Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The job of the school is to teach so well that family background is no longer an issue”. We need to equip all our schools to cater for all reasons that are making our children drop out from the schools.
Our Demonstrative schools
Children from different socio-economic – cultural backgrounds are required to teach by using different teaching methodologies connecting to their lives. Strategies that we use for tribal children will not be useful for children from urban areas. This is the reason why children from Rural, Tribal and Economically weaker backgrounds feel alienated in our universal education system and eventually, they become dropouts.
Though there is a lot of charity work that has happened with these children from vulnerable backgrounds, what we need is strong education models for children from Tribal, Rural and economically weaker sections that they feel connected and also empower them.
Appropriate Education Model: Democratic Education
The international community on democratic education defines Democratic education in the following way. We believe that, in any educational setting, young people have the right:
- to decide individually how, when, what, where and with whom they learn
- to have an equal share in the decision-making as to how their organisations – in particular their schools – are run, and which rules and sanctions, if any, are necessary
The diverse participants in Democratic Education are united in upholding the spirit of the Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child and implementing this as the primary framework for the day-to-day practices in all learning environments.”
How these demonstrative schools are different from others?
Bachpan Banao 