Students share management duties and help chose their teachers. The pedagogy is more appropriate, based as it is on Montessori methods. But mainly children learn how to take charge of their own lives. It is this empowerment that gives the extension schools an edge over government schools. As the extension schools batter education stereotypes, they have also inspired 45 government schools in Karnataka to adopt their Montessori pedagogy and materials, in large part to try to end the high drop-out rates.
National statistics are even more dismal.
Making the schooling appropriate, Damu says. Working children are the best decision-makers for themselves, so we brought them together in a movement that they own and supported every choice they wished to exercise for themselves. Led by Amukta Mahapatra, Damu and a team of education experts put aside traditional pedagogy and designed styles that would allow children to learn independently. Where children took two years to learn the alphabets, the new pedagogy of extension schools equipped them to read newspapers in three months. Working children were invisible.