My post for this week focuses on a small tribe town in Dindori, India. Their government noticed that the school attendance rates in the region were startlingly low, and they figured this had to do with the fact that there was no permanent location for the children to attend their classes. A group of people decided to team up with the railway company and turn old and abandoned train cars into classrooms. Principal of the school Santosh Uike was quoted saying “Out of the 96 students in the three classes, the school was seeing a maximum attendance of only 50. But after the school was remodelled as a railway station, complete with the train engine and coaches, the attendance rose to 87, which is just nine short of the total student strength,”, emphasizing how much the renovation really made a difference in the families decisions to send their children to school. More details on the story can be found here.
I believe this is an important story because in the United States it is easy for us to forget how much of a privilege it is that the average person expects to graduate from high school throughout their life. According to the OECD, as of 2017, 82.3 percent of Americans received a high school diploma, where as in India, only 33.3 percent received one. There is a strong correlation between lack of education and higher rates of poverty across countries of the world, so it is imperative for the heads of governments to start making changes in their schooling programs, if they hope to see improvements for their citizen’s living conditions. It is inspiring to see the people in Dindori making these strides to make education more accessible in their community. Their creative problem-solving strategy to reduce costs by using old train cars is also impressive, because this allowed them to create change without having to spend an overwhelming amount of money on new structures for a school building. This highlights that it is more realistic to bring school to children in remote areas across the world than many one formerly believed.
Between the friends I have made over the years and the things I have learned, I have always really enjoyed going to school. I believe it has been one of the main factors in making me a more independent and driven person, so I am very happy to see these children in India being given the chance to experience a better education than they were ever granted before.