A few days ago, there were a couple of emails that went back and forth between Ed, Ina and myself about two opposing ‘schools’ of thought regarding rural education in India, prompting this three part blog in which I’ll talk a little about formalised schooling, alternative education and some interesting schools Ina’s found to visit.
This is part 3. In the previous posts I talked a little about the failings of the formalised and alternative systems from my perspective. However, despite this, it seems there are a few places that are doing some exciting stuff that we’re thinking of visiting to learn from…below is an extract from an email Ina sent me regarding what she’s found so far.
1) Sarang Hills (http://saranghills.org/):
- Sarang is based in Kerala.
- It works in a typical rural sector of India (more like a rural university!)
- It does not follow any strict curriculum but functions on a truly experimental basis.
- They can be helpful w..r.t. the topics that they cover at the campus, e.g. watershed management, natural farming, yoga, dance, martial arts, etc.
- Besides this, their insight would definitely help us finding solutions to some of our recent problems. The founders of this school, Gopalkrishnan and Vijayalekshmi, themselves have been teachers and have struggled their way through immense difficulties to raise and run a school like Sarang J
2) Sita school (no website available):
- This school is based in Karnataka and is run by Jane Sahi for past 30 odd years!
- It basically deals with the problem of drop-out children from the Government schools.
- Though Jane and her family are more into art, the school follows the regular SSC curriculum upto 7th std.
- It is a kannada medium school, which adopts innovative methods for teaching.
- You can check the following links, which will give you some idea about the school:
http://www.learningnet-india.org/groups/karnataka/JaneSahi/index.php
http://www.sutradharindia.org/profilestore4/10784857138748
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# Both the above schools have the local language as the medium of instruction, which I see would be a point beneficial to us, especially to find out, how to deal with the problems of providing alternate education using the vernacular medium.
3) Kanavu:
- Though ‘Kanavu’ probably would be the best school to visit for our purpose, I have not been able to find any current contact details of it 
- Kanavu is also based in Kerala (Wayanad district) and it is a truly tribal school.
- I read about it a few years back and know that their experiences could be really useful for Hunar Ghar considering it started and worked in the more or less the same setup.
- Nevertheless, I will try to find out the details from one of my friends in Bangalore, who hails from Kerala 
4) Parikrama schools (http://www.parikrmafoundation.org/):
- Parikrama learning centers are based in Bangalore and are actually more of ‘urban’ schools.
- They basically work in the slum areas of Bangalore and follow ICSE curriculum as any other ‘normal’ school in India.
- But what I think would prove to be helpful visiting these schools is that the socio-economic class that they are dealing with…
- The children come from a typically compromised background and the education level of the parents is next to nil here.
- Which means, the children at Parikrama aspiring to appear for the ICSE board examination at the end of 11th std, must be facing the problems of non-conducive environment at home, non-exposure as well. I want to find out, how does Parikrama deal with these problems? What are the strategies they adopt to boost the moral of these children and keep motivating them to strive for a better and healthy education?
- Parikrama also has community development on their agenda in addition to the education of the underprivileged sector.
- It would be interesting to find out, how to do they integrate the innovative ways of teaching and learning at Parikrama.
5) Grammangal (http://www.grammangal.org/):
- I think, all of us are already aware of Grammangal. They are based in Pune.
- There are a couple of things wherein they could be useful to us.
- I wish to find out more about their training programs for teachers, their education aids (material) and see, if we could make use of any of them.
- In addition, Grammangal runs a Balwaadis as well a primary school at Aina village, which is a hardcore tribal area in Thane district of Maharshtra. I am planning to go to Dahanu to visit this.
- It will also be interesting to find out more about their ‘Learning Home’ project in Pune city.
- The founder of Grammangal, Ramesh Panse is considered to be a pioneer educationist of India :-0
6) Aksharnandan:
- It is based in Pune and was basically evolved from the concept of ‘home schooling’ for some of the children.
- This school was founded by the interested parents, who did not want their children to go through the agonies of formal regular schooling.
- Though the school still follows the normal curriculum of SSC board, they have come a long way adopting methods to make learning is truly enjoyable and valuable process for the children.
- Of course, I have kept it on my list since it is easier for me to visit it (being in Pune!)
7) Mahatma Gandhi Vidyamandir:
- This school is based in Mumbai.
- It is a regular SSC board school but I recently read an article about how innovatively they implement their curriculum and I found it quite astounding!
- Even here, they believe in ‘Learning through experiments’ and use the textbooks only for providing guidelines.
- I am sure, it would be worth visiting this school and documenting their methods for our benefit.
