Thoughts From The BhuvaneshwariMahila Ashram

Through its childcare programme, working through our balwadi centres, the Bhuvaneshwari Mahila Ashram is trying to protect the "rights of the child" in every respect. Our programe therefore emphasizes health, education and future opportunity.
In health, we have tried hard to move
away from the "outpatient syndrome", in
which only the illness is treated and no
thought is given to nutrition,
immunization and child-spacing. In the
under-    five  clinics   that   we
operate in the balwadis, the supervisee are trained to instruct mothers on matters such as personal hugiene, environmental sanitation, child safety, vision testing and dental care. Mothers are also shown how to deal with day-to-day ailments such as cough, cold, fever or diarrhea. We have "feast-days" to promote supplemental feeding for the children. The Ashram doctors and health workers periodically instruct the balwadi supervisors and counsel individual families with specific problems.
While the Ashram is equipped with audio-visual aids, we feel that our volunteers are more important for spreading health awareness. After all, personality, knowledge, dedication and tact are qualities that can never be taught to a slide projector.
In education, we stress "values" more than "techniques", because the child is first taught to identify with his or her roots. The learning commences within the child´s immediate environment and spirals out to encompass   learning about
 
 
other lands, peoples, cultures, literature, music and history. After our children outgrow the balwadis, they are encouraged to enter the Pariavaran Vidyalayas, which are our primary schools.
When a teacher stands in front of a class and tells the children what they "ought" to know, that is not true education. Instructors think they have to pour whatever they have learned into the children, so they can pass exams, get degrees and and become qualified for employment. This kind of education produces human beings whose whole focus is to take all that they can from life, with no idea of giving.
For us at the Ashram, education is a drawing-out process and we try to be innovative without changing the existing curricula. We try to humanize education, make it more meaningful, and neutralize the dreadful boredom that exists among so many of our young. Our teachers look at the child as an equal. They teach from the textbooks, but provide the missing elements, be it in maths, physics or geography. Take botany, for instance. The usual procedure in the study of plants is to take a flower and cut it to pieces, draw it and try to classify it. Before dissecting the flower, we encourage the child to feel the flower, its texture, to note its curves, its colours and its smell. The child considers its uses, for decoration, in medicine, and its existence simply as part of nature. This is not an intellectual exercise, but knowledge by identity and experience.
Some might say that we are too ambitious with what we are trying to do here in Anjanisain, in the poor hills of Tehri Garhwal, But as Oscar Wilde said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Cyril Raphael assists Swami Manmathan in Anjanisain.

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