My Abyasika experiences

In IITB we have a very noble initiative called Abyasika, whose purpose is to improve the educational standards of the nearby slum children. Though the initiative has been going on for years, I came to know about this only during my 2nd year in IITB. Now it's been around 8 months since I started going for this, though I sincerely wish I could have joined this from my 1st year.

Everyday a batch of volunteers go to the slums near IITB, and help the children with their homework, clarify the doubts that they might have which, I guess, either they are afraid to ask the teachers or may not have understood when it was taught in their class.

It is not at all easy to make a small kid understand what something means, especially kids in the age group of 11-13. These children go to the nearby govt aided public schools where the quality of the teachers are one of the lowest. The  level of education of a kid in these schools is much below the equivalent education level of his or her counterpart in private schools.

The most difficult part in teaching these kids is that what sounds obvious to us are not at all obvious to these small kids. Let's take an example

If I ask one of them to evaluate


  2 +
  3
-----

then they will give me the answer as 5.

But if I write the same thing as

2+3=

then they are unable to give me an answer.

They are unable to understand that both the above formats are one and the same.

Similarly if I write

2*5=

they will give the correct answer but when I rewrite it as

5*2=

they are not able to provide the answer.

Almost the same scenario is repeated when teaching English. Everyday these children are given a set of questions to do as homework by their school teachers. These children are asked to find the answers to the questions and then write both the question and answer 5 times. What these children do is, they just open their guides, search for the question and then copy the answer. Then they write both the questions and the answers 5 times. Homework done!!!

But what is the result? The students know both the questions and the answers by heart, but if I ask them what is the meaning of these questions and the answers, they have no clue.

For example the question and answer may be as follows

Q) How many wheels are there in a bicycle

A) There are two wheels in a bicycle.

If I ask the children the question, I get the answer within 2 seconds. But if I ask them what the question actually means, they have no idea. Thus these children are encouraged to resort to the same old technique of plain rote learning which is the curse of our Indian education system. What is more shocking is that the students do not show an inclination to understand the meaning behind what they are learning. It is not because they are not interested, but because their primary priority is to complete their "homework" otherwise they will receive punishments from their teachers the next day.

But what is amazing is the that even when provided with such sub standard quality education in their schools, there are one or two kids among them, whose ability to grasp and understand things is just mind boggling. Given the right education and help, I have no doubt in my mind that these kids can conquer the world. But the question is will these talents go wasted or can we do something to provide these kids with the right help.

Before I end, I would like to share an essay that a student in Abyasika has written, when asked to write an essay about her favourite teacher. Her name is Deepti.

PS : You can skip the last line of the essay. That line was added by Rishi, who too comes with me to Abyasika :)