From
the Editor's Desk
Hello
readers!
It is always nice to get back to you with our latest activities.
And we hope you love to know about them. The elections are
finally over and a new government has taken the reigns in
New Delhi. We welcome this change and are hopeful that the
present government will do away with some of the lopsided
policies of the earlier one particularly in the areas of
elementary education and primary health. We were/are fighting
for equity in education, raising voice against the government
policies which are detrimental for the future of the children,
and of late vehemently protesting against the education
bill. The new government’s take on education in the
Common Minimum Programme (CMP) appears positive. We have
to keep debating and discussing on various issues related
to elementary education, and try to bring in constructive
changes by building up a public pressure. We look forward
to your suggestions and opinions.
- Anupama (Editor)
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Life
and Learning
On the 18th of
April, we arranged for a formal launch – an inaugural
screening of the film ”Life and Learning “ a
documentary on Vikramshila’s Experimental School in
Bigha, for a select gathering consisting of academics, social
workers, journalists, Government officials, and friends
of Vikramshila. The venue, very fittingly was the Indian
Council of Social Science Research, here in Kolkata. In
our village school the traditional boundaries between life
and learning have been dissolved to show how learning can
go beyond the two covers of the textbook, the four walls
of the classroom and the five formal hours of schooling.
By involving community people in the process of learning,
we are not only striving to preserve our indigenous knowledge
base, but also instilling positive values about the world
of work.
Through this
film, we wanted to show how we try to put our core educational
values and beliefs into practice. We wanted the film, to
be a picture of the school and how it fits in the village
community, as well as provide practical examples of how
other village schools can become centres of community life.
We were able to convince renowned filmmaker Amlan Dutta
to visit the school, and to our delight he fell in love
with Bigha, the children, the people, the luscious green
fields and the unbelievably curious looking sweets. Lucky
for us, because Amlan’s camera reveals the simplicity
and wisdom of Bigha for all to see.
The viewers very
much appreciated the manner in which the film has been able
to capture the essence of our work; we believe, as Tagore
so aptly pointed out “…our education should
be in full touch with our complete life, economic, intellectual,
aesthetic, social and spiritual; and our educational institutions
should be in the very heart of our society, connected with
it by the living bonds of varied co-operations. For true
education is to realize at every step how our training and
knowledge have organic connection with our surroundings…”
Do write to us
if you are interested in watching the film. We will send
you a copy. It will be a pleasure to share our experience
with you.
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Do
schools need to change?
In our country
we have a system of school education, which has at least
thirteen layers! Starting from the super elite schools offering
five star facilities and down to the makeshift “centres”
run for the poor - each layer contributing its own interpretation
until the idea of quality gets more and more mystified and
hazy. The world of school is divided into so many segments
– the government and the NGOs catering to the underprivileged,
the corporates and business houses who run profit making
schools, educationists who love to experiment with new ideas…and
a new breed of consultants offering quick fix solutions
to age old problems. And there are the actual stakeholders
– students, parents, and teachers. Of late, a number
of schools have been upgrading their approaches, strategies
and pedagogical techniques. We wanted to find out the nature
of change that was being contemplated – whether they
were productive or non productive? Was corporatisation of
school culture essentially a bad thing? Were the tradition
bound schools becoming irrelevant like dinosaurs? Whether
it was advisable to assess teachers through “deliverables”
and “tangents”? Whether a child’s failure
should be treated as a handling error on part of the teacher?
To get
a feel of all this and much more, we collaborated with Calcutta
Chamber of Commerce to hold a panel discussion on the topic
“Do schools need to change?” The panel of speakers
was representative – we had a student speaker, a school
principal, a college principal, a corporate and an educationist
who all put forth their views in front of a packed auditorium
in a surcharged atmosphere. If you are interested to read
the report of this Panel Discussion, you can log on to needtochange.pdf
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Vikramshila's
Diary
Need to know the policies
We organised a two-day workshop on educational Policy Analysis
in April 2004 to have a clear understanding about the Government
(Central and State) policies influencing education. The
Education Resource Groups of MP, UP and Rajasthan participated
along with us. Mr. M.M.Jha (IAS, Researcher on Inclusive
Education), Mr. Manoj Kitta (education consultant for UNICEF),
Prof. Mrinmoy Bhattacharya, General Secretary, World Federation
of Teachers’ Union, and Mr. D.G.Ghatak, Deputy Director,
Department of School Education, Government of West Bengal
were the resource persons who provided us the necessary
inputs, which will help in carrying our movement on quality
forward.
Shiksha adda on life skill education
The School Education Committee, Government of West Bengal
had organised a workshop on life style education and had
given primary focus on sex-education in schools. We believe
that whatever is relevant for the learner to help improve
the quality of her/ his own life as well as that of her/his
surroundings is essentially the content of a life skills
curriculum. Conceptual understanding of life skills education
was what we kept as the discussion topic for our shiksha
adda in the month of April. Invitees were Dr. Bhabesh Moitra
and Mr. Utthanpada Samanta.
Working for Scientific Awareness
Government of
India has declared this year as Year of Scientific Awareness.
Many coordinating Committees have been set up to do the
task, to come out of the traditional concept of science
(as if they are only the few science subjects) and make
it popular. Science Communicators’ Forum has been
recognised as the Regional Coordinating Agency (RCA) of
the Coastal States. To implement this in the particular
State, District Coordinating Agencies (DCA) and District
Organising Committees (DOC) have been formed. Vikramshila
has been chosen as the DCA of the Barddhaman district of
West Bengal.
First, once again
Putsuri High
School in Block Manteshwar organizes a local talent search
examination every year to identify the promising students.
About 1000 children studying in the neighbouring government
primary schools, private schools participate in this with
great enthusiasm. Due to the overall excellent performance
of our children, our school at Bigha was declared first
for the second consecutive year.
Drama workshops
In April, a three-day
drama workshop was arranged for the teachers of our Bigha
School and a few other youngsters of the village. Two members
from “Shatabdi” (Badal Sarkar’s theatre
group from Kolkata) had gone there to conduct it. The purpose
of the workshop was to form a group who would be able to
campaign and build public awareness in the villages among
people.
Another
two-day drama workshop was held for 22 Nabadisha teachers
in Kolkata, in the same month by the well -known actor Debshankar
Haldar. The purpose of the workshop was to enable the teachers
to use this art form in classroom teaching. And the long
drawn objective was to make children think and enact drama
in their own way.
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