Poorna Pragna Visit by Anita Balasubramanian(ant_asha@yahoo.com) Date of Visit - Friday May 30, 2003 Address - Tara Gopinath, Purnapragna, 404, Alanahalli, Mysore 560011, tel – 0821-2417569 Currently Funded by - Asha Detroit and donations by other well wishers Amount Funded - $ 3000 for 2002-2003, $4200 for 2003-2004 Earlier Funded by - CRY(till 2001), Ratan Tata Trust(till 2002) Highlights - Alternative school, in existence for 19 years, mimimal admin costs and overheads Student teacher ratio - 8:1 Poorna Pragna school was started in 1984 by Tara Gopinath in a village Alanahalli near Mysore. Before this she had been working in formal schools for many years. She and others working in the formal schools, slowly started feeling that they wanted to work in a different kind of school. Malathi (Tara's sister) had started her school Vikasana meanwhile and this attracted her. She and another friend of her decided to start a non-formal (alternative) school near Mysore for the poor children. Her friend moved to some other place due to personal reasons. Tara Akka bought the land and started the school in 1984 with about 17 children. She got trained by Malathi of Vikasana, who was trained by David Horsburgh, a famous educationist. Slowly more teachers joined in. At every point the school ensured that the teacher student ratio is no more than 1:10. Tara Akka feels that 1:20 teacher-student ratio is feasible in schools where the family background of the children is better than what it is here in these villages. Currently the school has 26 children in the age group of 9-16 years. Besides Tara Akka, there are 3 full time teachers - Kumuda, Rajalakshmi and Mary and one part time teacher Gayathri. Kumudha has worked with this school for 8 years and earlier in Navodaya schools for some years and Rajalakshmi for 12 years. Mary has also been with the school for a while (I dont know how many years exactly). Gayathri comes to the school twice a week to teach maths to the children. Kumuda works with the older children, Rajalakshmi with the middle age group children and mary with the younger children. Rajalakshmi joined Poorna Pragna immediately after finishing her BAed. Before joining Poorna Pragna Kumuda worked with Navodaya schools for some years. Kumuda also volunteers with a women's organisation called Samata in Mysore which does counselling work with women in case of dowry, abuse etc. She also has been involved with various government workshops and recently attended a training program on gender sensitisation. Tara Akka provides overall guidance, takes music lessons, helps with pottery and clay work and works with slow learners. Apart from this she also takes care of the overall administration of the school, handles requests for admissions, talks with parents and ensures that the schools runs smoothly. Tara Akka is also a resource person for Pratham in Mysore and a committee member of Mysore Task Force - which coordinates functioning of schools in and around Mysore. Tara Akka and Manju(a student of Poorna Pragna who now works as a teacher at SVYM) had both attended the conference on alternatives in education at Bangalore, January 11-13, 2003. They spoke about their school there. Details can be found at http://www.ashanet.org/conferences/lni/poornapragnya.htm. Philosophy of the school The philosophy of the school is that school should be a place of overall and complete development of the child. The school provides stress on academics as well as arts and craft, since both are important. Music, painting, clay work, sewing are all given as much importance as math, english, kannada and science. The methods used to teach the children are flexible and there is no fixed methodology that is followed in the later years. This is because each teacher feels comfortable and confident teaching a certain way and each child learns through different ways. In the earlier years, english alphabets are introduced through phonetics, rather than as aay, bee, see, etc. There are no exams, but continuous evaluation by the teacher happens, since the teacher student ratio is small. The school follows its own set of books for science and math whenever possible. The children learn in an atmosphere of freedom and free of fear. The relationship between the teacher and the child is based on love and respect and not one based on fear. Regular contact with the parents is maintained. A day at the school The school has 3 buildings. One is the main building with 3 rooms. The other is an open structure with a roof and blackboard and some shelves, and as an extension as another room where they have a sewing machine, some benches and house the things made of clay. The third one is partly an open shed with the potters wheel and place for cooking the kanji and partly a room which has clay and other items. The school normally starts at 9am and goes on till 4pm. The school day starts by wishing Shuba divasa to everyone and singing sahana vavatu. After this the children sing various songs in English, Kannada Hindi or other languages they have learnt. On the day I went, they sang some English and Kannada songs. I found the songs and the rhymes different, good and generating a lot of enthusiasm and energy. I learnt a few from them, so I could use it in need :). Around 9:30 the children go to their classes and various subjects are taken up for each group. This goes on till lunch and after which the children take up maths and then do various arts and craft activities(clay, sewing, painting, paper work etc). They have a potters wheel as well as a kiln to fire the clay things they make. Friday's are a special day for the school. The normal routine is not followed in the morning. Rather they have a session called general session in the morning where all the children work together or have diccussions or do science experiments. On the day I went, friday, the children were doing activities on improving their handwriting and reading in Kannada, jumbled words in English and some math problems. They were all trying to see who could finish these faster without any mistakes. Most children were able to complete these without mistakes, though some children had difficulty. The problems given were problem to children of all ages, so some found it easy, while others found it difficult. I suggested to the teachers to make them into maybe two groups. Then the children went for their 'kanji'. After this, I had a discussion with the children on a project they had done - about villages and cities. I was asking them what are the good things about cities and villages. Most children seemed to mention many good things about the village and more bad things about the cities (like pollution, heat, noise, lack of space etc.). Then was time to clean the school, which happens every friday. After this was lunch and after lunch, we again sat down with the children and I asked them what are the things they like in the school and what they dont like or what they would like to see changed. All seemed to like the arts and craft activties. Some children said they did not like the kanji, they did not like Naga the dog(since he walks on their notebooks :)) etc. Some said they wanted to have uniform,a compound for the school and exams! So we discussed about why they wanted exams. Someone mentioned that if they do not have exams, parents feel that they do not study due to lack of fear of exams. We discussed about passing and failing and if any of them would like to fail. Then another one of the older girls mentioned that here the teachers teach something till they understand, in government schools the teachers only teach once for the sake of teaching and hence exams are need to check if they are learning/understanding there, whereas here exams are not needed. It was getting late and so we closed this session. The children then had some time for themselves during which each one was doing different things. I decided to take a look at all that the children had made - pots, paintings, paper work items embroidery, cross stitch etc). I found it simply beautiful. The children had such vivid imagination and had so much of creativity which the school is nurturing. Most of what they had made is sold every year and they make money out of this for the running of the school. This year as well they had sold most of their best pieces. But the pieces I saw were by themselves so good, that I had to imagine how good the best pieces must have been! After this one of the children was teaching the others to make an aeroplane and sun using paper. He had learnt it recently and was eager to share it with the children. I then showed them to make a frog and a ball using paper. The school ended after we spent a little more time learning to say a tongue twister rhyme in English, which was fun! Approach to sensitive issues - The school has had to deal with the caste issues many times in the earlier years. The children of the upper caste(lingayats) would not want to sit with the harijan children. However today such issues are hardly present. The children interact freely and eat with each other as well. They also go back home and deal with these issues at home to whatever extent they can. They have also had to deal with gender inequality and adolescent problems as well. Early girl child marriage is another problem they have had to deal with. Atleast the girls from their school they are able to ensure get married only after 19-20 yrs of age. Otherwise in the village, this is still common. Tara Akka feels that they have been able to deal with such issues successfully by adopting one or more of the following ways 1. Address these issues between children immediately, through dialogue. However one more thing to remember is that it may be good to let go of certain incidents, though we have noticed it , and the children know we have noticed it, instead of making a big deal of them by talking about them. Rather just mention it in passing, or divert the attention. 2. Bring about changes through your action. 3. Story telling is a very good medium of getting across what you want to say. 4. Relationship with parents and talking with them about these issues, once in a while is also important. Tara Akka feels that there have been many cases where the children have been helped by the school to come out of depression or not take an extreme step due to emotional problems or problems at home. The sister of one of the children coming to the school had committed suicide. Tara Akka feels that such things can be avoided if teachers and parents give attention the the child's feelings and emotional problems. The children come from very difficult family backgrounds, lot of violence, beating, abuse and not much of love, affection and attention. The school provides them a place where they feel loved, cared and attended to. Comments - This is certainly a school that encourages complete development of the children and Asha should continue to work with it. - The older children recently organised a workshop on arts and craft with Tara Akka, for 100 children from government school, through Pratham. - This school has been functioning for 19 years now. Tara Akka now feels that she is unable to continue at the same pace and put in the same efforts and energy as she used to earlier. She is trying to see if the teachers can take up more responsibilities of the school and the administration. If we know of someone who would be interested in taking up administrative responsibilities of the school in Mysore, do refer them to Tara Akka. - Maybe because the school just re-opened this week, the heat and it was a friday(general day of the school), I felt that the overall pace of the school was a bit slow.