Report on Site visit to Vidya Bhavan education center
Prepared by
Amit Mookerjee
Background
Vidya Bhavan is a group of institutions that started with the founding of a basic school in 1931. The founder, M.S. Mehta, had a vision of providing quality education to non-elite sections of society with the aim of making socially responsible citizens. Currently there are numerous institutions under the auspices of the Vidya Bhavan society:
ASHA Seattle has been funding the education center for the last one year. The recommendation for the project had come from Sindhu Naik from India Literacy Project. A site visit had been made earlier by Lokesh Agrawal.
My objective for the site visit was to better understand the activities of the education center and explore opportunities for future involvement of ASHA Seattle in funding this project.
Outline of the Education Center
The Vidya Bhavan Education Center was established in 1994. In their own words the center is a "resource unit to facilitate cross fertilization of ideas on pedagogy"[1]. The resource center was perceived as an institution that would make quality interventions in the vidya bhavan institutions. However the scope of the center has evolved over time to encompass consultancy activities, research and training in educational affairs in India.
The secretary and main force behind the center is Dr. Hriday Kant Dewan (known as Hardy to his colleagues). Hardy has a distinguished track record in the field of education. He was part of the original Hoshangabad Science Teaching Program(HSTP) team. He started his academic career in Delhi University(DU) as a professor of Physics in Kirorimal college. Later on he left DU to become a full time member of HSTP. He was also a key member of the NGO Eklavya that evolved out of HSTP. He moved to Udaipur in 1994 and joined the resource center as its organizing secretary.
Hardy has been the chief contact person between ASHA and Vidya Bhavan. I had exchanged several emails and also had a telephone conversation with him before visiting Udaipur.
Day 1, 7th October 2002
I reached the Vidya Bhavan offices around 2:30pm. The education center team –Govind, Prasoon, Shobha shankar, Kaushalya, Manoj and Hardy were present to discuss my visit.
It was decided that we would spend the afternoon going over some of the activities of the center.
Hardy started of by giving an overview of the resource center. Then the other members of the team presented some of the specific projects that the center had been involved in.
Before going into the details of the projects I would like to present a summary of a very interesting discussion that we had. The resource center had been involved in training teachers from a Christian missionary organization. The discussion started when I raised the issue of the appropriateness of the center supporting an organization with religious affiliation.
Hardy- The objective of the center is to promote quality in education. In this aim we do not distinguish between institutions – whether it is RSS or Christian missionary. However we ensure that the training techniques that we have adopted are not subverted by any religious agenda. We try to provide quality training and it is up to the institution to adopt the techniques.
Amit- What would you do if a institution insisted on a religious bias in the training methodology?
Hardy – In that case we will not provide the training. We have a very clear idea of what the training should be like and if an organization requires the training to be twisted to suit their purpose we will withdraw from the training.
Amit – How do you react when you see educational material with a religious bias being provided to the children ? For example if you encounter a problem in a math book that talks about Kar Sevaks, what steps will you take ? It is clear that there are objectives besides teaching mathematics when formulating problems in such a way.
Since Hardy had been doing all the talking till now, I expressed an interest in knowing the views of the other members of the team.
Hardy (addressing his team) – What will you do if you see the following question in a textbook ? If 5 karsevaks can build the Ram Mandir in 100 days then how many karsevaks will be required to build the Ram Mandir in 5 days ?
Manoj – Our aim is to teach the concepts of mathematics. I am a secular person myself but I am not really concerned about the formulation of the problem. I will try to explain the concept and make the children solve the problem.
Shobha Shankar and Govind agree with Manoj
Amit – There is much more at stake here than mathematics. A deep impression is being made on a young mind through the medium of teaching. Should we tolerate this subversion of education in the name of teaching math ?
Prasoon – Sometimes the situation is very difficult and one has to go along with the system. We try to do our best but sometimes it is really not possible. At the end of the day we want the children to learn something of value.
Prasoon is from Bihar and he digresses to narrate an incident of conversion by Christian missionaries in an adivasi village
Prasoon – The missionaries came to the village in a jeep and they put the hand brake on. Then they call the adivasis to take the name of their God and push the jeep. Of course, the adivasis are not successful. Then the missionaries release the brake and ask the adivasis to take the name of Christ and push the jeep.
Amit – This is one of the most innovative tales of conversion that I have heard about. But the question is
that shouldn’t we be more proactive when we see education being used as a medium for promoting religious agenda?
Hardy – I do not know about the others but for me math teaching takes a backseat when I am confronted with a situation like this. There are some fundamental issues and values that need to be instilled in the students. This is much more important than a math problem.
The above exchange with Hardy and my subsequent conversations with him indicated to me a very coherent and pragmatic view of education in India. His willingness to dialogue with and train all kinds of groups while keeping his basic principles intact is impressive. The other team members are not academics like Hardy and they look towards Hardy as their mentor. Prasoon admitted that one of the reasons for his joining the education center was the opportunity it afforded to work with a person like Hardy.After giving the overview of the center, Hardy asked his team members to present various projects that they have been involved with in the recent past. Given below is a summary of the different projects:
The overall impression of the presentation was favorable. I was shown reports for some of the above projects. I was also shown some of the educational materials that the center had developed for the NFE program.
Day 2 , 8th October 2002
Hardy had planned a trip to some of the Sevamandir NFE centers for which the center had provided consultancy. We left Udaipur around 8:00am. Manoj and Kaushik (a sevamandir worker) accompanied me. Our first stop was the Ghatiagarh hamlet in Rava village. Kaushik told me that this was one of the few villages they work in that can be accessed directly by car. Ghatiagarh has 32 families – all from the Meena tribe.
The mention of the Meena tribe took me back to an incident in my undergraduate days at IIT Delhi. There was a boy from the Meena tribe in our class (I will call him Shyam). One day while discussing a homework problem, I found out about the effort he has to make to cope up with the class. Since the medium of instruction at IIT is in English it is very difficult for people from a Hindi medium to compete. Shyam took down all the notes in English. Then he translated everything into Hindi and tried to understand the concepts. Then he prepared his answers in English. Shyam had entered IIT in the Scheduled Tribe category. Hearing his tale convinced me of the need to support reservation in higher education. Now visiting a Meena village I wondered about the kind of effort that is required of a person to come out from here to compete in an engineering entrance examination. I also remembered the antipathy of the general category students in IIT towards the reserved quota students.
Sevamandir runs a NFE center and Balwaadi in Ghatiagarh.
The NFE center has been established about a year back. The teacher of the center is Chatanlal. Children up to the age of 6 attend the school. School usually starts at 8.00am and end at 11:00am. Most of the children do some kind of work after school hours (either helping at home, working in the fields or looking after their animals). The NFE center has an enrollment of 25. On the day we visited, 16 children were attending. The boy girl ratio is about 1:1. Given below is a transcript of my interaction with Chatanlal (translated from Hindi):
Amit – How many children attend the school on a regular basis?
Chatanlal – About 16.
Amit – The enrollment is 25. What do the other children do?
Chatanlal – There are various family pressures that prevent children from coming to school. Some parents want their kids to stay at home.
Amit – Is it difficult to convince the parents to send their children to your school?
Chatanlal – It is much easier than before. Parents are aware of the importance of education. But there are some families who are located at a distance from the center who are not willing to send their children.
Amit – What do the children do after finishing their course of study at your center? Do they go to the government school in Rava?
Chatanlal – Some of them do.
Amit – What about the girls? Do their parents encourage them to go to government schools?
Chatanlal – Girls are less likely to attend school than boys. The parents feel that girls have learnt enough in the center and it is time for them to take up their share of household responsibilities.
Amit – Where did you receive your teacher training?
Chatanlal – Sevamandir and Vidya Bhavan held teacher-training workshops. They also provide the educational materials.
Chatanlal shows me the books and the charts developed by the Sevamandir/Vidya Bhavan team. Manoj tells me the methodology behind developing the basic devnagri alphabet chart. They did a survey on the most commonly used vowels and consonants by the children. The char t was developed as a result of that research. The first chart that is shown to a child makes her familiar with the alphabets that constitute the most commonly used words in their region.
Amit – What are the prospects of higher education?
Chatanlal- The Rava primary school is 3 kms away. Most children attend that school. The middle school is located in Jawar ( a distance of 5kms). The secondary school is located in Tidi, which is about 10kms from here. Fewer students attend higher classes.
Amit – How far did you study?
Chatanlal- I studied till class X.
Amit-Do you want to study further?
Chatanlal-Yes, I would like to go to college. But I have to work also. It is difficult.
Amit-What do you do besides teaching in the center?
Chatanlal- I do some farming. I am also the librarian for the village.
Note: Chatanlal runs a small library that was setup with the help of Sevamandir.
Amit- Is the income from farming sufficient for the people of the village?
Chatanlal-No. The food that we grow here sustains us for a few months in the year. There has been a big drought and farming is not enough to sustain us. Most of the men folk go to Udaipur to look for work.
They usually work as laborers in the city.
The NFE center has two sections depending on the level of the children. Chatanlal teaches one section while the other section is given some work. Both the sections are taught in the same shed. We met Ritwik- another Sevamandir worker, in Ghatiagarh. Kaushik and Ritwik monitor the centers regularly. They note the attendance and monitor the classes. The children are periodically evaluated to ascertain the efficacy of the teaching. Teachers like Chatanlal frequently attend training workshops organized by Sevamandir and Vidya Bhavan.
I was interested in the process of setting up an NFE center. I started speaking with Kaushik about this:
Amit – How do you go about starting an NFE center? What are the problems involved in running a center?
Kaushik-We identify villages with a need for a center. Usually the request comes from the village itself. Then we try to identify a group that will be interested in such activities. It is tricky since we want dedicated people. Sometimes we make the wrong decisions and we have to replace the teachers for performance reasons. After identifying suitable candidates we provide them training and educational materials. Then we regularly monitor the centers. We pay an honorarium to the teachers. The payment is made as a check to the gram sabha, which in turn pays the teacher. The idea is to make the people confident enough to run its own center. However, we have seen that it is difficult to withdraw from a village after a few years. The center requires constant nurturing.
Our next stop was at the Balwaadi where mothers keep their children during the day while they are working in the fields. Children between the age of 2 and 5 attend the Balwaadi. The children also get a midday meal at this center.
The Balwaadi is run by Ambabai. She usually gets 15 to 16 children a day. The Balwaadi is basically a play school for children. Sevamandir has provided the play materials. Ambabai also teaches them rhymes and cooks the midday meal for the children.
I found the children in very good spirits. They were very eager to recite rhymes for me.
The work of Sevamandir in these villages is impressive. They have built up quite a reputation in and around Udaipur. They have a substantial presence in the villages. They are involved in a wide array of development activities ranging from basic education to construction of water harvesting structures (they have an engineering unit for this purpose).
Our next stop was at the NFE center in Kaliyari village. Kaliyari is another village inhabited by the Meena tribe. The teacher in charge of the center is Duleshwar. The center is in operation for over a year. The attendance on the day we went was 17. 30 children are enrolled in the school. The classroom had an interesting feature. It had a blackboard on all the four walls. Manoj explained that they took advantage of the fact that children love writing on the walls. The children are given exercises that are frequently solved on the wall nearest to them.
Given below is a selection from the transcript of my discussion with Duleshwar(translated from Hindi):
Amit- Why do you keep a stick at the side of your table?
Duleshwar-I do not beat the children. But the sight of the stick is enough to keep them out of mischief. It often helps to maintain order in the class.
Amit-What do you learn from the training workshops?
Duleshwar-They train us on ways to teach children. They tell us how to encourage children, and make them overcome their shyness. Usually some children are very shy. They tell us that if children are giving a wrong answer to a question we should not scold them or even stop them from completing their answer. Scolding and rebukes increases their shyness and reduces their confidence. We are asked to correct them gently. We are told not to beat them. They also give us the teaching materials that we give to the children.
Note: I asked Duleshwar the same questions that I had asked Chatanlal earlier. The impression that I got was similar. Girls do not continue with schooling for long. The higher classes see lower enrollment. The distance of the schools from the village is also a factor. Duleshwar has completed his class XII exam. He is very keen on studying in a college in Udaipur. But his family circumstances are difficult. He got married two years back and he has to look after his family. He appears to be enthusiastic about his job.
On our way back to Udaipur we stopped at the Sevamandir zone office in Gojia. Here the car could not go through to the village since the nala bordering the village was too deep. The main activity going on at the office was an appraisal test being conducted by Saroj-another Sevamandir worker. Saroj was interested in seeing the effects of a 20-day learning camp (that had been conducted by Sevamandir) on the children. The children attend NFE centers along with attending the camps. Children passing the test are moved to more advanced teaching programs. Those who fail go back to the basic course.
The second day activities ended with a site visit to the Vidya Bhavan basic school in Ramgiri. The basic school was established in 1941 with the aim of imparting education based on Gandhian principles. The school provides an emphasis on vocational education. The school has a commercial paper processing unit that I saw in operation the next day. This unit uses the cotton waste from garment factories as their raw material. Many of Vidya Bhavan’s paper needs are met from this unit. The school also has carpentry, food processing, tailoring and electrical workshops. The school aims to provide hands on training to the students in skills that are of interest to them. The aim is to provide students with a livelihood option once they leave school.
We reached the basic school around 1.30pm. The classes were almost over but I had an opportunity to interact with the headmistress and the teachers of the school. My discussion with the headmistress Dr. Sudha Bhandari is given below(translated from Hindi).
Amit – Can you tell me a little bit about your school?
Sudha – This is a basic secondary school having classes from I to X. We follow the curriculum as prescribed by the Rajasthan state education board. Along with curricular studies we give an emphasis on vocational training. We encourage the children to pick a skill of their interest.
Amit – How many students and teachers do you have in your school? What is the teacher student ratio?
Sudha - We have 442 students and 20 teachers in our school. The teacher student ratio in a class is 1:35.
Amit- In many schools there is an implicit push to the students towards the so-called service jobs like Engineering and Medicine. Your school encourages vocational activities. What is the reason?
Sudha- Many people remain unemployed even after getting an M.A degree. Service sector jobs are limited and the competition is fierce. We encourage students to pick up a vocational skill that can be turned into a livelihood at a later stage.
Amit-Do you try to inculcate the feeling in the students that being an Engineer or a Doctor is not the end of all education? Do the students feel that they can live a healthy and respectable life and contribute as a citizen even if they are a carpenter or an electrician?
Sudha- We try to convey to the students the importance of the hands on training they get and the desirability of turning it into a profession. But it is difficult to change the mindset of the people.
Amit- Do the children get this mindset from home? What do the parents have to say regarding the vocational activities that you teach here?
Sudha-The parents often tell us that we do not send our children to school to learn these skills. They already know these things from home. They expect their children to learn something special at school so that they can come out of the situation that their parents find themselves in.
Amit-So a carpenter’s son is made to feel bad about the profession of carpentry?
Sudha-That is correct. We try to tell them that this is not the case and that it can be a good profession for them. But we are often unsuccessful.
Amit-What is the percentage of students graduating from your school that take up these vocational activities?
Sudha-We have just started a research program to study the effect of the vocational training. The results are not in as yet.
I was also told about the computer lab in the school. Computer training starts from class III. Children are taught word processing and programming. There are 12 computers in the lab and two children have to share a computer between them. The electrical workshop teaches children about fixing basic household accessories like kettle, electric iron, and table lamp.
Since the school had finished for the day, I was asked to come again in the morning to visit the workshops.
Day 3, 3rd October 2002
I went back to the basic school in Ramgiri to see the activity centers. Since the time was short I was given a quick trip of the various workshops. I spent most of my time in the paper-processing unit. The unit supervisor showed the different steps involved in the processing of paper. The activity was sophisticated and the headmistress told me that children of classes VIII and above were eligible for this activity. Children can definitely get a flavor about paper processing from this unit but they need more training to make it a profession.
I also visited the tailoring workshop were children, both boys and girls, were busy stitching dresses on sewing machines. This workshop can be seen as an equivalent of an apprentice training at a master tailor’s shop.
I also visited the electrical lab, carpentry workshop, and the food-processing lab. I was surprised to see a large number of boys in the food-processing lab. Children make foodstuff like popcorn in the lab and then they sell it in the school canteen. I found it a very complete exercise since the student is involved in all the stages of the product from preparation to sales.
Conclusions
The Vidya Bhavan education center is doing quality research and training work under the guidance of Hardy. They have a dedicated and hard working team. It is a very good project for ASHA Seattle to fund. However the scope of work in the center is very broad and we need to focus on the specific activities that we would like to support.
The activity that impressed me the most was the NFE center administration by the Sevamandir/Vidya Bhavan team. The NFE program is weakening due to lack of financial support. Hardy feels that it is a big task to maintain and strengthen the existing NFE program and funds in this area will be welcome. Kaushik told me that they cannot do quality appraisals and provide facilities like blackboards on four walls for all centers. I feel this is an area that we should look into in more detail. I have requested Hardy and Prasoon to send me the financial details of administering and strengthening the NFE program.
Given the presence of Sevamandir in the area, I would strongly recommend a long-term relationship with the Vidya Bhavan/Sevamandir team. The impact of their work is felt in many remote villages in Rajasthan. I think this will be a very satisfying project for the Seattle chapter to be involved with.
References