Home Schooling versus Village Schooling in Paalaguttapalle

 

Homeschooling is getting to be a trending word.

There is one issue though.

A home can't school. Only a community can. Schooling in values, in perspective, in discipline, in culture, in attitudes.

Parenting is about working out such a community. In synchrony with the values, the learnings the parents seek. For the child.

Our daughter did her 10th and 12th thro NIOS privately. It worked well... It allowed for a lot of village time, and her other Sanskrit learnings.

But her real education in the best and widest sense of the term happened because of the village. PaalaGuttaPalle Dalitwada.

If she was up late to sweep the yard and put the muggu (kolam/Rangoli) someone down the street would call out to her, asking if this time was valid. This was when she was five. That habit of rising early and sweeping is a habit for life for her.

So also lighting the lamp before the gods every evening. So also the Friday prayers.

A poorest community, giving unthinkingly to each stranger in need at the door, and forgetting the giving the moment it is given, has given her a bar for life.

Each if the community being her Akka, Anna, Avva (grandmother), Pedamma (elder mother), Thatha (grandfather). Herself being Akka, Pinni to many children. Is what made the slender bonds unbreakable.

... It takes a village to bring up a child ...

The village we seek for our child, is what we need to work on. It could be in a remote district or in a city or on Mars. The child is shaped by this village.

Home is far vaster than the home one is born in ... and schooling happens in this vaster space.

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Homeschooling is an oxymoron. School schooling is worse.

It takes a village to bring up a child.

4 Comments

• Suraj Kumar

  absolutely. After a year of trying to Unschool my daughter while being stuck in the city I can say that it is a luxury to attempt it. And even then the neighboring children place a peer pressure that requires conformity. That said am not sure there are much children in the villages who aren't being schooled. govt schools aren't any better for they too make the children look forward to moving out of the villages.

  

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    Aparna Krishnan

    doesnt work. unschooling in a city. because we are a part of the same society - and the change needs to be vaster than us for even us to be able to sustain it. collective redemption or nothing.

    

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  • Suraj Kumar

    It works to the extent that the child opens up to so many things otherwise not possible within four walls. We went on a lot of birding trips and watched snakes fish for food at lakes. We went to the nearby slums and chatted up with the people there and played with the kids there. But it doesn't lead to a happy child as much as it leads to a child who starts awakening to the reality of this horrible world. It can get depressing for the child.

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    Aparna Krishnan

    Children need a lot of company, peer and otherwise. In a village the community gives that. in a city in HSing that becomes hard.