Hasiru Hejje: Innovative Multidisciplinary Projects in High Schools

Yettina Halla lower reach

Kannadi hole before joining Kempu hole

With the introduction of CCE in high schools across the country many institutions are expressing their unhappiness for not being able to cope up with the schedules and tasks. They are simply not able to accept anything out of the age-old rote method. With great ease any teacher can show how their class room teaching enables children to score high percentages and prove them brilliant. The managements too find it very convenient for they can accommodate up to half a dozen or more sections in each class. But to carry out field based projects in high schools it calls for smaller groups. To make the student groups smaller it takes more number of teachers, which is a very uncommon thing to find in our education institutions.

The recent introduction of multidisciplinary project for class ninth and tenth is another thing seen as a devil by many institutions. Just as many run of the mill teachers are finding innovative methods to dilute or even skip the project work stipulated by the CBSE some good teachers backed by their dedicated institutions are finding innovative projects to put their students to work upon. While a teacher tries to get the pesticide residue analyzed in the turmeric crop in Hassan district another tries to study the fish diversity in Krishnaraja Sagar Dam.

Marked area for the construction of a dam

The teachers of TVS school in Tumkur chose more burning issues related to the state. While the ninth graders chose to find out the feasibility of siphoning water from the west flowing rivers to the drier regions in the eastern plains of Karnataka, their seniors chose to find out the effect of mining in some parts of Bellary. Apart from detailed case study in the classroom they under took extensive field study on site.

Here is one of those study reports in pictures. After zeroing upon a small village called Raxidi near Sakaleshpura, in Hassan district the class made it their base. The community hall kept by a local theatre group and their half constructed proscenium theatre stage was their makeshift field station. The children enjoyed the sun and shine sleeping in tents. The made day trips to the rivulets proposed for taping and the fields they fed, met the people who would loose land, the factory that manufactured the pipe for laying underground and the biodiversity hot spots.

Kids inspecting the pipes

An estate owner explaining what a TMC is

In the evenings they met the community and shared ideas through documentaries about the issue related to water distribution. The six teams working upon different aspects of the same issue finally made a presentation to the High school students at Kyamanahalli. The discussion between the students of the two districts was like a mini summit. The spirited discussion between the little custodians of water at the native district and the beneficiaries of the proposed diversion project was moderated by Manu K of Hasiru hejje. In the presence of local environmental activist Prakash Rakshidi and the school headmistress one of the petitioners of the project Advocate Kishore kumar made a presentation to clear the doubts of many.

Prasad Raxidi explaining the issue in the local perspective

His affirmative presentation made the children form solid opinion out of all their field work. The entire process might have looked like a child’s play but in some years to come it is these children who would be an engineer, a designer, a politician, a journalist, a lawyer or a naturalist in real life. Exposure to the monsoon climate for four days in the heart of Western Ghats and being in touch with the myriad forms of life it supports would linger on in their memories and become part of their psyches.