These days, I’m trying to persuade a few other people whom I know to join My Home Foundation as volunteers. So, I was discussing this concept with a friend and former colleague who works for an economic newspaper in Mumbai (India). The main discussion was on the curriculum design for the children. His view is that it should be the traditional government-school curriculum at least till 7th standard. Because up to that class, whatever one learns, be it history, civics, etc, does contribute towards at least language building (and general exposure). I do agree with him.
But my point was to innovate on curriculum design. If you see there are millions who have never used their pure academic learning in their profession. For example, I have done M.Sc. but have never used even a bit of that education in my entire professional career. For kids, it’ll be almost a life-long stay in My Home. We’ve to arrange for their career. This will lead to a huge business structure to accommodate thousands of such children. These children will be part of this enterprise to make it sustainable.
So I want to implement lean, focused education for these children. For example, they should learn basic arithmetic, writing, communications, different languages – English, German, French, etc. to work for clients in these markets. Then subject understanding – say, fashion, technology, politics, on which they will be working. Then they need to learn marketing and relationship skills for different industrial sectors, fundamental technology skills for promotions, etc.
For this, why should they waste time to learn complex mathematical theorems which they’ll never use but they are part of the government-school curriculum? Why should they learn Newton’s law or salts changing colors in chemistry labs?
The debate is still on. Let’s brainstorm before arriving at any conclusion. You can participate with your views.
