The show can change, the show must change- A look at the Indian education system through TFI’s lens

The show can change, the show must change- A look at the Indian education system through TFI’s lens

Featuring the students of TFI, the play highlighted the plight of under-privileged students who more often than not fall prey to the ills of the system.

Shaziya ShaikhUpdated: Saturday, November 30, 2019, 03:13 PM IST
article-image
The show can change, the show must change- A look at the Indian education system through TFI’s lens. |

On the evening of 12th November, the walls of the magical Royal Opera House in Mumbai reverberated with the slogan ‘The show can change, the show must change’ which was then followed by thunderous applause.

Teach For India, a renowned name in the list of several not-for-profits and social impact projects working with school students in India and with the Indian education system, presented their play, ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’.

Featuring the students of TFI, the play highlighted the plight of under-privileged students who more often than not fall prey to the ills of the system.

The founder of Teach For India, Shaheen Mistri says, “The system is broken at every level. From the curriculum and methodology, to the way kids are treated in school (humiliation, abuse, comparison etc.), to the way we study only for exams and their fragile relevance to the way kids learn, the system and the appalling number of children who we leave out of the system.”

She adds, “Moreover, there is a severe lack of high-quality Fellowships and volunteer programs that help bring the best possible talent to our children.” With TFI, Shaheen wants to fix one corner at a time of the enormous system with people who believe in the need for quality education for all children of India.

Shaheen, who was born in Mumbai but studied in 10 different schools across the globe, in a moment decided to leave her under-graduation in liberal arts from a reputed institution to invest her time for the underprivileged kids of India. During every vacation, Shaheen would visit India and volunteer at various organizations working for social causes. She couldn’t help but notice the disparities around her, which inspired her to do her bit from an early age.

The play had multiple characters, children from TFI schools reenacted the scenes from their everyday life and not some fictional script. Caught in between household chores and early-marriage, battling pressure from parents and early responsibilities, bullying and the burden of monotony that starts as early as primary school years, the show was a beautiful display of the will to gain knowledge and the hurdles kids have to cross to attain it.

The play also addressed the common physical and mental abuse children face in educational institutions, how it taints a child’s self-confidence and how seldom opportunities come knocking at doors of low-lit, cramped up corners of poverty-stricken homes.

Being a ray of hope for more than 32,000 children from low-income schools across seven cities, including Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi, the passionate TFI fellows have been visiting schools and imparting knowledge in a fun and interactive way for a decade now. TFI has trained and placed more than 1500 fellows in India since the start.

The decade-long revolutionary movement has created ripples of leadership across tiers of intervention. With constant efforts towards establishing an equitable system that prepares the kids of poverty to compete alongside the wealthier and more fortunate sections of the society.

The complex, diverse and knotted fabric that the education system of India has become in the post-independence era is tearing at the seams with higher drop-out rates and substandard education.

Sandeep Rai, the Chief of City Operations at Teach For India and the author of Grey Sunshine, a deep dive into the glaring statistics of the state of education in India and heartwarming stories from TFI’s ten-year-long journey, says his time with TFI has given him the opportunity to witness stories of “children and adults who have moved him to tears.”

TFI fellows and the team has encountered stories that are heart-wrenching and inspiring at the same time. Remembering the ups and downs, Sandeep says, “Over the last ten years, we have been surrounded by a plethora of challenges. None of those, however, have matched up to the challenge of working with poverty.”

He points out that the biggest difficulties faced by the children and the programme have been the troubled lives the children are living.

With Teach For India, Shaheen dreams of breaking away from the horrors of an incompetent and insensitive structure that turns kids into marks on an exam sheet and numbers in a report for literacy.

Shaheen has visualised a dream, a bold dream for Indian parents and students, she says, “By getting parents and other family members excited about what's possible with their children in our classrooms and showing them the progress their children make when they attend school, we see high attendance rates. We aim to create classrooms that children want to attend and classrooms to which families want to send their kids!”

With people from all age groups “who desperately want to create a better tomorrow,” Sandeep says Teach for India in the next decade hopes to build “an enduring and purposeful movement at every level of the educational sector.”

Sandeep promises that TFI’s conviction and the “bright, passionate and committed people” who make TFI a revolutionary initiative “will become exemplars of what’s possible, and also change the conversation – from ‘if’ to ‘how.”

Shaheen and Sandeep aren’t here to sit, and crib about the system, they are working continuously and “always looking for the next ray of sunshine to cut through the grey.”

RECENT STORIES

Mumbai: Central Railway's Mumbai-Hazrat Nizamuddin Rajdhani And Mumbai-Nagpur Duronto Express Trains...

Mumbai: Central Railway's Mumbai-Hazrat Nizamuddin Rajdhani And Mumbai-Nagpur Duronto Express Trains...

Mumbai: CBI Questions Gangster Prasad Pujari After Deportation From China; Reveals Meeting Kumar...

Mumbai: CBI Questions Gangster Prasad Pujari After Deportation From China; Reveals Meeting Kumar...

Bombay HC Refuses To Stay MAT Order Asking State Govt To Give Grace Marks To Transgender Persons

Bombay HC Refuses To Stay MAT Order Asking State Govt To Give Grace Marks To Transgender Persons

Bombay HC Dismisses Rakhi Sawant’s Pre-Arrest Bail Plea In Case Filed By Her Estranged Husband...

Bombay HC Dismisses Rakhi Sawant’s Pre-Arrest Bail Plea In Case Filed By Her Estranged Husband...

Mumbai: Christians Prepare For Holy Week Culmination With Maundy Thursday And Easter Services

Mumbai: Christians Prepare For Holy Week Culmination With Maundy Thursday And Easter Services