What do children study in social studies? Sangati is a program that encourages children to study society, starting with themselves. Avehi-Abacus has trained teachers in more than 900 schools of the Bombay Municipal Corporation to implement this program. I had the opportunity to visit some of the classes during their Sangati session.
The Sangati curriculum is designed with the aim of helping students make sense of their personal experiences at home and in their neighborhoods in a broader social, political and historical context. The students I met had learned about Savitri bai Phule who worked for the cause of education for women and girls, and read stories raising caste issues such as Premchand’s Thakur ka Kuan (Thakur’s well) and Eklavya.
Thakur ka Kuan by Premchand
Savitribai Phule
Ekalavya
In the course of the discussion, the teacher asked them questions such as,
“What have been the conventional roles expected of men and women?”
“How has society changed?”
“How does education play a role?”
“Was Dronacharya a great teacher?” (क्या द्रोणाचार्य महान गुरु थे?).
“If your teacher asked you for such a guru-dakshina what would you do?”
Students discuss questions of caste and gender during a Sangati class in a Bombay Municipal Corporation school
Students discuss questions of caste and gender during a Sangati class in a Bombay Municipal Corporation school
In their discussion we could see that while the material they discussed challenged social conventions and power structures, their ideas of how to challenge these in their own lives were yet forming and would take many more such discussions for them to articulate.
The politics of the classroom and the politics of their present reality layered upon one another, complicating the questions that the teacher asked based on the lesson. It poignantly revealed how far the students were willing to go in challenging issues of caste and gender which we like to think are settled.
I read some of the textbooks and teacher’s guides, including descriptions of their classroom exercises designed to facilitate introspection on questions of caste and gender. It would be interesting to try out these exercises ourselves in chapters. There is so much that we in AID can learn from this program, as travelers along the same journey towards a just society.
Related:
Signals in the Fog 