Again in the same dilemma.....as first stroke of the brush...the first line of a song....similarly first line for this post!!.....again in search of all funny thoughts in the desire to make this post more desirable to read :P

Basic intention of this post is to put up a model (after discussions with couple of my friends, Abhishek and Imtiyaz). This model to a certain extent covers the basic four necessities that I have put up in the previous post about the implementation of a education system, but as just beginning steps.
Recalling from the previous post:
1.Giving exposure to all forms of arts and subjects to enable them to understand their true passions.
2.Create an environment which enables them for the ethical, moral and social responsibilities for the nature and the people around. Thereby teaching them the art of enjoying nature and life.
3.Create opportunities for those talents so that they can earn their livelihood and don't do some arbitrary stuff just for the sake of money and loose the essence of life.
4.Sustain an environment where these flowers wont whither away with the fear of loosing themselves.

Let me put up the model in steps (after all I have been trained to be an Engineer for 6 years...you can easily notice I am not including my years of work experience :) ), this enlists the basic four steps....ignoring many important facts like funding, timings and the way of imparting
1. It will start with identification of schools (ya ya.. we first need kids) where we can first implement these basic thoughts.
2. Identification of the subjects ( or shall we say subjects/skills from today ? ) we intend to impart, which will cover most art form and personality development stuff. Defining proper syllabus in accordance with the age of the kids is very crucial here
3. Then picking up experts/talents who can impart these subjects. They need to be good enough. Many a times a student can become only as good as his/her teacher.
4. Creating opportunities to these students who intend to take-up career in one of those subjects.

Elaborating them... before that, the world runs on moolah. Just like any other project, we would be in need of a lot of funding for all the four steps listed above. The number of kids, subjects/skills, teachers/experts, schools .... all depends on the flow of funds.

Choosing the school:- Even though the intention is to impart all art forms and other personality development related subjects within the curriculum, we may have to start off as extra-curricular activities. According to Karnataka government rules, no student should be detained till the class of seventh. This rule makes the implementation of our model much simpler :). Most of the schools end by 3PM, after which we can use a couple of hours to offer these extra subjects. Till seventh standard its better to have one subject each day, so that the children will get exposure to diffent subjects/skills. Once they enter 8th std they can choose one out of them if they intend to. For high school kids we can have classes for these courses even during weekends and couple of classes during weekdays, as they will be dealing with jam packed weekdays.

Choosing the subjects:- Subjects need to include different art forms like pottery, sculpturing, fine-arts, music, theater, dance, sports etc. The idea is to give an exposure to as many forms of arts/subjects.One thing we need to make sure is that we emphasize the importance of harmony with nature and with all other relationships.

Choosing the teachers:- We can begin with talented college students and retired professionals. But then as I said before, a student is only as good as his teacher, we need to make sure we are picking up real talents and if funding supports we can go for professionals as well. Its not just about imparting their talents, a teacher should also be able to identify the true talent of a child and encourage him accordingly.

Creating opportunities:- This is to empower the skilled ones, so that they will be able to earn their livelihood through their talent itself. This completes the loop. We can talk to different NGOs supporting different arts and vocational courses to support and to find/create jobs for the talented and interested kids after they finish off with their schooling.

Another important issue is the way of teaching. As far as the medium of teaching is considered, I think everyone will agree with me, if I say it has to be in the mother-tongue of the students. About the technique of imparting I still need to do a lot of research into it. One of the schools that attracted me with the way of teaching is JKF schools. I Have spoken to couple of contacts there. I am planning to stay there for few weeks and observe the way that they have adopted to teach kids. We can go forward with such real life examples and case studies picking up the best practices along our path.

The steps so far discussed are just the first steps. The real picture of education I was painting is far from finding its true colors at this stage , but this will surely bring-in more sense of education into the schools that we have today in a realistic way. I remember reading somewhere, Dreams are like stars....you may never touch them, but if you follow them they will lead you to your destiny. Ya, I am just trying to follow them :)

Numerous times I have thought about this first sentence of my first blog.....I think its going to come up in the way it has to!!!

Its about a passion of mine.....'Education' ----my dreams about that and my aspirations ( see I told you before :), just the way it has to )

Well...I am making myself clear again....its not abt literacy ( just to indicate, you can easily (rather pls) ingore my spelling errors and grammatical blunders :P !!!)

Let me start with what I think about education, its purpose and its worth.

Education.....makes a person realize his worth for himself and in turn to others. That brings me to explain what does 'worth' mean. Worth, a self realization. Realization of his talents, responsibilities, his likings, his goals in life and more importantly 'love' rooted deep within. As Malcolm Forbes says 'Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one'.

Education is what makes you learn to create your own path.....to get through obstacles....to be independent and free.....to sway in your own flow....how to be one with the nature.......in other words how to be a river :), not just some rotten dead leaf which flows with the rush of another roaring stream, where your direction, force, freedom, in turn independence and whole of existence will be defined by that stream. But I see....we are so scared of independence ...and feel so secured with this constrained life.....Why would one wish for such a constrained life? Why should sprouting lives wither away into a rotten dead end? Why dont we ever come out of this cocoon of security?

I think the reason for us to get into these traps of expectations and.......hmmm...seriosuly just realised...its only expectations that drag us away from the true education we are supposed to get. Expectations of our parents...of the society.....expectations to succeed......expectations of others and the list continues. I think anything which we think drags us away, can easily be put under some or the other form of expectation !!

Why do we care so much about it ? about these expectations anyway.......probably because of fear......deep rooted fear of losing identity!! Sigh!! what an irony.....loosing ones true identity in the fear of loosing it!!

As I have your attention now, let me get to 'why this blog?'. I am here to put in my ideas, my dreams about education and also in search of like minded people who can put in ideas, who can criticize any objectives or theory or an understanding and who are in search of equally passionate persons to work with.

Now education has been mostly confused with literacy. There was a NGO which came to my office asking for funds telling that they will be providing ICSC syllabus for the under privileged kids!!! First of all it made no sense to me why do they intend to do that.....all subjects in English for the kids who can barely understand it....secondly why are they so much concentrating on the syllabus while all that is important is how they are imparting it. Most of the NGOs are concentrating on the improvisation of education by trying to improve the vocabs, reading and writing capacities and pumping more information into the heads of the kids. Is that really what we should care about?

Hundreds of years ago, when India was at the peak of richness, not every one was literate but we were the richest.....culturally, ethically and economically. We lost that certain something in the ruins of the history. Brithish knew it. To conquer India in the truest sense, they changed our education system to a completely, destroying all the ways we used then. All they needed were the clerks who could work for them. They just needed machines who can follow blindly. Thats where we lost our richness, and to a greater extent are still following the same way of education, but now creating bigger machines for bigger MNCs, which have conquered us economically and hence to an extent politically.

My dreams with education is to create an environment in which a soul would bloom. Giving an opportunity to identify ones own talent, ones potential, which thereby would educate them to figure out the path for themselves. The beginning should be implemented in the following steps.
1. Giving exposure to all forms of arts and subjects to enable them to understand their true passion.
2. Create an environment which enables them for the ethical, moral and social responsibilities for the nature and the people around. Thereby teaching them the art of enjoying nature and life.
3. Create opportunities for those talents so that they can earn their livelihood and dont do some arbitrary stuff just for the sake of money and loose the essence of life.
4. Sustain an environment where these flowers wont whither away with the fear of loosing themselves.

Having said all this....I never meant to imply that my education was bad.....I might not have paid full attention in my english class :) ....but thats the point.....education is not about words...its about what they convey. Education is not about remembering the name of a flower but to be 'able' see it...to be 'able' to feel it and to be 'able' to enjoy it :). Its about Ability !

Here ends by first blog. It was quite a nice experience to put-up ideas here but its purpose will only be served if I get to know your views about it. Lets discuss what you think about it. Its not about thoughts, we are done with thoughts, its about coming together and evaluating if we are on a brighter path to tomorrow and if not atleast taking the first step on it.... :)

PS:In my next blogs I will be writing about few of the basic models and projects to start of with this dream.