Alternative Schools - Gram Mangal

Gram-Mangal, is a registered voluntary non-profit organization in the Indian state of Maharashtra that has been working on transforming Early Childhood Education (ECE) in India. In addition to bringing elementary education to the doorsteps of rural and tribal children, they are committed to revolutionizing the childhood education system itself, in rural and urban India alike. They believe that good early childhood education is vitally important in determining the mental and physical health of a child. Today, an unimaginative formal education system is thrust upon children forcibly. Gram Mangal has been exploring alternative ways of ECE which is enjoyable and beneficial to the child.  

Educational Philosophy (Presentation at the conference by Nilesh)

We are working in the border of Gujarat and Maharastra in a predominantly tribal area.  Gram Mangal was established in 1982, by the eminent educationist Anutai Wagh, and Prof. Ramesh Panse. When these two along with other volunteers, entered the tribal area near Maharashtra-Gujarat border, the village of Aine-Dabhon was in dire straits. There was no drinking water or electricity or roads, let alone a school. There is still no electricity. They started thinking about how to gradually transform the village into a self-reliant community. Ever since its inception, Gram-Mangal has been involved with various development activities.  Later, Gram-Mangal started focusing on education, and now its principal thrust is on Early Childhood Education.  We are working on research, development of methods of teaching and learning and also with social problems that tribal children face.

Our view is that the school has to be owned by the child. The child should feel a sense of ownership with the school. We believe that there is no single intelligence. There are many new theories suggesting that there are several abilities that children have. We try to give sufficient opportunities to children to be able to discover the abilities they have.  Secondly, we believe in certain values which if they come into existence would lead to a peaceful and happy life - liberty, cooperation, rationality (crude translation of the Marati term “Vivek”), joy of labor (“shram-anand”), aesthetics (“soundarya”). Basically today, working with our hands is looked down upon. We therefore talk a lot about the dignity of labour and the joy of working with our hands. The child has to discover and learn this and we have sufficient opportunity for this. We also believe in the beauty of life and in “soundarya”. Our work tries to incorporate these set of values in everything we do. Of course sometimes, we are still shooting in the dark on how to inculcate these values. This is an area educationists need to focus on. Can we really impart values through education? Can these values be imbibed through the educational process? If so, how? We’re trying to work on these things. The third practical goal of the school is: Given the social/economic background of the children it is a luxurious thing for the children in our schools to study for 20 years. So at the end of the school, the child should be clear on how he/she wants to earn bread and butter. So we want to impart this ability to the child. 

So in short, we see education having three goals - developing an individual with all the potentials he/she has. Helping the child link with the society around him and giving an approach to think about himself and relations with society. Lastly, the ability to stand on his/her own in terms of economics. Whether these can be larger goals of education I’m not sure. But I see this as an alternative to what exists today. It is too early to comment on whether this is the direction to take to help create the society we want but this is an experiment/step towards this.

Working Policies of Gram Mangal

The working policies of Gram Mangal broadly involve the following:

1.        We do not accept any government grant to run any of our programs. Our entire work is supported by the community. We work as a bridge between the well off and those who need it. We are not against any of the effort of the government in the field of education. We do not replicate any efforts the government has already done. On the contrary we work on the complementary and the supplementary efforts taken up by the government.

2.        Focus of organization has always been in field of education. In the initial stages we had to develop basic infrastructure for functioning, e.g. drinking water facilities. When we started there was no drinking water facility. So cleanliness was out of question. Roads had to be made. After three years we decided to concentrate on education.

3.        Our goals are to conduct research, development and extension activities in early childhood education, primary education, especially ECE - which is neglected in the educational planning. People think it can be done by anybody anywhere the way they want. The science behind it is not known at all. This is an area we want to change.

4.        We aim to conduct ongoing research, development and extension activities in the area of technical, vocational and tertiary education.

5.        We undertake rural development projects with the tribals.

6.        We collaborate with like-minded NGOs and take up educational research programs.

 Activities And Educational Methodologies of Gram Mangal

Our primary activity involves Vikaswadis which are a form of school. Our other activities include Mukthashaala – which is a residential school, a resource center for teachers where more than 800 teaching aids are stored. This is a collection of teaching aids which is constantly growing. This is not a static entity but one which is constantly being developed. A lot of these aids have been developed at Gram Mangal. Our goal is that teachers from any school should be able to use this as a reference library. Information is stored in a classified manner. If I am a teacher and I need help to teach fractions or place values – this is made available in one place.  We are part of a forum that has developed a training program for pre-school educators in Maharashtra. This forum called Maharashtra Bala Shikshan Parishad is lobbying for changes in pre-school education via a government policy. The purpose of this is to get the government to declaring a policy insisting on a minimum amount of training and qualification for people working with pre-school children. At the state level there is no policy at the pre-school level. Today anybody and everybody can do this. We believe ECE is too important to be treated lightly. We have developed a one year course under the guidance of the VC of Mumbai university Mr Ram Joshi. This is being tried out at our place for the past 7 years.

The Vikaswadi concept was developed by Tarabai Modak, a disciple of Gijubhai Badeka, with her own Montesorian origin as well. She worked with tribal children all her life and ultimately came up with this form of school called Vikaswadi. This is a unit where we have a crèche for children below age of 3, a balwadi for 3-6 and a primary school for age 6-9.  Why do we need all under one roof? This is because the tribal habitat is very scattered. There are typically hamlets of 20-30 houses with about 35-40 children at a time in 3-9 age group. For 35-40 children at the most we can employ 1-2 teachers. Having one teacher per grade is just not possible. So this form has been adapted. A crèche has to be part of this because if we want the older children to come to school, we have to bring the younger siblings to the school. Both the mother and father go to work outside and the older ones look after their younger sibling. Managing all this under one roof, how to manage this effectively without losing the educational content and quality is precisely what we have been working in the last 20 years in the organization. There are between 20-50 children. We have multi-grade teaching and a flexible timetable. The school starts between 9 - 9:30 AM . It isn’t possible to just ring a bell and get the children. The teacher has to go around the hamlet to get the children to school, not because the children don’t want to come to school, but they are usually busy finishing up their work. With one call they come to the school. A lot of emphasis is given on cleanliness activities. This is a curricular matter. Where we work, there are lots of skin diseases prevalent and we have observed now that they have gone down in the last decade. Washing one’s own clothes has some place in the school activity. Activities like cutting nails, combing hair, taking medicines are all the responsibility of the teacher. The teacher is responsible for looking after the health of the children. If the children are ill the teacher has to contact the closest doctor. For typically  even after the teacher gets medicine for the child, the medicine  is thrown away. So the teacher has to ensure that the medicine is taken. All this is made an integral part of the teacher’s work. The learning has to be highly individualized because pace of learning of each child is different. The children are not always very regular -they go out with their parents to the wadi to pluck vegetables, or market or just don’t come to school because they just don’t want to come to school that particular day. This is all allowed, and if  we force, they will run away. Gram Mangal has worked out a methodology in which a flexible, but concrete program can be implemented in parallel with 40 - 50 children. In this process we have developed highly interactive material in the form of cards and sometimes in the form of local material gathered or made by the teachers. The teacher is very important and works by initiating activities for all children at different grade levels and ensuring everyone is busy in a meaningful way. That learning is indeed happening. Material is an integral part of the whole program, it isn’t just the material but the teacher’s capacity to understand the levels, group the children properly, give the right material to the right child. This plays a very important role. Teachers' training is continuous and ongoing. Many activities are done outside the 4 walls of the school, taking into account the local situations and problems.

Initially we worked with only pre-schools. This developed into Vikaswadis. After around 12 – 15 years we felt the need for a residential school (Mukhta shala). Initially after the 3rd grade we used to send them to nearby ashram schools, but many dropped out. Not because they were academically poor, but because it was a traumatic experience to stay there in confined spaces. The children came to us and refused to go to schools where they were made to sit all day. And there was no pressure from the parental side to go to school. We felt a need to extend the school to a residential school; otherwise it would be incomplete and unjust to the child. We still send children to nearby schools and only those who have problems there come to the residential schools. Ideally we believe that the child should stay at home and come to school to learn (non-residential), but in the case of tribal children - at the age of 9-10 they find work and drop out if they are not in a residential school.

The motto of our school is - education for happy life. We believe that intelligence is not single. There are several abilities in each child, so education should be individualized.  Vocational training is a must, educating a child for 20 years is not a cup of tea for a tribal family, so at the end of education, the child should be clear on what he/she wants to do to earn a living.

 A day at the residential school – we start the day with warm up and yogic exercises. Our children are undergoing athletics training and have tremendous potential for athletics. They come out with flying colors. No tribal development program is realizing that sports can be a very interesting and sound program for tribal children. Our children with just one and half years of training, have gone to the state and even to national levels. Another aspect of our curriculum is that we try to emulate real life work experience for the children. A school farm is maintained and managed by the children. They work on the farm, sell the produce and cash flow is also with them, maintained by them.

I’d also like to talk about the Aam sabha - the school parliament. I have some charts on how this program was initiated. This is a part of the democracy education program. In terms of the social aspect there were rifts within the three tribal communities in our area (Warli, Katkari and Vallar Kohlis). The Warlis and Vallar Kohlis look down upon the Katkaris. To live together and eat together was a problem. So the teacher had to sit together with a katkari boy on one side and a warli boy on the other. This was a challenge we had initially. We worked on this and it no longer exists in the residential school. Every now and then it comes up in the village. 

In terms of the school work learning by project method is important. Children have done many projects. These are displayed and I can show you more of these. Children are undergoing training in classical music – not all but those who have a flair for the music. Those who find it interesting continue to learn it and others just listen. We are able to get the teacher expertise for this on voluntary basis and so we decided to have this. Otherwise it is just not possible to employ someone for this. A seventy-two year old lady is coming to the school regularly for this activity. Learning by doing is our philosophy. Small constructions in our school are done by us and the children together. We believe in dignity of labor and this is a hands-on way of achieving this.

Ques: What are your vocational training activities?

Ans: Vocational training is going to start full swing from next year. We are mainly looking at agro-based vocational training, since most of them are from agricultural families. They typically work on agriculture for part of the year. For example, producing vermi-compost on a large scale is one thing we are currently exploring. There is a big market for this in the surrounding areas with chickoo farms. We are looking at craftsmanship training - masonry and carpentry that will sustain them for the rest of the year, apart from agriculture.

Ques: Give us some idea about your teachers training

Ans: Teacher training is one of the major components of our activities and includes Bal Sevika training for one year for preschool teachers and shorter courses for teachers already in service. The teacher’s training is done in Hindi, English and Marathi.

Ques: What is the medium of the school?

Ans: The school is in Marathi medium, but the children have 3 different dialects. It is compulsory for the teachers to learn the dialect otherwise they cannot interact with the children.

Ques: How many villages do you work in?

Ans: We work in 20 small Vikaswadis scattered in over 5 villages (several hamlets).

Demonstrations

Gram Mangal did demonstrations of some of their teaching techniques and learning aids including those for

1. Pre-primary children to encourage their shapes/matching/sorting/color concepts. These were simple paper cut-outs of different shapes and colors and can be given to the child in varying stages.
2. Math concepts such as fractions, decimals, area, volume etc.
3. Example of project works on geography, local geography.
4. How to teach the values of democracy in the school.

They have an extensive collection of teaching aids and comprehensive training program in their resource center and schools & Vikaswadis.

Contact Information

1. R. K. Deole,
   President,
   Jai Building , Cinema Road , Ghatkoper (West),
   Mumbai 400083.
   Tel.: (022) 514-8396
2. Ramesh Panse,
   Trustee,
   Sugandh, 2118, Sadashiv peth, Pune 411030.
   Tel: (020) 433-0343
   Email: panse_r@hotmail.com
3. You can also write to Gram-Mangal at grammangal@hotmail.com

Please click on the names below for details about other alternative schools.

Back to alternatives                            

Top of page