Education

Roshni Ravi curated a set of textual resources on nature education for this issue of Samuhik Pahal, offering valuable insights and knowledge to the readers.

In this article, Chandra Shekhar Balachandran makes a case for making geography education in schools more concept-driven and activity-based. He shows us how this process can contribute towards building larger insights into social processes.

In the piece titled “Quest of Togetherness: ‘Sangati’” Nivedita Dwivedi writes about the ‘Sangati’ program of Avehi Abacus Project. Sangati is an innovative, three-year supplementary social sciences program, comprising of six kits, that runs in classes V to VII of Mumbai’s municipal schools.

This volume remains important and relevant, as it discusses some fundamental issues and concerns related to the nature of learning in social sciences disciplines.

In this issue, we also carry an interview with Eklavya, an organization that has been experimenting with plural ideas and practices of learning centers for more than two decades. It has used its experiences in these spaces for building deep engagements with the communities and people it works with, for improving learning-related processes in governmental schools, and in developing its grounded thinking about democratic education.

We also carry a review of her book ‘The Open Classroom’ in this issue. This volume captures her decades-long journey of working towards meaningful and democratic learning of children, often of marginalized backgrounds. It also discusses her efforts and experiences in running a learning center for children in the Tilaknagar area of Bengaluru.