Imagine
Shelja Sen
Why do we send our children to school? How can learning be meaningful? And most importantly, how can we build schools worthy of our children? From the time children are little, we start making stories about them. Schools are like factories where these stories are manufactured all the time. Some children, who're at the top of the social hierarchy, enjoy rich, diverse and colourful stories, which are told and retold. But there are many who spend most of their lives in school, clutching on to single, thin narratives where they've been judged as: 'a failure', 'can do better', 'not up to the mark' or 'not reaching potential' – every 'not' restricting and making their narratives thinner, limited, with lesser scope for possibilities. These are the children who are forgotten, who are invisible and who are seen as never being good enough. At the core of this book is a deep faith that learning is about the magical relationship the teacher builds with each child; it is about building emotionally safe, inclusive spaces for creative learning – this is the heart, the lifeblood, the bare bones of learning. Imagine is a call to action for teachers, parents, counsellors, therapists, activists, thought leaders and other change agents in our society. It is a game changer that will force us to reflect, rethink and redesign schools to ones that our children truly deserve.
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