues for learning by oneself. We felt that a good children’s library would be a common resource that could be exploited by all these initiatives.

The Bakul Foundation wants to give children from both the disadvantaged and the not so disadvantaged backgrounds access to the same opportunities to build their capabilities. We, therefore, hope that through a common library and the opportunities for self-development it offers, we can work towards breaking the distinctions schools create.

We started with an online campaign that began in April 2006 to mobilise a thousand individuals to donate books to set up the library. The Bakul Children’s Library in Bhubaneswar has been set up and is running entirely with small individual contributions without any funding and any user surcharge. It, nevertheless, can boast of the best collection in the State with over 8000 books, including some very interesting and engaging educational resources for children.

The name for the foundation and the library itself comes from the Bakul tree found in abundance in Eastern India. Many educational initiatives, like the Bakula Vana by Gopabandhu Das and others, started in the shade of Bakul trees, and thereby it is a symbol for what can happen with minimal resources.

The author is Founder-Secretary, Bakul Foundation. He can be reached at sujit15@gmail.com.

Books give wing to the imagination: Sujit Mahapatra

Chintan Girish Modi

How do you envisage the role of libraries in the lives of children?
A library is a must in the life of a child, be it a library at home or school or in the community. Books give wings to the imagination of a child and develop creativity, apart from developing linguistic skills and providing knowledge. It is important, therefore, that children develop a love for books and have unrestricted access to books to satisfy their curiosity.

How do you feel about the way school libraries function?
Most schools in the country unfortunately do not have libraries. Therefore, wherever they exist and in whatever shape, I would say, it’s just great that they exist and children are able to access books.

However, most school libraries do not attempt to make books accessible to children for fear that they may damage the books. Books are locked up in cupboards. The librarian gives children the books they must read. This is a wrong approach. Books must be kept in open stacks and children should be given the freedom to leaf through them. Even if they cannot read, they should have the freedom to just pick up the books, look at the illustrations, etc. They must fall in love with books. Libraries and librarians should ensure that this happens.

Unfortunately, most school librarians work in a mechanical manner; they catalogue books and maintain records of issue and return of books. Librarians should be in love with books themselves so that children too can respond in the same way. They should not be merely people trained in the science of maintaining libraries.

There are schools where children can access only reference material supplementing the syllabus. Story books are seen as a waste of time. What do you think of this?
In our schools, children are never encouraged to imagine and to think, which is essential if they are to “think out of the box”. Many educators acknowledgethe importance of reading in developing imagination and there is merit in reading fantasies because they enlarge the possibilities of what the mind can believe.

I believe that the best education happens when one does not realise that one is learning. When one is reading a story book, language develops and one gets to know about many cultures; it helps us in being sensitive individuals. There is much geography, history, politics, science that one can learn from story books.

How do you place Bakul within this context?
Bakul is an experiment to ensure that there is everything desirable in a library and that it fulfills all the required roles as I have mentioned in response to the other questions.

At the same time, Bakul is a public library that is free to access. So, we are also trying to break the distinctions that schools create. We can proudly say that we have the best collection in any library for children in the State. As it is free, not only children from private and public schools but those from slums and orphanages also exploit the resources of the library. We want to offer the same opportunities to children from disadvantaged sections so that they have the resources at their disposal if they have their interest to build their capabilities and exploit the opportunities available to them.

Bakul also believes that a library, particularly a public library should work on socially and environmentally sensitive education, which can happen through film screenings, discussions and tours.

Do you think it is difficult to get children to read, with the television and the computer battling for attention?
In a way, yes. TV and cinema have taken the place of popular fiction. That is precisely why libraries need to reinvent themselves. Libraries have to be “cool” places where children want to go, even hang out. In fact, it is because of these challenges that libraries cannot see their roles as merely providing access to books. They have to create an interest in reading among the children.

They must be attractive and not boring places. The books stocked too must be attractive with beautiful illustrations that can entice a child. Most importantly, there must be numerous activities that will stimulate the creativity and imagination of children. The children must find something new in the library at short intervals, and there should be many events in which they can participate and contribute to the development of the library. At Bakul, for instance, we once had a community storybook activity. A huge book with blank pages was mounted on a stand. One child began a story and left after a paragraph. Later on, other children came and developed that story further. Children loved this activity. A few weeks later, for younger kids, we got them to add words to make a story giving a little twist to the same idea.

I also think TV and computers can be used as aids in our cause for furthering reading habits. We have slideshows of some of our stories, which we scanned along with the illustrations for children to read from the computer. Similarly, we have audio-visual versions of many stories, which motivate children to read the actual book later. We also screen films based on popular stories and novels to get children interested in the stories with the same effect.

Do you think librarians are sometimes quite rigid about which-books-for-what-age, and end up blocking a child’s curiosity?
Yes. First of all, in many schools, librarians do not allow children to leaf through books and choose for themselves what they want to read. This is not the kind of access that children should have. At Bakul we are exploring a system called Reading Buddy, a concept that has been tried out in UK. What happens here is that an older kid gets to act as the Reading Buddy to a younger kid. So, if the younger kid cannot read some books but likes the feel of it from the illustrations or look of it, the Reading Buddy reads out the book to the younger kid.

Children of a particular age also have different reading capabilities based on their individual histories of reading. So, a child of a particular age may be in a position to read and may want to read books that are being read by older children and that child should not be refused that opportunity.

Moreover, the best thing about a library can be the experience of serendipity, which can only happen if the children have unrestricted access to books. If the library can foster the child’s curiosity, and thereby imagination and the spirit of research, which follows, the library has succeeded in its mission. Therefore, I hold the position that it is mandatory for libraries to be accessible to children and librarians should not be rigid.

Chintan is an M.Phil student at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at chintangirishmodi@gmail.com.

Rahul Gagangala: “I want all books to have coloured pictures”.
Gayatri: “I like reading books with jokes. I get to laugh”.
Vandana: “I like T.V. more for Tom and Jerry. My books don’t have cartoons”.
Sudhkar: “Libraries in schools only give books for a single day to take home”.
Verra Reddy: “My favorite book is Bobak Nerchena Pattam (Bobak Learned a Lesson) that has a sheep like me that keeps eating”.

Community libraries are designed to allow children access to books in order to sustain their interest in reading, to strengthen their reading skills and also to support their all-round learning.

Pratham’s (An NGO working toward the betterment of the poorer communities including children) community libraries are situated in bastis that comprise 200-250 households. Housing a library in a basti gives that much more freedom to the children in that basti to come visit the library regularly. Also by focusing on a particular basti, the community libraries are able to follow a localised development model thereby creating greater scope for community mobilisation. The linkage fostered by a basti based library intervention also broadens the scope for advanced network within and among communities.

The community libraries of Pratham target children between the age group of 3 and 14 years. The libraries are located either in the community or within the school, if it is in the basti. The libraries constitute a collection of books stored in a cloth bag with pockets that can be hung on a wall. Each library contains about 150-200 books catering to varied learning levels that are developed within Pratham Resource Centers to encompass an array of non-fiction topics as well as a vast variety of fictional texts. This programme is run in communities by local women designated as librarians. Also,for a more effective engagement of the community with Pratham’s libraries, periodic home visits are carried out by the librarians to persuade the parents to send their children to the libraries along with conducting parent-teacher meetings to ensure regular attendance of children in the libraries.

To streamline the work of the community libraries, the librarians designate fixed hours for book borrowing. But often, as the librarians are local residents of the basti and have a good rapport with the community, children flock to their houses in groups whenever they want to during the day. Pratham’s community library programme has seen encouraging cases of children running their own book borrowing activity as well in the absence of the librarians on certain days. The librarians supplement this activity by maintaining a register with a page dedicated to each child that records the child’s background details including ability to read at the time of joining so that the long-term impact of participation in the community libraries can be tracked. The names of books borrowed and read by the child are recorded with the help of a library card. As the child reads more books, she/he is given library cards of different colours so that she/he feels rewarded for having made an effort to read more.

In addition to regular book borrowing and exchange, the librarians also conduct activities such as book discussions, role plays, drawing activities, quizzes, loud reading of stories, story telling and essay writing. All these activities are linked to reading and writing, thus helping children enhance their skills and internalise reading as a fundamental habit necessary for a learning culture.

The community libraries have become a platform for monitoring children’s literacy levels. They have also evolved as community activity centres where periodic activities are conducted to ensure that children acquire various skills. As Sunita, a mother of two children aged 6 and 10 years who frequents the library in Nampally mandal says, “I inquire about new books and activities in the library. This library supports the government school education of my children.”

G Anuradha is the librarian in Musheerabad Mandal of Hyderabad. On being asked about the children coming to her library, she explains that same children don’t come everyday because they go for tuitions. Also she says that she does not scold children if they come late or even skip coming because she wants to encourage children to come to the library. Her opinion about Pratham books is that they are rich in entertainment content but these books should also balance academics with entertainment. She further explains that if GK questions that children get from school can be answered using books from libraries, children would be more excited to come to libraries. When asked about the signifi cance of a community library in her mandal, she says that books supplement the grandma story-telling sessions and children narrate the same stories to their friends in schools.

The author works for Pratham, Hyderabad. She can be reached at daminisud@gmail.com.

Since its inception in 2006, the Regional Resource Centre for Elementary Education¹ (RRCEE) at the University of Delhi has provided a platform for school teachers to undertake classroom-based research through fellowships instituted for the purpose. The aim of this fellowship is to provide teachers opportunities to broaden their understanding of education, children, teaching and learning, and prompt them to enhance their knowledge of pedagogy and subject-content. The premise is that learning to teach is inseparable from learning to inquire (Dewey, 1904 cited in Hatch et al., 2005) and thus, a research based learning framework has the potential to enhance professional capacities of practicing teachers; and to address classroom concerns in such a manner leads to a nuanced understanding of teaching-learning. Scholars have argued how a systematic reflection on issues and concerns that teachers face in the classroom can lead them to ask serious intellectual questions about their practice which they themselves can address (Bass, 1999; Lampert, 2001 cited in Hatch et al., 2005). The fellowship also helps to forge organic linkages between teacher practitioners and institutes of higher education such as the university.

The RRCEE teacher fellowship programme offers two types of fellowships: Long Term Fellowships: available for teachers who wish to take leave for a period of one year to undertake research and Short Term Fellowships: available for teachers who wish to undertake short classroom-based researches while in-service for a period of one year.

One of the distinctive aspects of the fellowship programme is the individual mentoring support provided to each teacher fellow. A variety of scholars and educational practitioners from the University of Delhi and other organizations have participated as mentors. Monthly study sessions organized around a set of select readings is another vital feature of this programme. These study sessions are designed to facilitate discussions amongst the fellows on issues relating to the wider educational, socio-cultural, economic and political context. Select readings are categorized in broad themes such as: school curriculum; contemporary schooling; educational policy and gender and schooling. In addition, themes may also cover select writings of scholars such as John Dewey and Paulo Freire. Teacher fellows are also asked to contribute one key reading related to their field of study. These readings are compiled in different volumes each year and a copy provided to each fellow and mentors. Every study session is led by a presentation of the chosen reading(s) by a teacher fellow. The study sessions provide the opportunity for interaction amongst teacher practitioners from different contexts and with divergent views thus leading to a culture of supportive communities for teacher research.

Ordinarily, school teachers hardly ever get an opportunity to undertake discussions related to curricular issues and as Krishna Kumar (2004: 2) says, their “voice is structurally absent from the discourse of educational theory and research.” It is also argued that the schoolteacher “is reduced to a mere object of educational reform or worse a passive agent of the prevailing ideology of the modern state” (Batra, 2005: 4347). The fellowship programme addresses these concerns by providing a platform for teachers to articulate their views and develop constructive arguments with regard to several classroom related issues including curriculum design and pedagogic approach. The aim is to generate a body of knowledge rooted in the field of practice and which can inform the prevalent discourse on education.

While individual mentoring takes care of the many challenges of conducting research, the major challenge lies in facilitating teachers in writing about the insights gained from the research. Writing a piece of research is an arduous task. It entails the organization of thoughts, appropriate expression, stating ideas with clarity and in a precise manner. In order to write a coherent piece one needs to ensure logical presentation and progression of ideas. Keeping this in view, we organize writing workshops that are spread over the fellowship period. The aim is to enable teachers to understand the process of communication through the written word.

The attempt of the facilitator is to engage teachers with different types of writings: poetry, stories, newspaper articles and reports published in newspapers. Fellows are encouraged to share their concerns and queries regarding the academic research undertaken by them in depth.

Teacher fellows, their mentors and team members of RRCEE converge their efforts to organize various activities and ensure the participation of the fellows in study sessions and sharing meetings organized at regular intervals. Feedback and suggestions provided in such meetings help us to plan future activities. In one such meeting, a strong need was expressed for a workshop on research methodology and what research means for a teacher practitioner. This will now become a feature of the fellowship programme from the current year.

After the completion of their research, fellows document their work in the form of a research report in consultation with their mentors. To share the same with the larger practitioner community a symposium is organized for school teachers and student-teachers across a variety of institutions. The symposium provides a forum where teachers’ voices are not only heard but gain legitimacy in the developing discourse on praxis. Some of these reports are available on our web-portal; some have been shared through seminars and have been included as readings for student-teachers.

So far, twenty-six fellowships have been instituted over a period of three years. Fellows have worked on a diverse set of issues related to curriculum transaction, children’s perceptions, reading, mathematical thinking, learner assessment; gender, project-based learning, pedagogic concerns and strategies and other issues which teachers encounter in their day-to-day work.

References

1. The RRCEE is part of a larger network of institutions: University-School Resource Network that addresses issues of equity and quality in elementary education. For more information visit: www.eledu.net.
2. Bass, R. (1999, February). The scholarship of teaching: What’s the problem? Inventio, 1(1). http://www.doiiit.gmu.edu/Archives/ feb98/randybass.htm accessed on 18 August 2010.
3. Batra, Poonam (2005) Voice and Agency of Teachers: A missing link in the National Curriculum Framework, EPW, October 1-7.
4. Hatch, T. (ed.) (2005). Going Public with our Teaching: An Anthology of Practice. Teachers College Press. http://www.goingpublicwithteaching.org accessed on 18 August 2010.
5. Kumar, Krishna (2004). Politics of Change, Presented at a Seminar on ‘Strategies and Dynamics of Change in Indian Education’, New Delhi, 25^th November 2004.

Dr. Anupama Jha is Project Associate at RRCEE.
Namita Jainer has completed her Master’s degree in Social Work and is an intern with RRCEE. They can be reached at usrn.du@gmail.com.

I’d like to share something with this audience. Do I have your permission?” The little girl from class 7 who asked this question was hardly half my height. I asked her to go ahead. “I wanted to sing in the competition in my school. My classmates and other students laughed at me. But I sang better than everybody.”

The girl was glowing with pride, as she shared this with the students who had assembled from 10 different schools. The occasion was the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) organized for the students of classes 7, 8 and 9 from corporation-run schools. The 70-odd students who attended the function came from10 different corporation run schools in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. It was wonderful to see the confidence in the girl’s eyes. There was no sign of nervousness. She was not alone. All the students in the programme were confident, eloquent, and not at all shy. I expected to find tongue-tied children and was therefore pleasantly surprised by what I saw.

It all started last year, when I had to organize the RYLA for school students in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. About 100 students from different schools participated. The regular district RYLA is conducted in English. The resource persons speak in English, and, the participants are generally from private, English medium schools. They have a reasonably good knowledge of English and speak fluently in the language.

The students from the government-run schools, however, lack adequate knowledge of the language and their self-confidence in such environments is low. They find mingling with their peers from private schools a challenge. But these students too need the benefits that RYLA offers. My experience of organizing one district RYLA, attended by about 100 students of Hyderabad-Secunderabad and trying to teach spoken English to the Class 10 students of a government school for a year led me to approach the problem by carrying the solution to the students. I decided to organize an RYLA for them in the language of their choice-Telugu. I identified about 100 students studying in Class 10 from a government school, both boys and girls. While these students begin studying English from class 3, their understanding and competence levels is poor even in class 10. They come from poor families with little or no education. The environment generally does not encourage education. When asked, the children said that the main reason they don’t even attempt to speak in English is the fear of ridicule from friends and family. All these factors combined put these otherwise street-smart children in a downward spiral in terms of academic performance and employment prospects. To digress a little, one of the major reasons for trying to teach them spoken English was to make them more employable and maybe increase their entry level salaries.

As a first step, I shared with them what RYLA is; the kind of topics usually covered and the potential benefits. I also got the school headmistress and a few teachers interested in this. This helped everyone get involved.

As a next step, I sat with the students to ask them about the topics that would be of interest to them. They were very excited and after the initial hesitation, the topics flew hard and fast. Speaking in English, relationships between boys and girls, career options, were some of the top topics.

I’ve now already been involved in three similar RYLAs this year in addition to the main one in English. The response has been uniformly positive. I’ve also just finalized fixing two more RYLAs for this Rotary year (July to June) one in Tamil and one in Kannada. Discussions are on to find suitable dates for one in Urdu, in the Old City part of Hyderabad. As India is a country with several languages and dialects, it would definitely be useful to reach children across languages and expose them to wider opportunities.

How do we reach out to the children? Essentially, I’ve been inviting and involving Rotarians who understand the problem, are empathetic and good at establishing a quick and easy relationship with children. The programme currently is only of a day’s duration and hence requires immediate connection with the children. The topics are of interest to the children and hence improve the opportunity for them to be participative. They are removed from the day-to-day classroom environment and that is also helpful.

These children only need to be encouraged and exposed to new ideas and opportunities. The barrier of English language, when overcome, will certainly help us reach out to these bright children who’re currently marginalized for no fault of theirs. Such a large talent pool when brought into the mainstream, I hope will make a great difference in the children’s lives.

We need to take this process forward and encourage these children through sustained exposure to such programmes to merge with the other advantaged groups over time.

Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) is an intensive training program that brings together youth and young adults, ages 14-30, to further develop character and leadership skills and learn about Rotary. RYLAs often take the form of a seminar, camp, or workshop. It is generally a 3-10 day affair and is organized by Rotarians at the club, district, or multi-district level.
Participants are nominated by local Rotary clubs, which often cover all expenses. For these young adults, this recognition offers the opportunity to build self-confidence, gain exposure to a variety of issues and people, meet active community leaders, and learn valuable information and career skills.
Each RYLA shares the following program objectives:

• To demonstrate Rotary’s respect and concern for youth
• To encourage and assist young people in responsible and effective voluntary youth leadership by providing them with a valuable training experience
• To foster continued and stronger leadership of the youth by the youth
• To publicly recognize the many young people who are rendering service to their communities as youth leaders.

The author is a Structural Engineer, interested in literacy and a Rotarian who has been actively involved in RYLA. He can be reached at . For details about RYLA visit www.rotary.org.

A news report on Makkal Television on July 23rd 2008 reported that government schools in Tiruchi district were closing down due to lack of resources and declining strength. On hearing this, we at Kalanjiyam felt that this was a very disturbing scenario and one that we believed could be reversed if we all worked together. At Kalanjiyam, we are in the process of developing a successful model for having local non governmental organisations working effectively to mobilise the community around improving education in government schools. We would like to share our model with other communities, NGOs, and government officials so that they can draw from our experiences.

Kalanjiyam is working intensively in 3 primary schools and 1 middle school covering a belt of about 8 to 9 villages in Maduranthakam and Cheyyur taluks in Kancheepuram district by mobilising and coordinating the local village community, parents, local leaders, officials and school administration. Our approach has been multi-pronged, to improve environment, provide educational resources, improve curriculum and address children’s nutritional and health needs. Since we started working, enrollment has substantially increased; the children’s enthusiasm and the participation of parents and community in improving quality of education is becoming a reality.

We have improved the school environment for the children by providing tables and benches or mats for seating, wiring for electricity where required and equipping schools with fans and lights. A member of the Kalanjiyam staff works in each school, spending half a day helping teach the children. Members of the Kalanjiyam staff are young women from local villages whom we train to interact with and teach children.

We have been developing the middle school as a model school in the area; we introduced computer education for the students and appointed a computer teacher to teach the basics of computers. We have now extended this program and provided computers to all the three primary schools.

Other extra curricular programs were introduced to stimulate intellectual development to broaden the child’s perspective. Every week we also bring a music teacher from Chennai to teach the children classical music. Similarly, a drawing teacher from Chennai comes to the school every week to teach the children drawing. All schools have been provided comprehensive sports equipment so that the children get an opportunity for physical activities after school.

Recognising that nutrition is an important factor for enhancing children’s learning we started providing weekly supplements of fruits to children in all schools. In the primary schools, we provide sathu mavu and extra vegetables for the daily noon meal. Kalanjiyam staff regularly monitors the progress and changes among children, in terms of their attention, interaction, performance in school as well as their health, by checking their weight and height every three months.

After the introduction of these programs, there has been a transformation among the children, the schools and the community. There is an increasing participation among parents who are now taking an active interest in their children’s education. Many parents who were sending their children to private schools began to re-enroll their children back into our local village schools. The teachers, with support from parents, have initiated more school programs for special events.

We started coordinating between the different primary schools to strengthen networking among the various panchayat schools for effective local coordination and for increasing enrollment. We have now provided a school van so that children do not have to walk long distances to come to school.

Every student now in all the four schools has ID cards with their name, parent’s name and blood group. The children from these villages are more likely to be one of the first to know their blood group among rural schools! We have also started a program providing Health Cards to all of the students, nearly 300, so that they can get free health care from the nearest town. The main objective of this program is to ensure that health is recognised as a right of children and to make sure their health problems are dealt with in a timely manner.

All of this is possible as the basis of Kalanjiyam is the community; it is the local communities that run the initiatives and activities with external support mainly in the form of financial resources. In the early stages, a Kalanjiyam village committee was established to identify priorities and implement the community efforts; they in turn identified young men and women from local villages to run the activities; local panchayat and other community leaders are consulted; and local resources and enterprises are fully utilised so as to gain the participation of the community in all activities.

What we have learnt from our work is that making way for real change is possible from within the community; a key factor is changing attitudes and this in turn impacts what actions are taken. It needs to be understood that closing down of a local village school is not a small matter and one that requires attention of everyone in the village/ community. Closing down of local panchayat schools in the long run will impact further development of the village and the communities that live there.

It has to be recognised that we as a community can do something, by taking small efforts that can bring change for a better future. A way of working together will make this possible; if only local schools, teachers, parents, community leaders, local officials, local NGOs, etc., come together, it is possible to prevent our schools from closing down and to do much more for the brighter future of our children.

The author is the Director of Kalanjiyam. He is a social worker with more than 15 years of experience. He can be reached at kalanjiyam@gmail.com.

Kalanjiyam

Kalanjiyam was founded in July 2006 by Munusamy Raviraaj with the vision of developing a community development model where the core guiding principle is involvement and ownership of the community in the process of development. Kalanjiyam means “Collections” (of people, works, knowledge, wealth, etc.) and represents that which brings together the community to make a difference.

A main thrust of Kalanjiyam is to bring about attitude changes, along with community involvement in all the efforts. Kalanjiyam’s mission is to improve access to and quality of education, improve health and well-being, improve knowledge and awareness and build the skills and capacity of communities.

CLEAN toilets with running water are keeping girls in school and bridging the gender divide at six government-aided schools in Bishnupur I in West Bengal’s South 24-Parganas district. The schools here have spotless toilets thanks to the efforts of Nishtha, an NGO, and Water for People, an international funding group.

Ever since improved toilets with incinerators were installed, no child has dropped out of school. Earlier, around eight per cent of girls would leave school between Class 5 and Class 7.

“The improved toilets and running water are a major incentive for them to attend regularly and not be absent,” says Mrinal Kumar Das, proudly. He is an assistant teacher at the Kaastekumari High School. “In fact, in a Muslim minority area, where girls are generally married off at puberty, the improved toilets and hygiene awareness camps have brought in a revolution of sorts. Our students are now keen to study further after finishing school.”

Not only the girls, but female teachers and staff are grateful to Nishtha for providing the toilets. The NGO works in the area of water and sanitation.

Jaya Karmakar, a teacher at the Kaastekumari High School, joined the school 30 years ago. It takes her three hours of commuting each way to get here from Beleghata in north Kolkata. In the past, once she reached school, using the toilet would be a nightmare since there was no running water. There was no tube-well either. A peon would fetch water from a well across the road and store it in the school’s premises. This water was all that students and teachers had access to through the day.

Roma Mandal, an employee who travels all the way from Amtala, one and a half hours away, says, “It was terrible during my periods. Using the toilet after having traveled all that distance to school was a nightmare.”

“Boys and girls would just excuse themselves from class and go behind some bushes outside to relieve themselves”, explains Hasanuzzaman, also an assistant teacher.

The students at the Gabhena Chhatrabandhu Vidypith in the same block did have running water in the toilet. But the school had just one toilet for 1,864 students. For the girls, using the toilet during their periods was tough. There were no facilities for garbage disposal either.

Not surprisingly, girl students would be frequently absent. Once they reached puberty many would just give up and drop out of middle school.

At the Gabberia Chhatrabandhu Vidyapith ever since the improved toilets, drinking water taps and wash rooms were set up, water and sanitation (Watsan) committees, comprising boys and girls, have set new precedents in self-governance and teamwork. Each committee has 10 members and is annually appointed. It maintains the toilets by collecting a fee of Re 1 per student per month. This is used to buy phenyl, soap, sanitary napkins, toilet brushes and buckets to keep the toilet clean and hygienic. The committee also talks to students about hygiene and cleanliness once a week during their environment studies class.

Although the Vidyapith is in the rural outskirts of Barulpur town, its premises are immaculately clean. Every schoolgirl now flushes the toilet after use, washes her hands after using the toilet, and uses the single wash room connected with an improvised incinerator to dispose off her sanitary napkins. Depending on need, the used napkins are burnt in the incinerator once or twice a week to maintain hygiene and prevent any accumulation of unhealthy garbage. The toilet for the boys is also clean.

Although the Kaastekumari High School cannot compare with the Gabberia Chhatrabandhu Vidyapith in terms of overall cleanliness, the toilets are well-maintained and clean.

“Since this school is in the interior, awareness levels among students were very poor when we first started work,” explains Jharna Bari, a Nishtha instrusctor. “There would be bits of paper, pencil scrapings and peel strewn all over the classrooms. Once the children were trained at environment camps on our premises and came into contact with students from other schools, there was a sea-change in their attitude.”

Today, students in this school never relieve themselves outside. Working shoulder to shoulder with the boys has given girls a fair measure of confidence. The boys too have started treating the girls with greater respect. “Boys realise that girls can be equally efficient and earnest about making a difference,” says Sunil Kumar Ghosh, assistant teacher at Gabberia Chhatrabandhu Vidyapith.

In West-Bengal 1.04 crore children enroll in primary school but just 14.05 lakhs make it to secondary level. More than half dropout at middle and secondary levels as per the statistics compiled by the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics, Government of West Bengal in July 2007. If the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan is to make any headway the need of schoolgirls on the verge of puberty must be kept in mind.

This article has been reprinted here with permission. The article was first published in Vol. 6, No. 12, November 2009 issue of Civil Society.