Mumbai: Four Bhandup parents change the grammar of teaching

Four parents in Bhandup have hit upon an idea that's turning conventional education on its head. They call it Learning Home. As the term suggests, instead of sending children to schools, they are taught at home – not by private tutors, but by the parents themselves. The four of them – Kamlakar Indulkar, Pramod Kate, his elder brother Vilas Kate and Sachin Wakchaure – teach their five children – all aged between 5-5.5 years – through what they call a playway method.

So, what inspired them to do this?

"I feel, nowadays, education has become more commercial. In Learning Home, we four parents believe learning is not a burden but fun, and there's less student-teacher ratio. We take turns and teach them what we are experts in. We ourselves prepare the modules," says Kamlakar Indulkar.

Pramod Kate has an interesting point. "We always say that we have to eradicate corruption in this country. But the first thing we parents do is to give the first lesson of corruption to our child -- by paying donation to the school for admission."

"Education nowadays has become more commercial and teachers only teach curriculum in schools. Parents have left their responsibilities to teachers and have no involvement. We feel there is no best teacher in the world than a parent. Hence, we decided to start Learning Home. My daughter now speak Sanskrit at the age of five, when others of her age cannot," says Kate.

At Learning Home, the five children are taught only for three hours, five days a week. One day they are taken out. To impart a school-like feeling, the parents have hired a place where the children are brought. There are five blackboards – one each for all. The parents will evaluate the children by assigning them related tasks, oral (child should not know it is for exam), formative continuous evaluation – by making the child to appear for online exams, scholarships, Olympiads and competitive exams-- and the child is compared only with him/herself.

The Playway method focuses on creating curiosity among children and to inspire them. It puts a child on a self-learning mode and teaches it to learn by doing (projects and assignments). Till seven years, they will be taught only Marathi, Hindi, English, Sanskrit and maths. They learn science by doing experiments and social science by visiting places. When the child attains the age of appearing for board exams, they will take private board exams.

Prof P G Kale, who runs NGO Vishnugupta, which is into informal education, says, "We always believe that school and college education are not sufficient and there need to be greater parental involvement in educating a child. Hence, when these four parents decided to start Learning Home, I helped them in strategic planning. Why not teach through application is my idea."

No wonder, the concept is now getting more takers. "On August 2, we gave a workshop on Learning Home at Dombivli to a group of parents who came to know about our concept and invited us," says Indulkar. As they say, one good father is more than a 100 schoolmasters.