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Lighthouses
On The Horizon
The
Pratham Read
India
Project
 The results of Pratham Read India project are outstanding. Pratham, one of the largest NGOs in the country, had an audacious idea to get 80 million Indian children who cannot read to learn to do so in six weeks or less. Within just six months of starting this project in 2003, more than 150,000 students in seven states had demonstrated a significant difference in their reading ability, and a million more children were touched in subsequent years.
How did this magic happen? Traditionally children are taught to read by first introducing them to alphabets and then in a step-wise manner to the use of vowel signs and so on until they can read sentences and paragraphs. Pratham figured out that such ‘rules of literacy’ interfered with learning the ‘game of reading’ and reversed the process. Their technique introduced reading short paragraphs and stories from day one – to start the game.
Children stumble to make sense of what they see, guess the meaning of words and then are helped by adults who gently question the child, conduct interesting activities like ‘say-anything write-anything’. When stuck, the child refers to easy-to-understand alphabet, sound and sentence cards that help them decipher what they are reading. Through repeatedly playing this ‘game’ children overcome the barrier to reading.
Pratham is not alone. There are many more efforts to re-invent the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of the classroom. Homi Bhabha Center for Science Education (an offshoot of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) creates extremely popular ‘Small Science’ books consisting entirely of practical activities. Guided by the teacher; children learn to observe, question, plan and implementing activities, analyze and interpret data.
What children will learn in the schools of tomorrow is likely to be about deeply understanding the world around them and the test of this knowledge will be in the application of this knowledge in real life problems.n
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