Education: What Makes It Feminist?
One evening, last year, I finally coaxed my mother to sit down and take pause from constantly running around the house. I had been following her around for days to have this conversation. Sometimes, she silently smiled, and at other times, she eluded me. But that evening, she let her guard down.
“A library is not about buying shelves and putting in books. Anyone can do that! It’s about how one can put their heart and soul into it. You have to invest dil se.”
What does it take to make your own short film? Lights, camera, action—you might say, and a lot of passion. When young learners from Nirantar Trust’s Tarang centre watched a YouTube short, they got excited and said, “We also want to make a film!” A few months later, they made their first short, holding a mobile camera for the first time.
I want to tell this story in two parts. In one, the expectation of meritocracy oppresses everyone; in the other, even access to academic oppression is denied.
Savarnas don’t know caste—the same way a fish does not know water. When you breathe, see, feel, and thrive within a system, it is difficult to notice it, let alone know it. How does a fish then know water? By starting to know itself, of course.
Asnara walks to the FACE centre, crossing puddles and also generations of women from her community making and selling beedis. Beedi-making is a common household occupation for women and girls in Pakur, Jharkhand where Asnara lives with her family.
When Muskan said “Hamare yahaan yeh sab chalta hi nahi hai” (These things aren’t allowed in our areas), we couldn’t help but notice that she said it for feeling love as well as anger.
Welcome to the second edition of our Teacher Talks series where we meet first generation learners who share their stories of their own education and of teaching in centres for informal education.
Sahiba learns from Google, calls it her teacher and navigates her everyday—from getting things done to finding about her mental health—on Google.
Baby Halder’s life was not an ordinary one. Leaving behind a husband and decades of violence, she was thrust into the uncertainty and loneliness of a new city, about which she has spoken of many times over the years.
