The mechanical engineer is showing the way for innovation in education, something that governments across the world can learn from.
W
e all remember Phunsukh Wangdu, the creator of an enviably unconventional model of education in the reel world of the film, 3 Idiots. It left everyone intrigued, inspired and in some ways, desirous of wanting to make it a part of one’s own learning processes and environment. However, to the surprise of many, the model is in fact a reality, all credit to its brainchild, Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer from Ladakh who indeed was an inspiration behind the film’s version. Owing to the success of this innovative educational model, Wangchuk has recently been declared an awardee for the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for the year 2018.
The story dates back to late 1980s when Wangchuk, a mechanical engineering student in Srinagar started tutoring school going children to meet his educational expenses. However, what he thought to be a mere source of sustenance for his college years ended up becoming a life-transforming experience for him and his students. It was while tutoring these kids that Wangchuk realised the plight of Ladakhi children in terms of the challenges they faced vis-a-vis school education and took upon himself the task of bringing an educational reform in Ladakh.
“After having completed his mechanical engineering around 1988, Wangchuk along with his peers, started the Students Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL).”
This movement was primarily centered at bringing educational reforms at school level by partnering with several government and local bodies under the project name “Operation New Hope”. As a part of this project, they rewrote textbooks and re-trained teachers in native languages to make education more accessible. Soon, this revolution started showing its results with schools marking a surge in their pass percentages from five percent to 55 percent and to as high as 75 percent by the end of 2016.
During all this while, along the banks of Indus, was another project underway – the SECMOL Alternative school. It wasn’t so much a school as it was a small eco-village housing students, staff and volunteers using innovative methods to perform their daily chores and running the campus. This was the beginning of a rather unconventional learning model which Wangchuk proudly calls the ‘School for Failures’. This name is no misnomer for it was especially set up to cater to the needs of those kids of Ladakh who failed in the conventional schooling system. So, one literally has to fail his/her school to make it to this innovative school of practical learning!
This school, run wholly by students till date, operates as a small settlement, having a ‘mini-government’ of its own. Here children are made in-charge for various departments ranging from animal management to economic affairs to electricity and are held accountable on a bi-monthly basis for their performance through a parliamentary system of debates/discussions.
“The campus has its own newspaper, solar energy heated mud buildings and radio station which are based solely on the application of basic science. This novel idea of SECMOL aims at bringing abstract concepts of textbook to life through constant experiments.”
Another accomplishment of SECMOL has been the invention of the Ice-stupa technology. This technology was pioneered to compensate for reduced runoff on mountains by reutilising unused melted glacial water for irrigation. This technique (an expansion on the experimental work of the Ladakhi engineer Chewang Norphel) has won Wangchuk a lot of accolades globally and has also been adopted by the Switzerland Government to deal with the climatic changes and melting of glaciers in Swiss Alps.
While on one hand, the SECMOL Alternative school has helped children struggling with conventional school learning to obtain self-sustenance, on the other, it has put to perspective a new approach to environmental protection and conservation. In an era when the entire world is struggling to cope with climate change, the fact that there exists a small town embroiled in its own demographic challenges, developing solely on an environmental-friendly framework is an example for all the countries highlighting that development and environmental protection aren’t antithetical concepts. Be it the artificial glacier creating technology, the solar heated buildings which alleviate the need for any heaters at even -15 degrees temperatures or complete non-reliance on fossil fuels, this school has set a high benchmark for scientists and policymakers worldwide.
In the Indian perspective, especially when we seem to be heavily dependent on the outside world for technical know-how, feats like these reiterate the hidden potential of our human resources and bring to fore the fact that the young innovative minds have been left largely unexploited in our bid for higher grades, assembly line competitive exam preparations and rote learning methodologies.
Ironically, at a time when the Government has come up with the ‘Institutions of Eminence’ and the policy of financial assistance to bring Indian institutions at par with the western world, Wangchuk is crowdsourcing funds to set up in Ladakh its first university – Himalayan Institute of Alternatives to give something back to the world.
“Tourism, economy, foreign exchange, sustainable development and most importantly human resource development, this educational plan has a lot to offer which the Government needs to shift greater attention towards.”
What we all need to realise is that while we are busy aping the west, here is a man and maybe many others like him who need the much deserved attention as they are the ones who have in fact illustrated the true meaning of ‘Make in India’.
