Students sing, dance to understand subjects

Mangalore, February 1: When most of the students attempting SSLC exams in the next few months are buried in their books studying, students of Swaroopa Adhyayana Kendra are busy singing, dancing and painting.

Students of Swaroopa Adhyayana Kendra painting a picture, while singing their institution anthem, at Town Hall in Mangalore on Tuesday.However, people who are thinking that these kids are up to tom-foolery will be shocked to find out that they know their theorems, science experiments, history dates, English poems, Kannada grammar on the tip of their tongue.

How are they able to do it? Well, thanks to the innovative learning methods of Gopadkar.

Swaroopa Adhyayan Kendra is the brain child of Gopadkar, which aims to break the barriers of conventional education system which is limited to six subjects, exams and marks.

Gopadkar showed the wonders of his alternate education methods at 'Swaroopa Shikshana Jagruti Jatha' organised at Mangalore Town Hall on Tuesday.

“Who ever knows everything and understands everything, tends to forget. One who does not understand and is ready to accept that fact and learn is a student. When you do not understand, you are forced to think. Hence, it is better not to understand than understand,” said Gopadkar.

'Swaroopa,' means understanding oneself with an aim to develop. The alternate education system aims to bring change, development, experimentation and creativity, he said.

The students of Swaroopa, then demonstrated various learning techniques they learnt at the center and left the audience awestruck. The students presented a well-choreographed Bollywood dance. Later, they explained that the dance is just not a dance, but a depiction of Flemming's Right and Left Hand Rule. The students have memorised the entire rule with the dance moves.

The students performed various other dances which depicted Maths theorems and also the multi-tasked education dance, where students presented four different subjects in one dance.

Later, Gopadkar demonstrated the memory skills of his students, who could name more than 50 items in its chronological order and also randomly. “With this technique, my students have entered the Limca Book of World Records by naming 1000 items,” he said.

The students also demonstrated their concentration power, by doing 11 tasks at once. The students drew pictures in their left hand, counted in the right and memorised items, numbers, questions asked by their teachers simultaneously and also told what the audience were doing.

Any mobile number in the world can be memorised by these children and they can remember it permanently. The students have denoted numbers to various actions and they remember them through the story technique.

The First War of Indian Independence, seemed to come alive when the students enacted an entire chapter of the social science subject with an Yakshagana.

Later, they presented a puppet show “Artha Agtha Illa” (I don't understand) which showed the plight of the students in present education system.

“Stop Bonsai education. Try to solve the lacunae in the present education system. All children are geniuses, one has to know to use the human resource,” said Gopadkar and added that he and his students have toured Karnataka for three months, demonstrating the education techniques in over 54 centers. However, the education department is not considering to include the alternative study techniques in the education system,” he regretted.

“Earth is looted by the educated. Today's education is leading one to a destructive path. The society has become monotonous. There is a great need to have a change in the education system and hence emphasise on experimentation and creativity,” said Scholar and artist Gururaj Marpalli delivering the key-note address.

The programme was inaugurated by Artist K P Shenoy, with a painting which was backed by the Swaroopa institution anthem sung by the students.