Community Approaches - TNSF

Introduction

The Tamil Nadu Science Forum is a people's movement that has been mobilizing and empowering the underprivileged to help themselves since the 1980. The Science movements, like many others movements tries to change the way the society thinks, in this case by giving a critical understanding of science. The group was started by research scientists from IIT and IISC, who soon realized that critiquing the science policy and mobilizing people was not enough. They had to develop solutions that could be used by the common man. They developed alternate models in literacy, education, health, enterprises and agriculture. Through these models, it was attempted to restructure science learning techniques. These techniques were successfully demonstrated in a ‘joy of learning’ school. This was followed by training teachers to use innovative teaching methods, training village women to use health information and training farmers to use science to improve soil. From 1989-1995 TNSF developed a mass literacy campaign in 8 districts, which reached out to 2000 villages, mobilized 20,000 teachers and 200,000 learners.

Educational Philosophy (Balaji Sampath)

I don’t know what education is very well. We don’t really have a philosophy of education. I’m not very sure if you think the education system has failed.  In fact the  education system has succeeded very well. It reflects the society we live in. The children come from the society, are in society and go back into it. Schools are not an island we live in. Today’s society has created today’s education. In some sense when we talk of alternative schools what we are asking is what kind of society do we want? I think the answers for this are very complex and a small group like this is not going to solve everything.

Our group works with this kind of an idea. We need social change. And obviously for this education system has to change. Today's education system produces a few successful managers and lots of workers and poor people. The school system is structured like this. There are a few passes, few ranks and then lots of failures. In villages educational qualifications sound like this – 6^th std fail, 7^th std fail, 8^th std fail etc. And a few successes. This is what society wants. Educational experiments alone will not change things, sorry to say. What educational experiments have to work with is the idea that this is attempt in changing things so that society becomes more unbalanced than what it is today. Today’s society is very stable in its inequalities. Destabilising society is the important role of education. Proceeding with this, let look at what is going on in ordinary schools?  Rote learning – so change it to learning by doing , since it sounds more reasonable than mugging things up. Our approach is not based on a large philosophy but on individual actions. Its based on individual actions that make more sense. We have a overall idea of the society. We want more freedom for people and hence more freedom for children. We want kids to have more fun. And learning by doing is more fun and kids seem to learn better. So we go for learning by doing. There are several reasons why we follow this. One is of course that  - it works.

Secondly what the teacher can impart to the children is very limited. In most scenarios the teacher’s own understanding is very limited and communication poor. What she teaches is much less than what she understands. In most schools children know that they know more than teachers.  Most of us by the time we reach 12^th standard know this. And teacher also knows this. The teacher is very afraid of being exposed.  So go to the board, write, don’t allow them to ask questions etc, since the questions may expose what she doesn't know. Think about it practically - today teachers are less educated, less privileged in elite schools than the children attending the schools. This is exactly the opposite in government schools. The kids who come to government schools are children of lower social status. The parents will be coolie labourers. The teacher is superior earning 3000 -5000 rupees a month. This inequality gets reflected in the schools. In elite schools children are more confident. They know more than the teacher. They can be fairly independent of the teacher. This gives them confidence. In poorer schools – teachers start by saying – this kid cannot learn. It is the social realities that get reflected in the school. Learning by doing solves a part of this problem. I am not saying it can solve everything. The student can learn more than what the teacher says by learning by doing.  Thirdly, in today's scenario, given that the teacher does not know for example all concepts, design an experiment, so the student can also learn independently and explore things more by doing.

At the same time only doing is not enough to learn. Doing and thinking are both necessary. Not everyone hit upon gravity seeing apples fall. And we are talking about thinking that has accumulated over many years.  There are years of knowledge created by very many innovative people which also has to be transmitted. What we can try to do is create an environment where such small things of this kind can happen.

A larger aim is this – while thinking of breaking inequalities in the society, we need to break inequalities in the school structure. There are so many caste levels and divisions in the society. There are layers in the caste system which in turn oppress the next.  There is a whole hierarchy of oppression which sustains this oppression and feeds it. Today’s oppressed want freedom but will in turn oppress someone else. School structures are also highly similar. The teacher has to follow textbooks written by someone else, curriculum set by someone less. The teacher is oppressed under the system and even within the school hierarchy.  Why will teacher give freedom to the children? If I have to bear the weight of all this, you better bear my weight. So this whole structure needs to broken in society as well as schools. Learning by doing helps with breaking the oppression in the classroom.  What about the teacher’s oppression? So how will the teachers share this? How will the teachers share what works with others? Where curriculum is developed by shared understanding. A network for teachers where curriculum is developed by talking to each other. Teachers should be able to participate in the curriculum making and not just follow a centralized set of instruction coming from somewhere else. There should be joy in this process too.

Changes we propose in school should be changes happening in society. A bunch of people sit centrally and decide what children should learn. Why should someone sitting centrally decide what should my child learn? Make it a democratic process of what children learn. Community control of school is a more democratic process. When it comes to community control there is another problem today. As long as well to do families sent their children to schools, the schools were good. Today the rural elite no longer send their children to government schools. If government school infrastructure is collapsing, it is because they are not sending their children to these schools.  The rural elite is not interested. No IAS officer or teacher will send their children to government school. So why will these schools be of interest?

Lastly, when it comes to education it isn't only one model or philosophy or idea. Small small ideas with an overall idea of the kind of society we want is required. A lot of our work centers on letting children have fun. What is most important is that if they can learn that they can learn, a confidence will build up in the children. Such a confidence will help them fight inequalities. School today trains people to accept things in society. In this sense education has failed. If we want to change things - creating rebels out of schools is one of our important goals.

 Contact Information

Balaji Sampath 
130/3, Avvai Shanmugam Salai, 
Gopalagapuram, Chennai - 600086 
Tel: (91)-44-8113630 
Email: balaji_sampath@hotmail.com

Please click here for more information about TNSF.

Some of the groups working in this area are listed below. Please click on the group name to read more about them.

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