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Recreating knowledge

LEARNING IT DIFFERENTLY: Children at a workshop on `Sensing Nature, Knowing Nature' organised in Kozhikode. — Photo: S. Ramesh Kurup

Scenes from Nature recreated with dry leaves and twigs. Colourful `Kalam' of earth, stones and sand. Patterns of coloured paper. And Colour Scale with two colours. These are some of the works created by children at a workshop, `Sensing Nature, Knowing Nature,' and being showcased at the Lalitakala Akademi Art Gallery here from May 28 to 30.

"Sensing Nature, Knowing Nature is a workshop we have been conducting since 2003 at Aruvacode in Nilambur during the summer holidays in April and May. This year about 40 children in the 5 to 15 age group from the village attended the workshop," says K.B. Jinan, who is involved in promoting an initiative different from the existing educational system.

Knowing is a continuous `choice-less' process happening irrespective of whether we want it or not, he says.

Through a research study supported by the Centre for Developmental Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, he had sought to examine the efficacy of a system where children could develop traditional skills along with school curriculum.

"There is a fundamental flaw in the traditional system of learning. Knowledge cannot be transmitted, only recreated," he says.

The workshop on `sensing Nature' is for providing space to come together to listen, to see, to taste, to touch, feel, to make. There is no teaching.

This year stitching activities were introduced with a view to awaken the quality of care in children.

"Senses, our doors to the outer world and also to the inner world, are what need to be addressed and that too in a manner that would enhance the inherent, natural, biological tendency of human beings to be in beauty and to know," Mr. Jinan says.

Children in a Bangalore slum in the age group of 10 to 12 years, for instance, learn four to six languages without any teaching or learning happening. A student of M.A. English literature meanwhile may not be able to converse fluently in the language, he says.

"Children have proved that they are born genius and they need to be left alone to make sense of the world. The fundamental issues raised through the event is the `nature of learning, biologically embedded aesthetic sense in children, role of the teacher', and the do nothing method."

Teaching is not called for but providing an environment that would allow the natural to come forth. This requires sensitivity, trust and careful planning for the unplanned to happen. And, the workshop is an attempt to convey this idea.

Maleeha Raghaviah

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