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Keywords
Alternative School, Resource Centre, Government, Community, Science, Maths, Mathematics, Elementary, Language, Social Science, Hindi, Primary, Upper Primary, Rural, Girls, Training, Workshops, Consultancy, Teaching Material, Curriculum Development
Geographical Location
Jaipur, Rajasthan
Languages
English, Hindi
Philosophy/Beliefs
We believe that every member of the human race has the right to good education. This implies that it is the responsibility of every human society to create conditions so that each member receives what is due to him/her i.e. good education. Therefore it is not enough to create educational facilities assuming that children will use them. The system has to be sensitive and responsible enough to ensure that each child actually receives that education.
We believe that the process of learning should be self-sustaining if it is to continue for a whole life and that elementary education should be to 'help the child become an independent and motivated learner'. An alternative model of elementary education has to have the ability to successfully help the children become independent and motivated learners, and, it should be able to reach each and every child.
We also believe that an educational system has to recognize that lifelong learning is possible only if the learning process is based on the child's life experience. Any kind of grafting (disguised or otherwise) is bound to stun the process of increasingly sophisticated organization of the child's experiences.
These three ideas i.e. the aim of education is to help the child become an independent and motivated learner; concern that such help should be provided to each child; and all learning can be build on the child's existing understanding and skills - form our fundamental principles. These guide all major and minor aspects of our activities.
Objective/Mission/Goals
Digantar is an organization committed to develop suitable ways of educating children in a multicultural democratic society. It has been working in the area of primary and upper primary education for over twenty years. Digantar's search for alternatives in education began on a very small scale with one small school in 1978. The teachers of this school had trained under the late Shri David Horsburgh, who also guided the school in its initial years. The major aims of Digantar are:
- To conduct research in all aspects of elementary education.
- To establish and run schools to provide good quality education to children.
- To help other organizations in similar ventures.
- To work for the advancement of society in general
Digantar is involved in all aspects of elementary education from running of schools to research and theory building, and program formulation. Following is the description of activities -
- The Academic Resource Unit (TARU) - The main aims of TARU are Education of educators through regular and need based pre-service as well as in-service courses, Research in educational thought and practices, Action research in teacher preparation, material and curriculum development, and pedagogy in general, Resource support to other organizations, Resource support to government programs, Dissemination of research results and lessons learnt, publication in Hindi and English and Academic support to all Digantar projects.
- Alternative Elementary Education Program (AEEP) - The main objective of this program is to run schools for about 800 children that provide quality elementary education in the surrounding villages. The schools also serve as practice schools for TARU and its programs and help develop a complete package of curriculum, teaching learning material and teachers' resource books for elementary education.
- Vimarsh - Shiksha Vimarsh is a bimonthly journal on education in Hindi. It began in 1998 as a monthly journal with Digantar's own resources. The journal tries to publish material both on theory and practice of education and is engaged in building a dialogue on elementary education. Its main objectives are to build and sustain an educational discourse in Hindi, empower teachers through helping them develop their classroom practices as well as theoretical understanding, and share the work being done by teachers with educationists and academics and vice versa
- Pehchan Project - This is a project developed around education for out of school girl-child in the age group of 9-14 years. The project works towards motivating the community to send their daughters to school, mainstreams girls between 9-11 years old in the regular schools and second, help the girls between 11-14 years old to complete primary education as best as possible and work with the government schools to improve the quality of teaching.
- Pre-School Program - Digantar is responsible for running the pre-school and creche facilities for about 20 children. The pre-school and creche program caters for workers of both Digantar and Registan Private Limited free of cost.
- Training, Evaluation and Review - In addition to regular programs Digantar is almost always engaged with several training, evaluation/review of educational interventions and other academic support activities. Some involvements at present are: Support to SCERT Raipur (Chhattisgarh) in curriculum and textbook development, Developing a masters program in educational studies in collaboration with National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore, (with four other partners: Vidya Bhavan, Udaipur; Eklavya, Bhopal; Homi Bhaba Center for Science Education (HBCSE), Mumbai and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai), Digantar is also part of the group working with Wipro, Bangalore, on quality improvement in urban private schools.
- Elementary curriculum and books for language, mathematics and social sciences
- Various other publications on elementary education. Contact Digantar for a detailed list.
- Digantar has a training center with adequate facilities to conduct residential training programs for up to forty people at a time.
- A good library that subscribes to several journals and is equipped with well-chosen books on elementary education.
Rohit Dhankar
Digantar
Todi Ramjanipura
Jagatpura
Jaipur, Rajasthan 302017
Phone: (0141) 750310 / 750230
Website Links
Profile in Revive 2004
Democracy, Pluralism and Education - Presentation at January 2004 Conference