Looking back at the week we spent at MGIS, concluding at a most enthralling workshop that we attended only this afternoon, we find ourselves at a junction with a lot more opportunities, ideas, inspirations, and ideologies. To bring down the workshop to a gist would be difficult and also unfair, but I'll try to keep what we need for our project sake.
There were a lot of new ideas thrown and woven in beautifully in the narrative of the dialogue. Most importantly we were introduced to the idea of democratic education and global systems of learning. It can be identified as a counter to the analytic system of learning that most of us come from - A concept that emphasises a macro to micro (whole to particular) idea of learning for every subject. Introduced by a couple of french philosophers of the 1920's, this idea has a minority of followers as of know, owing to power balances and politics; but keen educationalists in this realm have found grounds to keep it going. Friere is one such philosopher who talks about generating text by the children for the children, so as to increase involvement and therefore productivity. The qualitative emphasis is enormous and even though it may seem largely impractical to apply that kind of individual attention to a population like ours, it does feel like the call of the hour.
Education in india is in a state of flux at this point, with more people recognising the loopholes and consciously comparing our systems more evolved systems of a few countries; But to actually create any kind of ripple in the waters, a much more massive dive of involvement is required on the side of the more privileged, specialised educated class of intellects - those who are willing and excited to stir up the education system.
In our small way, I hope we do.
