One day in a school....

I dream of bridging the gap between rich and poor in access to quality education.I believe education can emancipate the masses from the mire of ignorance and poverty.I strongly hold the view that it is a quintessential aspect of human development.OK! let me not dwell too much into the virtues of education, which I will do in my subsequent posts.My aim in this post is to share my experience in a rural Indian school.
A brief picture:
That village is different from any conventional village with cement factories surrounding it-pollution at its peaks.Income disparities do exist, though caste differences are a little thinner.Most of the people of that village work in one of those factories.It has 4 primary schools one secondary school(govt run) and two private schools.

My experience:
I happened to visit one of those private schools.It's a newly born one with a very nominal fee.That school's correspondent has no experience with education. All he had was money, though little.There are 4 to 5 students in each class.The qualifications of teachers are -unemployed graduates or housewives who have no idea about pedagogic practices.I attended class 9th to understand about those kids.They were curious, some of them, sorry, one of them wants to become a civil servant.Some do not know about having goals and dreams in life.They are intelligent ones but their intelligence is limited and curtailed because of lack of proper nurturing.Many of them do not know if the sun and the moon differ in some way (star and satellite)!. I tried to instill some confidence in those young minds by narrating the story of Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam.They found it interesting.I tried to talk to teachers, many of them are of my age or a little more than that.They were receptive.I tried to explain them my little understanding of a good teacher and they too showed me how they utilize limited resources to instill knowledge in those young minds.Many kids by the end of the session came to me and shared some of their ideas, doubts etc., I felt really happy to interact with them.But many questions bothered me - why should those kids be deprived of a quality education? Why should money define what and how they have to study? Should education be a business? How can I change this situation??
If you have some experience like this or some ideas relevant to this topic please do comment.
Bye.

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