Footprints on the Mountainside

It is a confusing image that India has and on all fronts. On one side we have our rich cultural traditions and diversity, on the other, we have orthodox beliefs and discrimination. We are growing as an economy, yet we have too many poor people. We worship the goddesses and we kill the female children.

Quite a paradox, aren’t we?

I started this segment to see if I could share ideas that occur to me with other like minded people. Ideas that make the world a better place, ideas that mean that we quit whining, and move our own bottoms slightly out of our comfort zones to “walk our talk”. Ideas that mean, while we can expect things from our government and politicians, we far outnumber them in terms of capacity for individual effort. All this effort could be put to better use than airing opinions alone.

This first post is likely to be jumbled, since there are too many things I care deeply about, but I guess I need to make a start somewhere and take it from there.

I’d like to mention an interview I saw on Doordarshan, of a man called Prof. Subedar Surve - a writer, teacher and social reformer. This man stayed in my mind for a very long time. I didn’t have the time to see it in great detail, but the gist of it is that this is an old, retired person with highly educated children, well into their respective careers. This man noticed the children on the streets and their lack of education. He started a learning centre for them and applied for funding support from the government. He got a grant. Moving to a different area, he did the same and got a grant again.

Applying this method over and over, he ended up with about 40 of these small education centres that are free of cost for poor children to get a basic education! We are speaking of about 1,200 kids! He noticed that some people were using the school premises to stay in at night, and expanded his programme to include night classes for grown ups.

Definitely old in terms of age, this is one of the most vibrant and youthful personalities I saw in a long time. Chirpy and cheerful, he speaks of the support he got from the government, once he took the initiative. He praised his wife for the unfailing support over the years through some very difficult times. He spoke of some of his stories that got national awards. He spoke of his enthusiasm to take his work further. He spoke in very supportive terms of todays youth that the world sees as “reckless” and thinks that it is a generation growing in a different world from what they know, and they are really very good people at heart, and they are going to take the world to new heights. This is one man who can retire, but not stay out of action. Kudos to him!

Jovial, extremely willing to talk of anything the interviewer requested, he had all of us “youngsters” spell bound and disappointed that the interview got a little abrupt toward the end for want of time. I could have listened to this guy for the whole day.
For all those who sit and speak of what the government should do, what the society needs, and what is the problem with everything, this man is a inspiring example of what can be acheived if we care to put our ideas into action.

May we all WALK OUR TALK

Technorati Profile

I had always wondered what technorati was all about. I finally found the time to find out. I now have my blog listed on technorati. The link above should go to my profile there.

For those who don’t know, you can access the rss2 feed by clicking on the link in the right side menu.

I hope this blog manages to do well, in spite of my sporadic posting patterns, because India certainly needs the added attention to outbound education for children, that I am trying to promote.

I guess I also need to write better posts.

I am not posting as frequently as I had imagined when I started this blog. I need to change that.

Currently, I’m working on a series of programmes for the students of the five ACESs (Atomic Energy Central School) for the children of the employees of the BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research Centre) in association with Outdoor Education Training Services. They wanted to introduce outbound experiences among their children rather than the usual picnics to parks and predictable destinations.

For these programmes, OETS had already done a series of one-day programmes with an experience of rappelling and a nature trail for the 9th and 10th classes. When we decided to continue the series, we thought of replacing the nature trail (their complex is very green and has abundant wildlife) with something more “relevant”.

I had been toying with the idea of introducing experiential learning as a mode of development among schools for quite some time and had even done some programmes with schools and colleges, but this group was to be students from the 6th to the 8th classes, so I wanted to keep things from getting “too deep” while ensuring a productive experience as well.

So far, it seems to be going well. The students are enthusiastic and perceptive. What is even more interesting is the interactions with the teachers that accompany them. Experiential learning as a method to actively encourage development of thoughts and motivation among students was an unfamiliar concept, and they were used to didactic education or the learning through imparted information, rather than through personal discovery.

Our focus is “performance” considering that students today are under constant pressure to perform in all aspects of their lives. They feel stressed, but there is little choice beyond defining priorities and shouldering their responsibilities as well as they can. This only increases as they grow up.

I found it very encouraging that the students and teachers alike were very interested in the processes and activities, and discussions often spanned breaks, with new insights flowing. One teacher was pleasantly surprised to see her less-than-hardworking class discover the importance of practice through seeing the changes it brought to their performance in a game.

Another was encouraged to see that gender issues were addressed quite bluntly, when they hampered performance. The students were in the mode of exploring the secrets behind performance and the elements that helped or hindered. As she put it, “They don”t need to be completely comfortable, but at least they need to understand that barriers to communication between the sexes in class were not required, as there was nothing in their lives as students that they couldn’t share with others in the class” We seem to have made good progress on that front with some of the classes.

Another teacher insisted that teachers training programmes based on experiential learning would go a long way to empowering Indian teachers struggling to manage students from the new generation, as they sought the fine balances between discipline and opression; guidance and influence; and teacher and confidant.

At the moment, I’m taking each day as it comes, as each batch of students is different. But I see a new awareness among the students and teachers about learning itself. I hope this grows

These days, I spend a lot of time in the SGNP, in a series of nature trails for school children. Its been years since I did this kind of a thing this regularly, and it was like the good old days, when I used to beg the parents for money and head off into the park every Sunday.

With the heavy monsoons these days, everything is dripping wet, green and tempting. My schedule everyday consistsa of two short nature trails with two groups of the students, and its a time to refresh my love for nature too, as I introduce them to this world.

I am planning to do something I had wanted to do for a long time. I will be writing about specific animals, birds, plants, insects, etc, as well as I can in a series of posts. Let me see how much I remember and how much info I need to hunt for.

Stay tuned!