The joy of enabling dreams...

There is nothing like enabling the dreams of people. The pleasure of being part of someone's dream is just unfathomable.
 

As I look back, I would one such day when I was thrilled being able to enable someone else dream beyond what they aspired for. Here is the story of an experiment that a few friends of mine and I did as part of my first start up: "edu-next Venture". We called it the edu-next Rural Education Services initiative.
 

The context:

Around 3-4 months after starting off with my graduations from IIMB, I was pretty busy during the weekdays, but the weekends weren't as busy. One of those days, a good friend of mine - B V Manjunath (BV) who hails from Byalkere and had been extremely encouraging about the education initiative discussed his idea with me. 

He had worked on the thought he was putting across to me - this idea was to take up weekend classes in the high school at his home town at Byalkere. Byalkere is a small town around 65 - 70 km from Majestic towards the Mangalore highway after a deviation at Solur.
The school had around 20 students in the 10th std, but the trend had been sad with the villagers were taking their wards away from the school and admitting them to a school around 10 km away as in their assessment - the quality of teaching in the school had dropped. 

BV had probably been thinking of the problem for quite some time and had gotten some of his school mates from Navodaya - Doddaballapura interested in this initiative. All of us had a brainstorming session and decided to try it out in as structured manner as possible. From BV's primary discussion, we had figured out that the challenge the school kids had was on three fronts - English, Maths and Science. We decided to focus only on these three.

We pulled out all the text books and other material we would need for the teaching sessions. We decided to have classes on Saturday and Sunday (around a day and half) - with each one of pus taking around 2-3 hrs class at the school. BV was in charge of the coordination for the sessions while the remaining of the team was in charge of the delivery. BV would pitch in when none of us could come in for the classes.

As we moved ahead with implementing the project, getting the students to understand and getting them to relate to the various descriptions and designing activities for the same, we were focusing on covering the syllabus. 

Our measurement of the learning indicated a good progress in all the three subjects. But what gave me the most satisfaction was...

The Moment of Satisfaction:
At the beginning of these sessions, out of curiosity had asked the students what their aspirations were - what would they like to take up as a career?
I was surprised to find only two professions came out as replies - teachers and a police constable. This moment of realization for me that people are so very constrained by the environment in which they live. The students grew up in their village where these two were the only two professions they knew about. 

Though surprised, we continued our weekly interactions with the students and after around 6 months I decided to ask the same question! This time the results took me by surprise - the student answers ranged from - engineering, scientist, doctors in addition to the few who still hadn’t changed their aspirations.
That movement I realized what we had left behind - it wasn’t the knowledge that we left behind with the students, or the final pass percentage of the school. It was really this difference in aspiration for the students from villages.
If there is one this I would love to continue doing is - open up the young minds to the possibility of opportunities outside their world. In fact - most regrets in life are not about things that we have done - it’s more so about the things we haven’t done in life.
Extending this thought, I have prepared some of the career options which students could pursue - maybe I could continue this blog into the various career options. Let’s see how far this one goes...

The team:
The initiative wouldn’t have been complete without the active contribution of my dear friends. Here is the list of us who were part of the attempt.
B V Manjunath
G S Naveen
Rajath
Veeranjaneya
Rahul HM
and of course me :)

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The joy I found in opening up a completely new level of aspiration and enabling them to dream beyond what they would have generally dreamt is just worth all the effort and time. My confidence in the ability of humans to change the surrounding they live in was strengthened multifold. 

Hope I get to continue touching the lives of many more people - changing their lives/dreams/aspirations at least in small way...

Understanding Education-2

In previous blog, we discussed about the diversity of constituent fields in education and its manifests in different forms. We continue our journey in understanding the concept of education in this blog too.

Education, as we know is the process of gaining knowledge and technical competency; in addition to this it is also about inculcating moral values, ethics. This formal process of education begins with kindergarten, through primary, secondary and higher education and ends only when the individual dies.

To imbibe proper conduct in a student, understanding its psychology is quite essential given it varies from child to child.

A child in its earlier age questions each and everything it observes, but as it grows up; its inquisitiveness and curiosity diminishes!

There could be two possible reasons, either that child understands the concepts very well as it matures or it accepts the inputs it gets as unquestionable gospel.The later of the two is really disturbing as it retards the thinking, reasoning capacities of a child!!!

If teaching is based on the child’s thought process, right since its formative stages, then it would strengthen its innate ability to independently understand and think. Even though it seems impractical in a class constituting many students, and equal if not more lines of thought; there is definitely a lot of generality a teacher could introduce say through the use of pictures, modeling etc that clarifies the concept better. This enhances their learning experience too.

In a class, there are definitely some children needing special attention, the teacher could identify such students and take care of them, ensuring that they too have an opportunity to gain knowledge. Encouraging a child to generate ideas nurtures its inquisitiveness and curiosity; which is any day better than just merely feeding the facts.

Abraham Lincoln, the former President of United States of America puts it very distinctly in his letter to the head master of his son’s school, where he states - “Teach him to have faith in his own idea, even if anyone else tell him they are wrong….” this highlights the importance of originality over being a clone of others' ideas..

Understanding Education Continued

In the earlier blog we mentioned how we perceive education, we continue with our understanding about education in this blog which is relatively longer than the earlier one.

Education could be seen as implementation of knowledge acquire, in our life to improve it there by empowering our surrounding and society. This process begins right from childhood. An Individual learns many things since childhood but it is the application of the attained knowledge in ones life that makes the difference..

Childhood invariably is the period of extreme happiness – It is also the period of rapid motor and psychological growth. Research suggests that nearly 80% of the child’s brain is developed within the first 2 years!

A child is constantly on the lookout for more information – when the child listens or sees or senses a new information in his/her surrounding the curiosity takes the upper hand. The child is all excited of the new learning it is in for – it is not limited by any physical limitations; mental boundaries (read fear) it doesn’t know of – the experience of this new input is all that occupies its mind. This curiosity definitely needs some monitoring from the grown up around from the aspect of safety but shouldn’t spoil the child’s joy of experiencing the new horizon it has discovered – This new horizon is its constant source of joy.

As the child grows up, it is generally made to believe that academic qualifications are education. It’s natural urge for new information takes a back seat and the blind race for qualifications overtakes – it might be due to peer pressure or parental pressure; but the fact is the joy of childhood in discovery slowly gets dwindled and is gets replaced by the routine and the repetitive.

While some attempts in the recent times have been made on enhancing the limited scope of education, there is still a lot to be done. Discovery which is a natural process of learning has to be encouraged and application is a very useful tool in this process.

There are more dimensions to education and one cannot limit it to application alone. Education and learning which are very close to each other are a complex aggregation of various subjects like psychology, management, planning etc. We will deal with these as more as proceed with the blog and get more clarity on the concept of Education.

So Education - With a Purpose

"Education” is an ornament which gives a distinct value and meaning to the life of every human being. Unfortunately, most of the present society equates its meaning to academic qualification of an individual. Education helps us to broaden our thinking horizon and assists understanding life. Educated doesn’t necessarily mean a qualified individual, even an illiterate could be educated – so, confusing education with literacy would be inappropriate. This being the case, we are left with numerous questions in our mind, What does education exactly mean? Who is educated?

In this blog “So Education” we try to understand about “Education”