Education for the less fortunate: What can be learnt from Taare Zameen Par?
When the topic of modern quality education is brought up, ideas of classrooms filled with kids wearing ties, each facing computers or tablets, surface in the mind. Should an absence of such an environment cause detriment to children from remote, rural, or vulnerable areas?
The tagline of Taare Zameen Par, “every child is special” brings one to reflect. This phrase, if extrapolated to encompass the socio-economic environment of the child while formulating educational solutions, can potentially lower the rate of illiteracy, dropouts, and self-disrespect.
Learning is a life-long process
Compressing information into a child’s delicate psyche from a young age to “prepare” him/her for the workplace, thereby conforming to preconceived ideas perpetuated over centuries, isn’t necessarily fruitful in every case. Is learning solely an academic endeavour? Is knowledge exclusively intellectual? We need to rethink.
As brilliantly demonstrated by teaching techniques adopted by elite schools in developed countries, focussing on a child’s brain development in the early years is essential to his/her overall development as an independent individual society can depend on. Exercises to explore and enhance neuro-motor and cognitive faculties are part of this curriculum, which helps the child understand him/herself in relation to his/her environment. New research shows that the amygdala, which is the region in the brain focalized on spatial interpretation and choice-making, matures fully, in males, by the age of 25 and by 18 in females. This fact alone demonstrates the need to broaden the prevalent but obsolete definitions of what education is.
Imposing a standard capitalistic definition of success upon everyone is quite limiting to the overall progress of a nation. Money is only a subset of abundance, as rigorously covered in Hinduism. Accessibility to the latest offerings of progress and technology is the birthright of everyone but should not hinder the individual’s progression if this access is lacking, or is available, in an altered form.
Customising Education?
The environment a child comes from can decisively benefit his/her pursuit of knowledge. Children from vulnerable backgrounds experience work in some form or the other from a tender age: helping their families in farms, fields, trades, or embodying roles of grown-ups to care for siblings or even actively partake in remunerated activities. Customising education to assist kids in these scenarios so they have an opportunity to learn, explore, and evolve beyond their perception is of primordial importance. Education might not be the priority for those in the depicted scenarios, so blending it in to form part of their daily routine may be the motivator to make them adhere durably to the path of knowledge. Small learning sessions daily, focussing on acknowledging feelings and expressing them, elocution, teamwork, fitness, human biology, animals, alphabetisation, arithmetic, Indian and world cultural progression, and awareness on technological facilities available currently can enrich these kids viably. The challenge remains the availability of dedicated resources. This is where the support of technology comes into play.
Watch: Is Quality Education a Class Apart?
Current projects helping educate vulnerable kids of India
Mini projects across India are currently making use of affordable technology to aid the teaching process. For instance, the Samaritan Help Mission School in Kolkata relies on video calls for conducting some of its classes and uses projectors to teach large groups of students at a time.
Another project in Kolkata, involves young members’, of a non-profit called Prayasam, usage of filmography and smartphone apps, to bring about change in their slums. More than 1,000 children and young adults are now part of the organization. The lower costs of capable android smartphones also make it possible for children to access free pedagogical materials.
Hole-in-the-wall is yet another initiative to help the spread of knowledge through technology. This ATM-like computer placed in slum areas empowers learning and collaboration among kids. Education for girls in India is an issue of its own which projects like Plan India seek to alleviate.
Pursuing knowledge is the endeavour of a lifetime. Kids from vulnerable backgrounds and first-time learners must be empowered with an education that blends with their existence and enhances their lives durably.
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- Published in Blogs