A school of a tribal village need more attention !

A school of a tribal village

 need more attention !

By Purusottam Singh Thakur/ Chhattisgarh

“Our students even come to school without brushing teeth, so on regular basis we taught them how to brush the teeth by “daatun”( Daatun is the small branch of a few specific trees which is used in rural India for brushing the teeth and cleaning the tongue ), ” says Jitendra Dhruv and Tekram Sahu, the teachers ( shikshak - panchayat) duo of the Primary school, Chandanpur.

Chandanpur is located in a remote place and surrounded by forest. It is 6 km away from the Nagri-Dhamtari road and 106 km from the Raipur, the state capital of Chhattisgarh.  The village comes under the most backward and tribal populated Nagri block of Dhamtari district. It has a population of 95 as per the 2011 census and all belong to the Kamar tribe which is comes under PVTG (Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group). Kamars makes their livelihood by making bamboo baskets and through agricultural work. Traditionally they also make mahua liquor for self-consumption but now some of them also sell it as the nearby villagers visits to have liquor in some places.

There is a one-room primary school in the village where a total of 13 students are enrolled including 7 students in class one, no students in class two, 4 students in class 3, no students in class 4 and 2 students in class 5. There are two teachers (shikshak – panchayat) in the school; one of them is trained and the other one is untrained.

“We provided a nail cutter to cut their nails but they were not acquainted with it so we showed them how to use it. Now they ask for nail cutter and do it on their own. We are also keeping button, thread and needle in the school, so that the students can use it to replace the buttons on their shirts which have fallen off.” said Jitendra.

“They don’t do homework at home, and we know why they don’t because they don’t have an environment at home so we provide them time just after the prayer to complete the same.” said Jitendra Dhruva. “We are so friendly with them that, now they are sharing their problems, experiences and also asking questions.” he added.

Jitendra Dhruv is an assistant teacher and he belongs to Gond tribe. He started out as a teacher just after he completed the 12^th class whereas his colleague Tekram Sahu is a trained teacher. They are young and energetic but we observed that though they doing their best, they need some capacity building and more exposure to the recent pedagogical methods of teaching.

But what the teachers appreciate about the students is that they are good and they have very good knowledge about their surroundings and environment. They can identify various trees and plants. But one problem is that though they know the names of the plants and trees and their use in their language, the teachers explain the same in the bookish language.

In our last visit we have seen the teacher visiting village to locate a student who was absent. She was a student of class two. When the teacher did not find her at her home, he went to a nearby jungle and located her under a mahua tree collecting mahua flowers. From her we came to know that since her grandma had gone to some relative’s house she had been collecting mahua for last two days in her place. So the teachers too understand the role of the children in their family.

The teachers face a lot of problems to reach the village, especially in the rainy season. The school is just 8 years old; it was established in 2008 and started in a mud house of a villager. But interestingly in these 8 years, 10 teachers joined the school and 5 of them have resigned and left! One can imagine one possible reason why they had to resign and was because the remoteness of the school was the issue.

But the two teachers who are there now say that when they joined they were little shocked but now they are fine despite the odd situations. They are interested to do something special and are willing to put in extra effort for this.

 The teachers appreciate the villagers too. “The villagers are very co-operative. All the villagers attend the SMC meeting and help in the development process of the school.”

“The school has been established here after our long demand and persuasion. And after the establishment of this school our children are going here but now we need a middle school as the nearest one is 6 km away from the village and to reach there you need to go through the forest.” say Mayaram Netam, the founder of the village.  

Let us hope one day these children of a lesser God will attract the attention of both the administration and the NGOs working in the field of education and they too will have a quality education.

( EOS)

The author is associated with the Azim Premji Foundation and the story have been written to create a better environment for quality education.