The participative schooling involving carpentry, masonry, pitching a tent, lighting a fire, knitting woolens, stitching clothes and cooking food is becoming popular in many schools of Japan and South Korea. These schools are preparing children for life, enabling them to learn the essential life skills which will help these children face the challenges of life in the later life. Every day newer and newer life skills imparting lessons are being exhibited on various social media handles.
While this participative, practical type education is being followed by schools worldwide schools in South Asia somehow seem reluctant to adopt this practical method of education. Even though the New Education Policy has encouraged practical education, but on the ground the real practical education to start in the primary schools will take many more years, possibly decades. Some schools in Hyderabad and Bengaluru have adopted practical ways of learning but their number can be counted on the fingers. The majority of the schools still follow the white chalk and blackboard method of teaching which has been rendered obsolete in majority of the countries.
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In the Kashmir valley while the infrastructure for the higher secondary schools looks satisfactory the infrastructure at the primary schools leaves a lot to be desired. The buildings are rickety, old and at some places leaky. Teachers often reach late to schools and most days attendance is also very thin. Influential teachers wield constant influence to avoid teaching at far flung primary schools. Most of the influential teachers dig in at town centres and adopt long term roles in various non-teaching roles. The well-meaning teachers have to travel every day 30 to 40 kilometres to reach these far flung schools.
For practical education it is important to train the teachers which in itself is a huge challenge. It would require great manpower and countless man hours to complete this huge task. It is a long way when all government as well as private primary schools will fully adopt the practical schooling. Step by step approach would be helpful here and we e need to keep moving however slowly. Slow progress is any day better than no progress.
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