For India’s poor, a school under a railway bridge
NEW DELHI (AP) — Their classroom is a flattened patch of dirt and rocks under the elevated rail tracks. Their blackboards are rectangles painted on a chipped concrete wall. Their teacher is a shop owner with no formal training, but a conviction that education is their only hope.
For some of these dozens of children of poor migrant workers in India’s capital, this makeshift, open-air school under the rumble of mass transit is the only school they have. Others who attend overcrowded and dismal government schools come here as well — to actually learn.
India’s Right To Education Act promising free, compulsory schooling to all children ages 6 to 14 was supposed to take full effect March 31, but millions of children still don’t go to school and many who do are getting only the barest of educations.
So every morning, more than 50 children gather under the bridge for two hours of lessons at Rajesh Kumar’s informal school. They sweep the dirt flat and roll out foam mats to sit on, just meters (yards) from the bushes were several men had been squatting and defecating minutes earlier.
The students, ages 4 to 14, study everything from basic reading and writing to the Pythagorean Theorem.
[Photos: Altaf Gadri]
God. My ambivalence about formal education.
Only if they’re wearing those towels that have snaps so you can wear them around your waste all day.
Tony & Janet Dorsett (1982)
YAAASSSS
(Source: donnalethal)
et cetera
Japanese Symbol for Beginner
Last week it was my pleasure to tell jokes for 500 or so nerds as part of the live taping of John Gruber’s The Talk Show.
And it was my double-extra-creamy pleasure to unveil, with the help of my YLNT buds Adam and Merlin, a proposal for the future of language.
(Also maybe this is the dumbest thing I have ever written. Sandwich and Merls kind of saved it.)
Echo Park Lake opening day. Finally!!
Blurs!
Echo Parquet
“It’s impossible to live a life in which you encounter no risks, but take basic precautions: Bring powerful and a portable cell-phone charger. Have handy whether you think you’ll need them or not; don’t hesitate to pop them in at a moment’s notice. Abandon footwear-related vanity and wear the most comfortable shoes imaginable. Get thee some shade and other means of cooling off; check in with the state of your skin and your body temperature. Drink water like a mofo — even if it means building expensive onsite bottled stuff into your festival budget. Hang back behind violent mosh pits, should they arise. And think through worst-case scenarios involving illicit substances, even alcohol; you’re in a huge crowd of people, many of them idiots, often at a remote location. Is your first music festival the time to relinquish control over your faculties? Go with friends and keep an eye out for each other; it’s no fun to babysit drunk or otherwise addled companions, but prepare for the possibility, because the alternatives can be far worse.”
SUMMER!
indoor picnic lifestyles
