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 :)
