A Story, a dream continues...

                                    A Story, a dream continues...

-by Vaishnavi Mohan and Deepthi J

Students at Azim Premji University

Our visit to Reach India Foundation was intended to give us some field exposure so that when we return to our classrooms after our semester break we go with a richer experience and a big bag of questions. That was exactly what happened in the few days we spent there. We met interesting people, had long conversations about things that we held valuable and learned a little bit about the education system that exists in the Thondarnad Panchayat. 

Enjoy the lunch at Naadan Bakshana Shala

Our initial interaction with Janaki had taken place when he came to Azim Premji University for Kappi Aur Charcha. Further interaction with the team members gave us better clarity on what this new organization was intending to do. It was the brainchild of few Malayalee students at APU who felt that Kerala public education system needs qualitative intervention. This seed of a thought gradually took them to this small space in Wayanad. Though it is just one man anchoring initiative, Janaki seems to have established a good rapport with the community. We slowly learned how the team is envisioning the development of a creative learning and living space where people can gather to educate themselves. They intend to develop a research base for launching into any kind of interventions because they believe in identifying the gap so that some sustained support can be given to the system. It was a fascinating experience to live in that space that RIF is building even for a few days. It is brimming with a certain culture that has its ethos steeped in strength of community, participation, silence, music and reflection. 

One of our broad areas of interest was value education and the thoughts we had about it were scattered. The interactions we had about this helped us bring the thoughts together with better clarity. There is still a long way to go, but we have identified some points where we could start our study about it.

Interacting with DIET principal, K M Unnikrishnan, S. Bathery

One another thought we had was about learning more about the education system in Kerala. We knew that 3 days were not enough to do anything on this front, but some interactions we had with education functionaries gave us some leads about the difference in structure. We also felt that the responsibility that the Panchayati Raj brought in terms of administration of elementary education has been taken up seriously in Kerala. We are not sure whether this kind of involvement of Grama Panchayat is seen in other states.

With Standing Committee Chairman Keshavan at the Gram
 Panchayath office

An unexpected twist came during a conversation we had with each other informally while we were at Wayanad about how younger generations have hardly any interest in agriculture and how some of the responsibility for reviving agriculture lies in education. Our meeting with Rajesh Sir resulted in discussions along similar lines. In fact we learnt about an institution in Palakkad that works with this theme from him.

Our discussions took us along several routes that included Philosophy, Sociology, Policy, Child development etc. What we are taking back from here include certain pointers on different fronts, answers of which can be found only by extensive research and literature review. We are also happy to have built a relationship with a group of people committed to a cause that believes in developing a better and alternate way of life.