Five education initiatives that are changing India

1. Hole in the wall

By literally placing a computer into a hole in the wall, Sugata Mitra devised minimally invasive education, what we will soon realize is the future of learning in the world. Through his experiment he deduced that children would teach themselves if posed with a question or a situation that they needed to understand and that their aptitude to learn is limitless.

Highlighting the bureaucracy of the current education system, he has more than enough proof that children can learn all they need with a mix of Technology, collaboration and encouragement in place of robotic teachers and stressful examinations. He has placed many such computers into the walls of schools across the length and breadth of the country, proving this theory one child at a time.

2. Barefoot college

Barefoot College was started by Bunker Roy in 1975 in a village in Rajasthan. It is essentially a school for the poor where they learn what they find important.

Villagers, mostly women, learn skills such as Architecture, solar engineering, rain water harvesting, education and more so that they can contribute to their society and take pride in their labour. The school has taught numerous illiterate women from over the world solar engineering through which they have gone ahead to their own countries and states and electrified more than a thousand villages. Roy believes that the current education system sets a standard for people that if they cannot match is regarded as failure, instead here they educate themselves with knowledge that is useful to them and flourish.

3. Pravah- SMILE

Pravah's SMILE (Student's Mobilization Initiative for Learning through Exposure) is one of their oldest running initiatives in New Delhi.

It basically believes in volunteering as a means of exposure for students so that they can grow as responsible and aware individuals who go on to become an integral part of their society.By removing them from their comfort zones and protected bubbles, it gives them essential practical experience that teaches them what a classroom cannot in twenty years of education. Young individuals learn to look beyond themselves, extend their responsibility to the world around them and rid them of the false sense of entitlement that most youngsters seem to imbibe these days.

4. Pratham

Thousands of volunteers from all strata of life come together through Pratham to give underprivileged children an education that equals the quality that a paid teacher might give in a privileged school.

The initiative started in Mumbai but has now spread all over the country.

5. MOOCs

Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs started picking up post 2012 and have been a revolutionary movement in education by themselves. Through providers such as Coursera and Edx, along with individual universities, the best courses in the world on every conceivable topic are now accessible by anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

Pre-recorded lectures by expert professors, interactive forums and tests make sure a student gets a full course experience sitting in his pyjamas at home.