Education | Syamantak
Syamantak – Bridging classroom to the world beyond
Two questions have been lingering around for a long time when it comes to improving the of Indian education system. “How to put the millions of children at school?” and “How to improve the quality of education?”. Syamantak is an organization that has chosen to take a closer look and try an new method in addressing the second question.
Situated in Dhamapur, Maharashtra and inspired by Dr. Srinath Kalbag, a scientist, educationalist and founder of Vigyan Ashram, Syamantak aims to vocationalize education and train students of rural background with skills required to meet local needs. Students spend one year in this residential school learning various skills like costing and accounting, civil engineering and construction, welding, computing all taught by professionals in the respective fields. They also get to use skills learnt constructively by providing paid service to local people like organizing play groups, computer classes and science classes or fixing an electrical failure. At the end of the year, they make a presentation on their progress in that year.
Syamantak has also successfully modified their residential program to integrate with mainstream schooling with their “Introduction to Basic Technology” (IBT) program. In this program, the students belonging to 8th,9th and 10th class spend one day per week “learning by doing” something adds immediate value. IBT program is recognized by education board of Maharashtra & student can take this as subject for 10th Std. board examination.
- Introduction to Basic Technology Program
Aligning classroom education with practical application is a much romanticized idea. But it has always been hard to implement it in practice. Harder still is to integrate it into mainstream education. Syamantak seems to have achieved it at least in the eight school in which IBT is implemented. This provides for a refreshing news to those working towards bridging the gap between the classroom and the real world beyond it.
