RIVER ecology:

It's no surprise that the RIVER method is a raging success, not just in delivering education but also in community building. Since Valmikivanam, 15 more satellite schools have come up in a 25 km radius of the RIVER campus. They form a network and teachers from these schools actively participate in developing new learning materials. Behind the seeming looseness on the school floor, is a deeply thought through training scheme for teachers. No room for amateurs among them. No one becomes a teacher until after interning in a running school. There is a spare teacher or two available to fill in for any going on leave. Each annual batch has about 30 to 40 students and in the oldest school, Valmikivanam all but 3 have gone on to high school in a nearby village. One is working for his BA degree. Whatever became of the drop-out problem, huh?

RIVER decided against starting more satellite schools, directly run by it. Instead, they are re-training teachers of government schools. The 16 schools and the RIVER campus have become non-stop training grounds. 25,000 teachers, directly —and another 50,000 indirectly— have learned the RIVER method. The School in a Box is now available in many Indian languages. About 20,000 schools in 11 Indian states have adopted variations of the RIVER method. UNICEF has endorsed the idea whole heartedly. Interest from abroad is also growing.You can read a more comprehensive narration of RIVER's work here. And, get a vivid image of a class in progress from the words of Robert D Kaplan, who wrote a chapter on Rishi Valley in his book, 'The Ends of the Earth' [see box]

Robert D Kaplan, writes:
"It was a simple, one-room schoolhouse of lime-washed mud brick with a corrugated-iron roof, surrounded by a garden of marigold and hibiscus. Inside the schoolhouse I saw four groups, of about five children each, sitting in circles on the floor and quietly working with instructional cards and small chalkboards. I heard no shouting and saw no bored or sleepy faces, just low steady whispering as children tutored each other with minimal help from the teacher, who appeared almost superfluous. Paper cutouts of flowers and birds dangled [Picture]from the ceiling a few feet above the children's heads. Shelves holding a neat arrangement of student's files and craft boxes were set against one wall [Picture]. Against another wall were colourful charts that listed the number of people, plants and animals in the village, each broken down into various categories. From the charts I learned that this particular village had 271 inhabitants, of whom 106 are women, 97 men and 68 children. An exhibition of children's paintings hung from the third wall. Though only a year old, this school was already a more than a hut—it was a 'home', with a deeply personal touch[Picture] both in the garden and in the classroom...I could not recall another classroom that seemed so calm and conducive to self-motivation. It was especially impressive when one considered the poverty of the students' background and the wide age-span within the class...
"I spent an hour in the classroom just watching the children. From time to time, for a minute or two they stared at me —an unfamiliar and foreign face that had sparked their curiosity. But then they returned to work. Not one child had an expression that seemed sullen or lost, the way many children appear in schools in poor neighbour hoods in the United States. I observed closely from outside the door. Not one child was pestering the other. By American standards, the class was an anomaly—a room full of underprivileged kids of varying ages who were all well behaved. Because discipline was not even an issue, everyone could concentrate on learning.
"A school need not be a lecture by one big person to thirty little people, whereby teacher and textbook perform as if they are magicians and everybody else sits in rows and listens. A school is not about rote learning or memorizing. Oral cultures, the Raos asserted, already do too much of that. Only when children are taught to categorize and analyze, rather than merely to memorize, can they achieve anything in the modern world. Intercommunal and tribal hatreds, the Raos explained, arise from too much faulty oral memory..."