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!