philosophy behind buildingBlocks (an educational venture)

So, why education and that too primary and elementary?

1. The future of the nation: It’s an adage that “children are the future of any nation”. What’s the state of future of our nation or may be some economist or statistician may want to ask what the “future of nation” index is? I can bet you without even going after any empirical evidence, its worse than what it was 10 or 20 years back.
And, what are the reasons?
a. Growing indifference or ignorance of parents towards what’s right for their children.
b. Rampant commercialization of education sector in absence of proactive regulatory or monitoring authorities.
c. Increased proliferation of Television in the Indian household and worst still unmonitored viewing of censored programs.
And the results:
1. Today’s kids mature before the right age.
2. Traditional values in our kids are a thing of past.
3. Today’s kids are prone to depression and psychological problems (that were unheard of just a few years back).

Still, all these issues in themselves do not warrant a start of yet another new school or educational institution as there are already existing schools and even alternatives, so why don’t they fix the problem in our society?

2. Existing education system is weak: The existing education system of India has comprehensively weakened since independence for all the different sections of the society. The lowest strata of the society (i.e. the poor and impoverished) are pretty much helpless and in a dismal state, given the indifference of the majority of government supported educational institutions. Further, even the schools catering to the middle class and affluent parts of the society are in a mess. A good example of that is the India Today’s recent survey where our supposedly genius kids are trailing behind their counterparts from other countries. Mind you these samples were taken from supposedly the best schools of India. So, it’s up to the reader to contemplate how bad would we perform in the case of MCD, NDMC or other government supported schools. One may think that there are already existing alternate education systems that could support the ailing education system. However, there is a caveat there as well:

3. Unethical practices prevalent by Private players: One of the most unfortunate aspects of the reasonably working free market capitalism is that the worst aspects of capitalism are mostly visible in the developing nations. The alternate education mostly being carried out by private players like Mother’s pride and Shemrock are nothing but mammoth factories with a penchant in good marketing. It is shocking how these factories operate a Marketing department under the name of Research and Development. Additionally, none of the big players (especially Mother’s pride and Shemrock) are adhering to the recommended guidelines set up by NCERT (worst they don’t even know if these guidelines exist). As, Dr. Ranjana Sharma has pointed out in her recent research, these money thirsty corporate pre school raiders are fiercely after profits and bottom lines so the costs spent on training figures last in their scheme of things. Lack of proper training and pomp and show of these marketing outfits are doing no good to the society other than creating consumers out of these innocent kids.

So, with such dismal situations prevailing in the education system, I could have done two things:
1. Crib about the problem and feel helpless.
2. Else, take control of the situation and try to offer solutions which work towards making the future of nation complete well rounded individuals. Citizens who enjoy their freedoms and rights, however, at the same time are cognizant of their responsibilities towards themselves, their families, society and finally the nation.

So, that’s the goal and philosophy of building blocks:

To instill confidence, moral values, mental sharpness and responsibility into the children of today so that they grow up to become model citizens of tomorrow.

In order to breakaway from the dubious past of inefficiencies and over promise and introduce long lasting change, we have invested heavily into Research and Design of course curriculum and our program. If you would like to know how we have knitted together both science and spirituality to come up with this new form of corrective education, please click over here.