Edutopia - June/July 2008 - (Page 56)

Room to Grow In the hardscrabble farmlands of rural India, dance and song help build pride for impoverished children. By Sara Bernard o you know magic?” Five or six tiny children peer at me through the windows of their dome-shaped school building at the Puvidham Learning Centre, in the rolling farmlands of southern India. They are wide eyed, enthralled. I don’t consider myself particularly exotic, but I’ve become accustomed to a bewitched audience. Here, an hour or so outside of Salem, in Tamil Nadu, I’m about as inconspicuous as a ⇓uorescent billboard. “No, I don’t know magic,” I admit, “but the other people here, I think they do.” This isn’t as misleading as it sounds: I am here with the Dreamtime Circus, a group of theatrical ⇒re dancers from San Francisco whose mission is to spread environmental awareness and circus joy throughout India during a six-month tour of the country. We’ve been offered grass mats on a classroom ⇓oor this weekend at Puvidham, a nonpro⇒t, grant-funded school for impoverished rural children. In return, we will lead some hands-on workshops for the kids and perform a show full of juggling, clowning, and emphatic messages about deforestation and pollution. Little did we know the school and its students would put a spell on us at least as powerful as any we might conjure. In a drought-prone region where educational and economic opportunities are few and far between, this school is a surprising oasis: Social and emotional intelligence, project and experiential learning, and a gentle love and respect for the environment— and for one another—pervade the sunlit grounds. The Puvidham Learning Centre is the brainchild of Meenakshi Umesh, a Mumbai native with a penchant for the D natural world and sustainable, organic farming. The bilingual Tamil- and English-language school, founded in 2000 with nine students and now grown to eighty-three, developed from an organic farm she and her husband, Umesh, began in 1992. Today, the school employs seven teachers, in addition to several more who work in three local village learning centers that have begun with the Puvidham model in mind. “What we want to do for children is give them con⇒dence that they use to handle life,” explains Meenakshi, who rejects the textbook-heavy, teacher-centered method in place at so many overcrowded schools in urban slums and remote villages (here and in the United States), “Here, we want them to have positive interactions with people and develop a trust of humanity.” It’s an important mission, as the educational alternatives for Puvidham children (roughly ages 3–13) are grim. In addition to the dearth of resources this far from the city, Meenakshi says, the rote learning and streamlined messages of the government schools can alienate rural students from themselves. Their way of life is deemphasized and devalued and as a result, “the children look down upon their parents, their culture, and their background.” There is little connection between what students hear in school and what they see in their everyday lives; corporal punishment is often employed and self-expression sidelined. “Add in the economic factors,” she says, “and it’s made very obvious to them that they are ‘the have-nots.’” SARA BERNARD Math in Farming, Language in Dance The Puvidham community attempts to reverse that message: here, learning is connected to the students’ environment, 56 EDUTOPIA JUNE/JULY 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Edutopia - June/July 2008

Edutopia - June/July 2008 Contents UpFront Feedback Dispatches Sage Advice Ask Ellen Head of Class Cool Schools Design Young Minds, Fast Times Wii Love Learning No More Pencils, No More Books Tech Without Support All the Right Moves Room to Learn Heart & Soul Pop Quiz: Jeff Corwin

Edutopia - June/July 2008

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