India Development Coalition of America--IDCA--Education

http://www.tribuneindia.com/2009/20090722/edit.htm#6 Education Policy — A Tribune Debate Another way to teach Children must learn without stress by Manish Jain More than any of the specific policy proposals, Kapil Sibal’s willingness to open a national dialogue on education outside the halls of elite commissions is to be lauded. Equally important is the tacit admission of a dirty little secret of educationists: the education system does not serve the learning needs of the vast majority of Indians. Nor does it serve the holistic development needs of local communities. As climate change and economic collapse loom before our generation, this is indeed a welcome opportunity to rethink some of the assumptions that have defined the framework of schooling until now, such as: monoculture, fragmented disciplines, competition, compulsion and authoritarianism. Everyone already agrees that government schools in villages are in bad shape. What will make this round of dialogue interesting is if we o...

AN ILLITERATE’S DECLARATION TO THE LITERACY PREACHER by Shri Dayal Chandra Soni First Published in 1996 Translated and Adapted from Mewari by Shri Dayal Chandra Soni and Vidhi Jain ABOUT THE AUTHOR Shri Dayal Chandra Soni was born in 1919 in Salumbar, a small town in Mewar, Rajasthan. Having received intensive training in ‘Basic Education’ under well-known people, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Zakhir Hussain, Vinoba Bhave and Khwaja Galamusadan, he worked for several years as a teacher at Vidya Bhawan, a small school, based on Gandhian philosophy and principles of community service, founded in 1931 in Udaipur. In the 1960s, Dayalji left Vidya Bhawan because of his controversial views and made a living through tutoring, freelance writing and eventually by setting up a small flour grinding mill in his home. The experiences with running the grinding mill profoundly influenced his thinking about education. He later worked at Seva Mandir, an NGO in Udaipur, on an innovative literacy campaign for ...