Learning Spaces

In her perceptive article, Nandini Shetty demonstrates from her own individual and organizational practice, how walls and curated engagements with nature can be productively used as learning spaces to reignite children’s innate love for knowledge.

A piece discussions of the following three volumes, ‘Our Land Our Life: A Curriculum for Children of Rural Communities in India’ by Nyla Coelho, ‘Selected Essays of Dr. S. S. Kalbag on Education, Technology & Rural Development’ (edited by Sangram Gaikwad), and ‘Position Paper of the National Focus Group on Work and Education’ (produced by a group chaired by Prof. Anil Sadgopal). All the three help us interrogate the relationship between work and education in a productive fashion.

The present issue of Samuhik Pahal focuses on the topic of ‘Work and Education.’ Instead of focusing on how the brave new world of work, which is shifting its contours on an almost everyday basis, is changing our systems of education, we choose to focus here on work itself as a mode of learning. In this issue we also share with you, innovations in learning strategies that are showing us ways of ‘learning to learn’ and of ‘being and working,’ which promise to help us take care for ourselves and of the places we inhabit.

In ‘Lessons from Learners,’ A. R. Vasavi shares the experiences of running an integrated learning program for rural youth in Karnataka, which tries to reorient them towards the possibilities of land-based livelihoods, and build their self-respect and connectedness relating to their communities through place-based education and social transformative learning.

In ‘Empowering People with Disabilities through Creativity and Skill Development,’ Vidhya V shares the learnings from the process of running a Multimedia and Animation Training Centre for the differently abled.

The ‘Ground Zero’ piece discusses the work of three organizations from across the country (from Udaipur in Rajasthan, Kutch in Gujarat and Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh) that are pioneering innovative approaches linking work and learning. The work of these CSOs gives us hope that work can indeed become an important pedagogic tool for facilitating learning, especially of those belonging to marginalized communities.