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Does one still need to go to school?

As I thought about my previous post, it set me thinking. On the one hand, there are a lot of regulations on who can open a school, who can run it - what you need and so on and so forth. And on the other hand, there is technology and there are people.

Why does one need to transport children in uniform across thousands of (cumulative) kilometres, when they can learn very well where they are? Yes, maybe in the industrial age, it had to be done, but why now?

India already has a National Institute of Open Schooling. And a Virtual Open School. Why aren't enough parents taking more advantage of it? Why are we still sending children to school (I still am, even as I write this)? Is it because that schools are also a place where children go daily - thus allowing parents to work?

Why cant this be extended to simplify the process of licensing schools? (I think some part of licensing is free atleast in Karnataka - for some types of schools). So why cant it be simplified further? To make smaller schools, even in cities. And make the whole debate about RTE (A flawed law in itself) nonexistent? (The RTE ironically, in the name of making education more available, actually puts more restrictions - which has resulted in more small schools closing down)

In the olden days - and this is not going as far as the 'Gurukul' system - as late as the 1960s, children used to go to neighborhood 'teachers' who used to teach. Just a home where children used to go, learn and come back. No uniform, no big building, no big buses transporting them

One of the fascinating aspects of writing/blogging - is that once you put an idea out, it does not go away from your head, it comes back. Sometimes, you cringe that you got that idea - at other times the idea comes as a better packaged, more thought through or with more perspectives. This idea is one of them - written about here.

And this is still an evolving thought - need to read up more on this...

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