Mukunda, Kamala V
(2016)
Experiences with the Varadenahalli school children.
Learning Curve (25).
pp. 47-49.
Abstract
There are thousands of people working with our
government school system to improve learning
conditions and psychological outcomes for
students. For these dedicated people, I feel deep
appreciation and admiration. I myself teach in a
non-formal private school (Centre For Learning),
and most of us teachers and students come from
city backgrounds. One of the many objectives
of the CFL education is to connect with lives and
worlds outside our own, to break our bubbles of
physical comfort and self-indulgence from time to
time. We do this in several ways, one of which is
to engage regularly with students from the nearby
village primary school. From the start, we have
seen that the Varadenahalli children treasure
these interactions too, so we continue them year
after year. I hope to share in this article some of
what we have observed and learned from these
rich and varied sessions. However, it is clear that
we can share neither the depth nor the breadth
of experience of those who work full-time with
government schools, and therefore I offer these
points in humility.One extreme example of this tendency comes
from a history project that we did with the Class
5 children (we were using Deepa Dhanraj’s film for
ideas and inspiration). They learned how to draw a
family tree beginning from their grandparents and
they were each to make their own at home by asking
family members for as many names as possible. The
next week when I asked to look at the sheets, there
was some giggling among the girls, and then they
showed me—identical family trees! They happily
informed me that they had all copied from Anasuya
(she was clearly the acknowledged ‘good student’
in class). I turned to the boys and asked for their
sheets. One of them grabbed Anasuya’s and started
copying it! It took a while and a lot more giggling
to explain that Anasuya’s grandmother was not
everyone’s grandmother, and so on...
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
