Bridging the divide in school learning, the Agastya way

Bengaluru: While the Indian education system has only recently realised its major fault when it comes to the spirit of inquiry among students, there is one education trust and non-profit organisation headquartered in the city that aims to stimulate young minds sparking their curiosity and instilling confidence.

The organisation, Agastya International Foundation, aims to reduce the disparity between those who can afford better education at high-end private schools and children from economically weaker sections, who can only go to rural government schools.

“The Indian education system is caught in a non-creative, exam system with textbook education that does not encourage the spirit if inquiry. Schools at villages are even worse off,” says Mr Ramji Raghavan, founder, Agastya International Foundation.

The foundation’s mode of teaching is based on three main exclamations: 'aah', 'ahaa' and 'haha'. “These three are the most important and profound requirements of learning. With a sudden unique occurrence, you always exclaim ‘Aah’ and when you understand the event you say ‘aha’ and with that, you do need a lot of laughter as learning should be fun and hence the ‘haha’,” he explains.

“At Agastya, we encourage innovation, whether it solves a theoretical problem or a practical one. Better, more economical methods for teaching children, training teachers, and getting lessons into the schools are always at the forefront of our problem solving techniques,” explains Mr Raghavan.

Agastya was founded in April 1999 by Mr Raghavan (former NRI banker in London), Mr K.V. Raghavan (former CMD, Engineers India), Mr P.K. Iyengar (former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission), Mr S. Balasundaram and Mr Mahavir Kumar with a mission to fill a critical gap in education.

They believed that for the country to become innovative, productive and prosperous, it was imperative to reverse the creativity gap to raise “the speed limit of creativity of the country”, through new, affordable and accessible teaching-learning methods that would spark and instil the key building blocks of creative thinking and action.

These include "observation, awareness, discovery and experimentation, association and application” skills based on curiosity in children and teachers. In the city itself, the Foundation reaches out to some 60,000 children every year.

The Foundation has taken children from being textbook bound to being hand bound, from fear to confidence by providing experiential learning. The Foundation's campus on the city’s outskirts sees some 700 children, from across the state and country, coming in to learn.

The foundation has also trained 1,000 teachers from Odhisa and Andhra Pradesh, who have gone through the teachers training programme. “We also have a programme where children teach children so that they can become leaders. The campus has some 10,000 young instructor leaders and 2,500 teachers from across the country,” he explained.

Operating with a staff strength of a thousand, Agastya has reached its affordable and creative pedagogy to over eight million underprivileged children and two lakh teachers across 18 states in the country.

Annually, Agastya reaches 1.5 million children and 25,000 teachers directly. It has created an ecosystem for hands-on learning that can be replicated anywhere in the country or the world. The funding happens from various CSR activities.