Whatzup Guys,
I am back from India after 28 days long dreamlike vacation. For time being lets postpone the interesting stories that I thought I should tell, well… hmmm on second thought, did I have to?… anyway, coming to the point, several months back a couple of us had started a discussion about organizing a meeting and village visit in Dec 05 in India where couple of abroad-abiding too could attend and start some kind of group meaning to contribute towards community. That finally culminated into Jat Jagriti meeting which, unfortunately, me and some other fellows couldn’t attend because of last minute change in itinerary. I am happy to know that 24th gathering was huge success with lots of new volunteers joining in. Though I read posts but couldn’t add because internet was slow in India. I am also sorry for not being able to meet all friends whom we had planned to meet personally, however some appointments did materialize e.g. meeting with Navin bhai was wonderful.
So I planned to do some work in the way I could with constraints of time and work force. Since we all work in same direction this could be called Jat Jagriti event #2 though I didn’t get time (and neither had wish to) to make noise in Jatland
).
I visited couple of schools and purpose of trips was two-fold.
1) To discuss with teacher and students the kind of issues that we had been talking about in Jatland for long and kind of assess the ground situation, to interaction with children and to see if any ad-hoc solution is available to any current problem.
2) The excuse for breaking the ice and making students comfortable was a 1 hr presentation in Hindi about scientific discoveries done in ancient India along with a video on laptop. Video, and so the talk, is a BBC documentary called “What the Ancients Did for US –(India)”. The purpose was also to enthuse children by tickling with curious little minds through informative discussion. The talk contained material easily comprehensible for kids: i.e. Indian mathematics (number system, zero etc.), advances in Indus civilization, advances in sculpture and cloth industry, metallurgy (like steel in “loh-stambh”), medicines and yoga, innovative instruments like clocks (water-clock and later Jantar-mantar), advanced ideas like perpetual motion machines, chess, rockets (first used by Tipu Sultan against British) and the language -Sanskrit. Children were very receptive and eager to understand things. I managed to visit following three schools.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/ancients/.)
Govt. Sen Sec School, Nandgaon (Bhiwani)
This is very old and famous school (3 km from my village Sarangpur) in the region where children from 5-6 nearby villages come to study and it has good staff till XII class (science too). Apart from aforementioned talk career options for XI-XII students were discussed. I was surprised by the lack of awareness about competition exams and hence the lack of motivation in studies. After general talk about quality in education and problems faced in rural area, it was decided to add engineering competition books in library for XII science students and put more emphasis on entrance exams rather than BSc in local colleges. Students and teachers were given contacts of NAJC in case any deserving student stands out. They really liked to hear about rather lesser known scientific achievements of ancient India. (First two pictures)
Govt. High School, Sarangpur (Bhiwani)
My alma-mater. Apart from few informal visits, the formal visit consisted of day-long discussions about need and possibilities of improvement in education. The quality has gone down since “my days” i.e. around early nineties. It was sad to see conditions in rural schools in general. We try to catch on to exact reasons through discussions and thinking but concrete answers escape us because reason for degradation in quality is complicated mixture of several inter-related factors. One reason is popularity of private school because they manage to produce better results in board exams. E.g. Private schools start teaching VIII books in VII and X books in IX, so that more people pass board exams but it’s at expense of quality in overall education. They put much less emphasis on other aspects of education like sport and cultural development and make student mug in extra time for more marks. Part of blame goes to parents and teachers too though the principal in the particular school was very nice and eager to help. She even offered a girl, the only student who had got scholarship in X board in the school, to stay with her family in Bhiwani so that she can go to good school. But girl’s family didn’t want that. Anyway we had motivational discussions with students with presentation. (Third pic)
Sukhram Memorial Public School, Kalirawan (Hisar)
My brother and I rode to Kalirawan on 01/16/05. We manage to reach just 5 min before the school closed and were received by Harphool Singhji (R. Aryaji’s contact, manager of development work). Class V was made to stay to listen to my chattering which I had to cut short although kids were very eager; that was followed by general chat with principal and others. It was more like a friendly visit with less planning and I was amazed to see the scale of Aryaji’s contribution and vision. It currently has classes up to 5th class and will be upgraded to XII once construction completes. The whole environment and set-up was quite different from regular schools. Children were very disciplined and education is virtually free. School property consists of about 30 acres which might be used for education center or institute in future. 8 resident quarters for teachers from far away and a guest house was under construction (the last pic). There are several such projects undertaken by NAJC which can be seen on the website. http://www.ajata.org/
(Last 2 pics)
I am back from India after 28 days long dreamlike vacation. For time being lets postpone the interesting stories that I thought I should tell, well… hmmm on second thought, did I have to?… anyway, coming to the point, several months back a couple of us had started a discussion about organizing a meeting and village visit in Dec 05 in India where couple of abroad-abiding too could attend and start some kind of group meaning to contribute towards community. That finally culminated into Jat Jagriti meeting which, unfortunately, me and some other fellows couldn’t attend because of last minute change in itinerary. I am happy to know that 24th gathering was huge success with lots of new volunteers joining in. Though I read posts but couldn’t add because internet was slow in India. I am also sorry for not being able to meet all friends whom we had planned to meet personally, however some appointments did materialize e.g. meeting with Navin bhai was wonderful.
So I planned to do some work in the way I could with constraints of time and work force. Since we all work in same direction this could be called Jat Jagriti event #2 though I didn’t get time (and neither had wish to) to make noise in Jatland
).I visited couple of schools and purpose of trips was two-fold.
1) To discuss with teacher and students the kind of issues that we had been talking about in Jatland for long and kind of assess the ground situation, to interaction with children and to see if any ad-hoc solution is available to any current problem.
2) The excuse for breaking the ice and making students comfortable was a 1 hr presentation in Hindi about scientific discoveries done in ancient India along with a video on laptop. Video, and so the talk, is a BBC documentary called “What the Ancients Did for US –(India)”. The purpose was also to enthuse children by tickling with curious little minds through informative discussion. The talk contained material easily comprehensible for kids: i.e. Indian mathematics (number system, zero etc.), advances in Indus civilization, advances in sculpture and cloth industry, metallurgy (like steel in “loh-stambh”), medicines and yoga, innovative instruments like clocks (water-clock and later Jantar-mantar), advanced ideas like perpetual motion machines, chess, rockets (first used by Tipu Sultan against British) and the language -Sanskrit. Children were very receptive and eager to understand things. I managed to visit following three schools.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/ancients/.)
Govt. Sen Sec School, Nandgaon (Bhiwani)
This is very old and famous school (3 km from my village Sarangpur) in the region where children from 5-6 nearby villages come to study and it has good staff till XII class (science too). Apart from aforementioned talk career options for XI-XII students were discussed. I was surprised by the lack of awareness about competition exams and hence the lack of motivation in studies. After general talk about quality in education and problems faced in rural area, it was decided to add engineering competition books in library for XII science students and put more emphasis on entrance exams rather than BSc in local colleges. Students and teachers were given contacts of NAJC in case any deserving student stands out. They really liked to hear about rather lesser known scientific achievements of ancient India. (First two pictures)
Govt. High School, Sarangpur (Bhiwani)
My alma-mater. Apart from few informal visits, the formal visit consisted of day-long discussions about need and possibilities of improvement in education. The quality has gone down since “my days” i.e. around early nineties. It was sad to see conditions in rural schools in general. We try to catch on to exact reasons through discussions and thinking but concrete answers escape us because reason for degradation in quality is complicated mixture of several inter-related factors. One reason is popularity of private school because they manage to produce better results in board exams. E.g. Private schools start teaching VIII books in VII and X books in IX, so that more people pass board exams but it’s at expense of quality in overall education. They put much less emphasis on other aspects of education like sport and cultural development and make student mug in extra time for more marks. Part of blame goes to parents and teachers too though the principal in the particular school was very nice and eager to help. She even offered a girl, the only student who had got scholarship in X board in the school, to stay with her family in Bhiwani so that she can go to good school. But girl’s family didn’t want that. Anyway we had motivational discussions with students with presentation. (Third pic)
Sukhram Memorial Public School, Kalirawan (Hisar)
My brother and I rode to Kalirawan on 01/16/05. We manage to reach just 5 min before the school closed and were received by Harphool Singhji (R. Aryaji’s contact, manager of development work). Class V was made to stay to listen to my chattering which I had to cut short although kids were very eager; that was followed by general chat with principal and others. It was more like a friendly visit with less planning and I was amazed to see the scale of Aryaji’s contribution and vision. It currently has classes up to 5th class and will be upgraded to XII once construction completes. The whole environment and set-up was quite different from regular schools. Children were very disciplined and education is virtually free. School property consists of about 30 acres which might be used for education center or institute in future. 8 resident quarters for teachers from far away and a guest house was under construction (the last pic). There are several such projects undertaken by NAJC which can be seen on the website. http://www.ajata.org/
(Last 2 pics)
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