Nation-building through education

Shukla Bose, founder, and CEO of Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit organisation that runs English-medium schools for underprivileged children, made a moving plea for education for all. She pointed out that by 2020, 120 million students will need jobs in India but only 84% of them will be employable and this is a demographic disaster. We often don’t plan for the marginalised sections of the society in terms of education. We need to change this attitude and build a nation that provides education to each child.

Bose pointed out, “Students drop out of school because there’s no value in the schools that they go to. It is said that with basic education, 71 million people will get out of poverty and global poverty will be 12% less. That’s the impact of education.”

She also suggested the actions needed for change, “We need to make education relevant for the new world. The curriculum needs to span cultural, economic and personal and interpersonal global relations. Our curriculum, teaching, and learning is local while it needs to be global because our students will have to apply for jobs globally. We need to incorporate flipped classrooms with collaborative and independent learning, digital textbooks, artificial intelligence, personalized learning, etc. We need to teach students to use their own brain and let them understand what, how and when can they learn; that makes them learn better.”

Adding to her point, she said, “We need to promote multi-disciplinary learning. For all of this to happen, teachers must start learning and they must teach how to learn, they must teach collaboration and evaluation of information. Teachers must become curators of all the information that’s available for a child. Teach them love and tolerance and when that falls in place in a school system, half your job is done. We need coaches, not teachers. And when all that happens, there’ll be less social unrest.”
Bose also shared the two models followed by Parikrma, “The first is the 360-degree model wherein we give nutrition and total health care to each student while working with their families. The second model is the E-to-E model wherein we take care of the children from age 5 to 25; we mentor them till they’re placed in jobs and it is good news that 100% of our students went to college last year. We have trained students with school habits, toilet habits and follow no compromise curriculum. We also have remedial and counseling programs for students who are susceptible to danger or trauma or have seen horrific events. “

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She also highlighted the healthy cycle that begins with educating these children wherein even their parents develop a healthy mindset and lifestyle, which in turn makes the student perform better in school. She concluded by saying, “It is with equal opportunities that we will have a robust nation.”