Learning 21st century life skills in an experiential way, from the everyday spaces around us.
Does today's education help a child grow into a self sufficient, sensitive and responsible adult? Too often, no. Life School sets out to teach the 21st century skills that exam driven schooling leaves out.
Life School treats everyday spaces as classrooms, building essential life skills through experience rather than rote. The aim is a young person who thinks critically, participates actively, and develops a compassionate and empathetic personality, the qualities that make a capable citizen rather than just a holder of certificates.
It complements the lab's other education models, the Museum School and the Virtual Museum School, by focusing on the human and behavioural side of learning.
Today’s system lets children excel at academics, art and sport. But does a child who excels at school really become an all-rounder? Do those skills help a child grow into a self-sufficient and responsible human being, a sensitive and aware citizen who thinks critically and participates actively, with a personality that understands both itself and others? And if these skills matter, where exactly is a child supposed to learn them?
Life School is an open learning space where children learn the skills and attitudes that bring out the productive, sensitive, responsible, independent, critical and happy beings in them, a space where they observe, experience, experiment, understand, learn, adopt, create, express and share.
Imagine learning these things not from a textbook but where they actually happen, on a farm, in a kitchen, at a bank, in a hospital, in a park, at a railway station, in a restaurant, on a bus. Learning that happens anywhere and everywhere. The curriculum is grouped into three families of skill.
What a person needs in order to live self-sufficiently and independently. Do we really need to depend on somebody else for the small problems of daily life?
What helps a child grow into a responsible, sensitive, aware and informed citizen.
What helps a child grow into a good and happy human being, reflecting inward to discover who you are, and understanding the world and society through yourself.
Life School has run sessions and camps in Bhopal, including winter camps and monthly programmes, hosted at Funshala, Trilanga.
Turns city museums into schools and their exhibits into teaching aids, with B.Ed. trainees as teachers, giving slum children world class education at almost no extra cost.
Turns a classroom into a 3D theatre and a lesson into a 3D film, giving every child a personal teacher and exhibits that pop off the screen, anywhere in the world.
An on field finishing school that grows teamwork, leadership and compassion in young people through social work, shaping them into responsible, capable citizens.
Whether you bring funds, a fresh idea, or an unsolved problem from the community you serve, there is a way in.
