The Katha School was on our list of schools to visit during the ASCD Board of Directors' trip to India in November 2006. We knew the school was located in one of the poorest sections of Delhi. What we didn't know was how powerful the experience would be.
As we left our bus and walked the several blocks to the school, although we never felt unsafe, we saw some of the poorest physical conditions we could ever imagine. The mostly earthen streets were strewn with garbage that rotted and stank in puddles. Fences had fallen down; buildings had crumbled. A cow wandered by; an occasional bicycle or car hazarded the street. Peddlers showed their wares in weathered stands as crowds pressed around us. So when we turned into an archway and passed through a gate, the school took us completely by surprise.
Everywhere vivid color met our eyes. Student art was painted on the stone walls, hung from walls and ceilings, and smiled down in the face of a giant painted giraffe, creating a welcoming and comfortable atmosphere. The principal and teachers greeted us in the open foyer. The principal was as warm and welcoming as the building; she seemed a pillar of strength for the students, teachers, and community. The group explained to us that the school is a community school that not only teaches the students, but also reaches out to families. One big focus is on improving mothers' jobs because, in many cases, the mother is the only parent in the household.
A sign on one of the columns read, “The 9 Cs are part of our classroom teaching.” The 9 Cs are curiosity, creativity, competence, confidence, courage, cooperation, citizenship, concentration, and critical thinking. A wooden sign hanging over the school entrance confirmed our sense of the school being a special place. “An Uncommon Education for the Uncommon Mind,” it read.
The Katha School, which began in 1989 with five students, works in and with a large slum cluster in Delhi. It now houses 1,450 students “from cradle to high school,” with hundreds on a list waiting to get in from the surrounding low-income area. Students are selected on the basis of merit. The school is part of the Kalpavriksham Centre for Sustainable Learning, which includes 11 community schools, two Schools on Wheels that reach out to the poorest of the poor, the I Love Reading Campaign, and Books on Wheels. These efforts serve 54 communities and more than 6,000 children.
Indians refer to the Katha School as a private school. Many such “private” schools exist in India, but they are similar to what many other countries refer to as public schools. They are open to the public but are funded substantially through private funds or attendance fees. Katha School is free to students, operating through the support of its main partners: the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Reach India/USA, the European Union, and the Delhi government. India also has many government schools as well as some denominational schools.
The Katha School, described as a “profit-for-all” nonprofit, works to improve the surrounding community, which is highly impoverished, in a number of ways. For example, it runs self-help groups for women that focus on such topics as leadership training, basic literacy skills, vocational skills, health, and women's rights. In 1990, the average monthly family income was 800 Indian rupees (the equivalent of 18 U.S. dollars). The women who have received Katha training now earn 10–20 times that figure, or 8,000–15,000 Indian rupees each month, as teachers, bakers, cooks, and seamstresses. All this effort feeds into Katha's Challenge 2010, whose goal is a slumless Delhi. The Challenge 2010 project receives support from Katha's partners as well as from corporate entities inside and outside India.
The work of Katha's students is an integral part of those efforts. From October 2005 to January 2006, the students carried out a major study of Delhi as part of Challenge 2010. This was the follow-up to a yearlong study of other Indian cities of antiquity, such as Benaras (a famous Hindu city located on the banks of the Ganges) and Ujjain (an ancient city of central India). The students studied the challenges and high points of those centers throughout history and came up with recommendations for urban improvement for Delhi based on the urban revival of those cities. The students then held a conference to present their findings and recommendations.
More Than a Building
Without the artistic touches and the enthusiastic teachers and students, the Katha School would look like an abandoned factory. Housed in a gray stone building, the school has only two walls in some areas, with the other two sides open to the outside. Parts of the roof are corrugated steel. In spite of this, the school's ambitious vision statement reads, “No child who has been in Katha School will ever live in poverty again.”
The concept of reading as the center of all learning pervades the school. One of the first rooms visible at the school's entrance is the reading room, which sets the theme for the colorful painting and art displayed throughout the building. Every three months the reading theme changes, and the students redecorate the school.
The Katha School is committed to the idea that through story, the school community will actively build a caring society. In A Whole New Mind (2005), Daniel Pink writes, “Story exists where high concept and high touch intersect. Story is high concept because it sharpens our understanding of one thing by showing it in the context of something else” (p. 103). Pink's idea is evident in Katha School, which uses stories to promote friendship and link people of different faiths, cultures, and personalities.
The goal of the story initiative is to enhance the story's presence in homes, build skills in storytelling, and help India once again become a land of storytellers. The school offers workshops in storytelling for all family members. These activities build close bonds among children, parents, and grandparents; they familiarize participants with Indian literature as they celebrate the country's myths, customs, and traditions.
The school is deeply involved in authentic learning and focuses on such topics as the city as classroom, service as learning, theater as activism, and community as friend. In a geometry class that we observed, students used their hands and arms in a graceful choreography to create and understand angles. As in all classes, students sat on the floor, with the teacher standing or sitting among them. In one of the second-floor classrooms that had two exposed sides, a group of students worked on improvisation as the teacher provided them with objects from which to choose. We sampled baked goods provided by the students in a home skills class and had the opportunity to purchase crafts that students produced in school as a way to support their learning. Students in a media center used sophisticated software programs on computers provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
What Society Needs
Katha sees four “capitals” as important for creating a caring and sharing society. Katha defines wisdom capital asthat content in education that helps us ask questions, stay long enough with them until we find answers, and then put them into action. It defines, hones, and strengthens the individual as a person fit to enter the social space. (Katha, n.d.)This capital is reflected in the school's focus on reading, which teachers and students see as making a difference to themselves, their families, and their communities. Students have a clear purpose for asking questions and becoming educated.
The school defines emotional capital as “narrative imagination.” This capital, so evident in the artwork that adorns the school, refers tothe ability to put oneself in the shoes of the other; the strength of the emotional quotient in each one of us, which brings in a proper mix of the male and female principles; and the emotional ties that make us respect the other. (Kathan, n.d.)
Cultural capital helps students appreciate the cultural diversity that is India. It “builds a strong sense of belonging and needs to be honed and fostered.” Students have pride in who they are, where they have come from, and what they are accomplishing. They share their cultures through stories.
Finally, social capital is a combination of “personal trust, civic engagement, and community involvement.” Because they have witnessed the school's positive influence on the community, students feel empowered to change their lives.
Learning for Life
The ASCD Board of Directors had the opportunity to meet with a group of students and teachers during our visit. The upper-grade students we talked with easily articulated how the four capitals are part of their learning. When we asked what the most important aspect of school was, every student referred to some aspect of the capitals. One student mentioned that the teachers provided support as well as a sense of trust and interest (social capital). Another student mentioned the importance of what the school was doing in the community to improve conditions for their families (emotional capital). Still another student alluded to the idea of cultural capital as he described the importance of becoming a contributing member of both Indian and world society.
Students are proud of their school, community, and country. They are also proud of themselves. But they understand that they have much work to do. They can see this as they leave school each day and return to the poverty of the streets. Delhi is 50 percent slums; it will take a lot of effort for young leaders to change that. Nevertheless, as students in the Katha School learn traditional content through nontraditional topics and pedagogies, they consider their short-term goals in terms of long-term benefits for their families and communities.
For example, students participate in entrepreneurship training in the school, creating products (food, clothing, artworks, and so on) to sell to school visitors and community members. In this way, the school helps students learn skills necessary to earn a living, promoting sustainability and hope in this slum cluster of 150,000 people.
The focus of the school, then, is on learning that is relevant to life. The word life itself furnishes the school with a helpful acronym. Life knowledge refers to skills in Literacy for lifelong learning, Income generation, Family well-being and health, and Empowerment, which includes issues of gender and equity.
Other schools we visited in Delhi shared to some degree this philosophy of life learning and understood the importance of educating the whole child. For example, the mission of the Amar Jyoti School and Rehabilitation Centre is to provide equal opportunities to people with disabilities. Students put on a fast-paced stage show; some students rode wheelchairs in circles, and others danced with enthusiasm.
The Indian National Curriculum Framework 2005 (National Council of Educational Research and Training, 2005) defines the curriculum focus for the country. The aims of education includeindependence of thought and action, sensitivity to others' well-being and feelings, learning to respond to new situations in a flexible and creative manner, predisposition toward participation in democratic processes, and the ability to work toward and contribute to economic processes and social change.The document speaks to the need for meaningful and life-focused learning.
The document also points out the dangers of standardized testing, which can create barriers to learning. The fact that learning has become a “burden” and a “source of stress” reflects a distortion in the aims of education. “Teaching should aim at enhancing children's natural desire and strategies to learn,” the document points out. “Knowledge needs to be distinguished from information, and teaching needs to be seen as a professional activity, not as coaching for memorization or as transmission of facts.”
The Katha School is an example of the kind of learning environment that the National Curriculum Framework 2005 is trying to move toward. But India has its challenges. The country has been in the throes of a “testing as learning” struggle for some time. Also, its greatest challenge may be using education to strengthen the democratic way of life. In 2002, a constitutional amendment made elementary education a fundamental right of every child in India.
The Preciousness of Schooling
One image persists in my mind as I think about Katha School. As we stood in the courtyard entrance, we saw a large crowd of children gathered on the other side of the wrought iron gate. Those children did not attend any school. During the course of our visit, every time I glanced at the gate, there were always children there, looking in.
That image represents both the challenge and passion inherent in India's education project. The challenge is educating millions of Indian children. The passion is what we saw on the faces of the students in Katha School—and on the faces of the many children who waited on the other side of the gate.
