Alternative Elementary Education for Children – Learning from Life

Education is not just about making people literate or enrolling them in schools. It is a means to self-actualization and social development. It furnishes learners with skills essential for leading a socially, economically secure and leading a happy life. It is important to provide education for all but even more important is to ensure quality of education through meaningful curricula, methodologies, educational materials, properly trained teachers, management and monitoring and learning environment that are relevant to learner's lives and respond to their needs. Rote memorization of information that is either irrelevant or taught without creating a link to the learners' experience has proved counter productive.

In the language and the spirit of the Convention on the rights of children, an education program must focus on the four groups of basic human rights of children: survival, development, participation and protection. A curriculum that is informed of these rights is bound to be different from the one in vogue. It has to include the following areas of study right from the beginning:

1. Civic education that is informed of the relationship between individual and family; individual and the society, the concepts of justice, rights and responsibilities etc
2. Education and training on health and environment those are absolutely imperative in order to have a healthy individuals, environment and society. Closely related to health is to understand the details of nutrition.
3. Agriculture and applied science are two other subjects that not only improve the understanding of health, nutrition and environment but can ensure livelihood earning and sow the seeds of future research. Home economics can help plan life in a better way.
4. In order to provide an entry to the above learning it is important to provide the learners with solid foundation in the medium of instruction and mathematics.
5. To prepare them for the modern day world it is imperative to provide them literacy in computers and English.

These goals give rise to the question of how to incorporate the above areas of study at the level of elementary education. Understanding the learning needs of children and preparing them for life is the sole way to developing responsive methodologies and curricula. Khoj believes in the long-lasting effects of a child-centered learning environment that ensures space for children,  participation and self-expression. Making learning an everyday life experience for learners and infusing a spirit of self-discovery and self-exploration has to be the hallmark of the new approach and methodology.

Khoj has been experimenting with this approach and methodology for more than eight years. The following lines from an external evaluation in 2004 explain the outcomes:

Khoj methodology “… is a holistic approach to teaching and learning. Students engage in a wide range of diverse curriculum strands that are meaningful, relevant to their context and daily lives, and that are built on the assumption that the children's potential to question, enquire, problem solving, to collaborate and challenge are essential components of a good education. Teachers are viewed as learners who co-construct meaning alongside students in classrooms and in the world beyond”.

The evaluation further states, “The curriculum developed by Khoj is a clear reflection of curriculum that is based on locally relevant content that enables learners to find meaning in every aspect of their lives. It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning. Curriculum is seen as integrated whole, learning in Urdu relates to learning about science and the practical activities in the agricultural plot. The Khoj methodology reflects the connectedness between subjects, the way in which children truly learn about their world and use quality active learning as a critical tool inside and the outside the classroom.”