Students of Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) have taken to teaching school children about governance. In a novel initiative called ‘Ignited Minds’, third and fourth-year students of humanities at the institute are encouraging school students to participate in workshops, learn to develop a concept and make it work too.
For the past two years, they have been inviting 50 to 60 students from various schools to the institute for a day-long workshop. “We let schools select the students. When we went back, we found that the students were not keen on following up on the workshop. Many of them were academically brilliant but not motivated to work on social issues,” said G. Venkataraman, the brain behind the programme. “We have now reduced the size of the group. We have sent posters to 22 schools in the city and would like to have around 10 students studying in classes IX to XII. Any interested student can volunteer for the conference,” he said.
“The students will identify a problem in their area and develop content for the workshop. This will help them carry forward their experiences and experiment in classrooms too,” he explained. In the earlier two workshops, the IIT-M students designed the conference activities.
Fourth-year student Shilpa Menon says: “We want to expose school children to issues that we come across only in college. In school, we read about local government without understanding the ground issues. We learn about panchayats, equality in villages or poverty, only to score well in exams. The idea is to help students approach the subjects through games and gain perspective at a young age,” she said.
From this year, the participants of the workshop will help develop content
