Limitations in schooling interventions

A Story.

When I first moved to the village, 1995, it was with the youthful notion that a good schooling could set many things right. I had read on Nayee Taleem many times over.Schooling which incorporated local skills and local wisdom and gave credibility to that was the need. We persuaded the local potter to come and teach in school. The children and I made mud lamps for Diwali. It was fun.

But ... a little later down the road, some narratives became clearer. The potter was a poor and disillusioned man. He sold fewer and fewer pots as time passed, and was working as a labourer. He himself used aluminium vessels at home. The whole system was loaded against him and the rural economy and rural self worth was in shambles.

Simply singing its virtues in school was a meaningless exercise as the scool was simply a small part of a larger economic and cultural reality.And scooling bacame a side involvement as I started breaking my head on the village economy and possibilities.

Sometimes people ask me what we have 'acheived'. What can I say ? Plastics have become more rampant, as even water pots and winnows are of plastic. Agriculture has become a sadder story, as groundwater has gone from 200 feet to 1000 feet over 20 years.

A few things happenned like ayurveda getting accepted and established. But for every step forward, the wave of modernization swept us and the community and the earth some miles backward. The fight is larger than one village, or district, though it has to be anchored on the ground in the village and district. And fought.