Why Progressive School Works....

Our present education system, with all its drawbacks and imperfections, has survived the world wars, drought, famine, disaster, etc. and it will survive in the future as well.  It is resilient, it is easy to start a new one, and it is easy to organize and manage. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s the best.

Whatever progressive education system that are propounded, be it Gandhi’s Nai Talim, Totto Chan’s Tomoe Gakeun, or AS Neill’s Summer Hill schools, they all are context based, and exist within its context only.

For instance, the Summer Hill School has been around for almost a century now, but if it had been a good, practical, economical and sustainable education system, the schools all over the world must have followed its model by now. Instead the Summer Hill School is confined to its original state in rural England surviving because of its prominent supporter.

And Totto Chan’s Tomoe Gakeun was, pardon my language, only for the misfits who failed to fit into the ‘so-called conventional’ educational system.  Of course, I’m saying too much by saying that, but can you imagine having about 1000 Tomoe Gakuen in present day’s Tokyo which is over populated with shortage of space?

And Gandhi’s labour based Nai Talim is for the rural village only, and it failed to survive a simple test of young India’s industrial economy of those days which was a much lesser version of our present day capitalism.  The major problem with Gandhi’s New Education system is not it’s requirement of labour as a base of learning, but because it called for a new and revolutionized society which as we know, is unimaginable.

I'm not insinuating that our present education system is good and the progressive schools are bad or impractical. It is just that the kind of progressive schools we have seen so far are context based, confined to specific area, and were either usually led, not by the system, but by few good people who were fully dedicated to what they do. 

Every now and then, we saw some very excellent Government School, and if you have taken a deeper look at why the school work, most probably you're going to find some dedicated and passionate people responsible for it.  We need that kind of passion among the stake-holders of our education system.

The Progressive schools are progressive because of its founders or proponents' dedication and passion. Like everything else, we need passion, we need dedication, and we need commitment to put meaning to education, and to make something of our education, and to make our education works!  

Terminology I don't like: First Generation Learner

First generation learner???  Seriously, those people never learn before??? Don’t you ever wonder how the child came into being? Out of thin air, or are you saying that the child was born out of some virgin maiden?

The simple fact that the child, who you called a ‘first generation learner’ existed means the parents learned how to make a child, and they also learned how to nurture the child, and obviously, how to survive.  And since we all do whatever we do to survive, it means the parents had achieved something great.  It also means they learned a lot, and that the child is not a first generation learner, but a first generation school goer.

There is a big difference between learning and going to school.  You can learn, live and thrive without going to school, and going to school doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will learn, live and thrive!

So please stop using the term ‘first-generation learner'!  It’s not fair, and it’s against every possible human rights!

The Integration of Work and Education

I had earlier reviewed Marjorie Sykes’s The Story of Nai Talim about Gandhi's idea of education which I dismissed with one word: “romantic”!  I said the idea was romantic because the education system started by Gandhi’s failed to survive the economy of post-independent India which is an infant version of our current overtly commercialized capitalism.  Besides, I thought of the possibility of having such a school in the city and considering the kind of space it required, I thought it was practically impossible. 

Now looking back on my argument, I was too focused on the infrastructure aspect and not on the ideology of education.  If we take a good look, there is an integration of work and education at all level, and it cannot be separated.  The only thing absent is that raising the consciousness that the thing that we do everyday involved as many knowledge as available to use, the only thing is we are not aware of the knowledge we use, and we don’t know how to categorize them.

For example, a farmer integrated many knowledge in his day life.  He knows about the season, the rains, the pattern of cloud, how crops grows, what crops will be good in the type of soil, how to tilt his land and what to do with pest.  In other words, he knows botany, holti-culture, geography, language, applied science, etc. 

What we can do about the integration of work and education in our school is that, we don’t need a field where they can grow crops, or rear cattle, all we need is a room where we can store all sorts of things and give the freedom to children to do whatever they want to do with it.  For e.g. in the book “To the principal with love”, the author mentioned that we can collect old and used cycles and cycles part and store them in one room, children should be free to bring their own cycle and repair it, or build a new one from the parts that are available.  They should be allowed to tinkle with it, play with it.  We can do the same for computer parts for those of our children who want to be a computer/ hardware engineer, old (but clean) clothes for those of our children who want to be a designer.