We’re all made of stories.
And the stories we make, make us.
This is a story that touches many lives…
… a story that brings the gift of education to countless underprivileged children.
… a story that connects various cultures and languages through the bridge of
translation.
This is a story of a story… a story of Katha! Centred around the idea of ‘story’, Katha’s unique curriculum, or StoryPedagogyTM, created and developed by our Founder-President Geeta Dharmarajan, has been in use in Katha learning centres since 1992. The principles of StoryPedagogyTM are based on India’s traditional storytelling practices and on the 2,000-year-old treatise, Bharata’s Natya Shastra. Katha sees story as a powerful, uniting tool in nation building. The pedagogy, over the past two-and-a-half decades, has shown new ways of looking at teaching, learning and making learning child-centred. Tapping the transformative effect of story, Katha has, over the years, seamlessly connected grassroots work in education, teacher training and publishing.
The environment when Katha started was not too conducive to education. Almost thirty years ago, the 42nd Sample Survey showed that children dropped out of school not only when they were working to support the family but also when they found school boring and dull, and the lessons irrelevant. The challenges of integrating relevance and fun and excitement (that most of us who knew what a book holds) into an experiment in Delhi, was beyond doubt. When we look closely at the beginning and the first students Katha worked with, we found they were working children – it seems that story as the basis for children who had gone without schooling till they were 7-14 years old; the children who were going school were struggling to read their school textbooks, children who spoke the language fluently and traded in it, but could not read or write it; children whose parents were non-literate and thus learning happened for them and their grandparents through means other than the written word – through story – and story seemed a good way to start off. India in the past had a tradition of “gurukul”, an Indian Atticus style which we believed in. Speech. Debate. Interaction and right action. Hence our founder Geeta Dharmarajan thought that if they could listen to stories and follow along “Indian Atticus-style” familiar stories, written simply, with a finger on each word, child on lap. The result was visible: a story and personal attention was getting a child reading and learning. And this was the beginning of StoryPedagogy.
Stories can create new ways of seeing the world we live in. We foster writings that break social, cultural and gender stereotypes and help us see the other side of pictures by helping us develop our narrative imaginations. We valorise kindness and equality, compassion and caring. Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu – stories can foster cultural linking – between peoples, languages, cultures of India – historically and across the miniscule chasms like caste, class and religion. In supporting writers for our child-readers who are creative – iconoclastic or traditional –and explore life thoroughly and empathetically. We support our writers who, in their creations, steadfastly refuse to be drawn by economic need to commercialize or follow conventional thinking. We applaud and admire writers who create good and sensitive pieces of work which recreate the magic of life. We desire stories and poems that enhance our understanding of the contemporary and the historical in ourv lives: what we are now, where we come from, and what we aspire to be as a country made up of, predominantly, children. We revel in the readers and the joy they feel after a good read. We believe in our good editors and the strength they bring to texts, honing their appeal and charm, and in the good and sensitive teachers who help us bridge them through close reading of stories and texts. We see the humanities as a tool to transform the self, and through it, the society we live in.
And so the technique of delivery process of StoryPedagogyTM was evolved: Active Story Based Learning (ASBL) which takes a child through the process of thinking, asking, discussing and acting using stories. Without a textbook, the story can teach language, science, mathematics, general awareness and critical thinking. The integrated subject teaching was possible through branch story technique. Soon teacher training on the StoryPedagogyTM started and age-appropriate, quality books were published by Katha to ignite the minds of young ones. The cradle of this innovation was Katha Lab School. The StoryPedagogyTM based Katha Relevant Education model is being delivered in Katha Lab School for the past 25+ years.
Central to the innovative StoryPedagogyTM was RUCHI—to transform a child from a passive learner to a leader. RUCHI (Read, Use, Comprehend, Holistically and Intuitively) is Katha’s encouraging assessment tool which connects learning in the classroom with community issues and challenges. There began the process of community resurgence because it did not alienate the child and parent from their realities, rather propelling the will in each child to do something to change the situation. Through the inquiry process and contextual stories a child could think of solutions for her own community.
Through experimentation and relentless learning, our Founder-President Geeta Dharmarajan stabilized the integrated StoryPedagogyTM based solutions into Katha Relevant Education model with story as the fulcrum. The education delivery process not only focuses on the child but also her ecosystem and brings community resurgence into its programmes in creative ways. The stories resulted in community action wherein children initiated small projects on the day-to-day challenges they faced in their own community. The projects were based on safe sanitation, safe drinking water, health and hygiene and education and empowerment, which led to double empowerment—[SHE]2.
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