Digantar

OUTSIDE OF JAIPUR - The following is the feedback email which we sent to Digantar. If you would first like to know more about Digantar, you should visit their website at www.digantar.org.

Hello Rohit-ji and Reena-ji. This is Raj and Sameer. We are now inAhmedabad at the Indicorps (the organization Juie Mahajan is from)end-of-the-year workshop.
First, thank you for letting us visit Digantar, sharing with us, and letting us observe the schools. It furthered our journey into understanding education.

We wanted to give some of our feedback, both points of strength andpossible critiques. We have just listed them in bullet-format:
• Community meeting seemed to value transparency and community voice.
• Digantar seemed to have a very good reputation in the community (asseen by the long waiting list).
• The idea of "Sampark" – the teachers going to the village andmeeting with parents and familes – every day seems like it can be apowerful tool.
• The "Apne Aas Paas" textbook series seems like a good attempt toallow the child to use the community as a learning means. However, isthere any attempt to ensure that they actually interact with community members or not?
• Architecture at school seemed to create a natural environment that was not stifling for the students. The circular building with a common"spill-out" area also seemed to create a positive environment for interactions.
• Students seem to enjoy and feel responsible for physically taking care of their school – cleaning, filling up water, etc. The teachersalso participating in these activities seemed to be a very importantcomponent.
• Having different "classes" or levels of student in one group seemedto have the following effects:
o Reduced (or no) competition
o Natural collaboration/cooperation
o Learning the material on their own
• As we understand Digantar's vision and the learning process, the goal is to make the students life-long learners. This would meanlearning from the people and world around them, not just in a schoolsetting. We aren't sure if the independent work in class wouldtranslate to self-motivated learning outside school boundaries. Also, it seems that "life-long learning" would result out of constant questioning. We did not see too much evidence that encouraged this questioning, or pushed the students to challenge their own assumptions/thinking.
• From observing the lower primary groups, did not notice any use ofactivities in learning math or language.
• Most students in the classroom were engaged at all times; and teacher focused his/her energy on these students, and allowed those students not engaged to come back on their own.
• The relationship between students and teachers and also the teacher:student ratio were good. The students did not seem to have any fear of the teachers.
• The amount of time that the teachers put in for review and planning after school was very impressive. However, possibly because of its structured-nature, the efforts seemed like mechanical, busy work. If the teachers use the time to creatively plan for the next day and/or qualitatively review progress of the students, the time and efforts may be of more value.
• Art projects seemed creative.
• The students seem to be in an environment that is pretty natural to them. Being able to speak in their local language in classes seemed to have added to this.
• Upper primary groups did not seem to "practice" the Digantar view of education as much as the lower primary groups. In most ways, it seemed like the "standard" methods of "teaching-learning".
• The teachers we talked to seem to value the "teacher training" process.
• We did not see any spaces created for the students to explore themselves – process of self-reflection, self-exploration, goal-setting, etc.

Unlike many NGOs and alternative schools we have seen, when you describe your vision and when we observe what is happening in yourschool (esp. the lower primary section) there is a high degree of correlation. The Digantar staff does show commitment to making all necessary changes and modification to fully bridge this gap between vision and practice. Clearly this is shown in all the success Digantar has had. The one question we both leave with, however, is: Does Digantar continuously and critically look at it's vision and evolve asthey delve deeper into it?