Children Know Best

Rajasthan shuts for Holi, the Hindu celebration of colors, so I headed to Beawar to spend time with Yash and the Mangal family, our partners for our first school, Mangal Newton. During Holi, most of the children who stay at the hostel go home; however, two of the scholarship students at Mangal Newton, Rishab (from Chandighar) and Nikhil (from Jammu) are too far from home so they were welcomes into the Mangal family’s home for these auspicious days. In the midst of throwing colors and eating traditional dhal bhati, I asked each of them to give me 3 ideas for how we can improve Mangal Newton. I described our vision to bring the best to this school for them and Rishab quickly responded, with “Yash sir is not only trying to make this the best school in India but the best school in the world!”

Within 20 minutes, Rishab also had his frist idea: English coaching classes so that everyone can be a good public speaker and be an MC of one of Mangal Newton’s many public shows. 15 minutes later, “Maam, I have another idea…..”. In Hindi, he described how his science teacher is teaching a topic, like how iron turns to a magnet, it is hard to understand so we should give teacher iron so she can show the kids how it works. I am thinking – this is it! This is not an educator, not an academic, not a school management company speaking, this Rishab, in 6th grade saying that he wants and needs to see and do things. We must respond to this need and there are may organizations like Agastaya Foundation who are thinking specifically about how to create interactive science curriculum. Education Access for All looks forward to working with such organizations to bring such innovation into schools and also working with them to digitize such curriculum so it can spread across India at scale.

Schools at Scale

Editor’s note: Yash Mangal is the Director of Mangal Newton School and will be leading Newton Management Company as we expand to new geographies and areas. He will also be regularly contributing to this blog.

Last week, I joined Deepti and Erica for a few days to visit schools in small towns across Rajasthan. As a Director of a school myself, it was an eye-opening and humbling experience. We started Mangal Newton because when we were kids, there were not any good options for schools in Beawar. To be honest, I thought we were pioneers in bringing such innovative learning to such a small town; however, it was interesting to see so many families with a similar vision as our own doing the same for their towns. In fact, we saw the only university level chemistry lab to be installed in a school in Rajasthan in a small town called Jhunjunu.

At the same time, it was often concerning to see families and individuals invest unlimited time and money into just ONE school which will likely be able to serve about 2000 children a year at the most. The investment they are making could easily be shared with other schools in the area such that the innovation can reach children at scale. Newton Management Company aspires to leverage the fact that many families in these small towns are motivated by having a school in their name; but at the same time, aspires to achieve scale by partnering with a number of schools in a community. We look forward to learning from the other education innovators in small towns and partnering with them to achieve our vision.

By Yash Mangal

One Village at a Time

Visit Pilani, Rajasthan and you feel the potential of India. 70 years ago, Pilani was a remote village in the desert of Rajasthan. Today it is thriving town – often reminding me of Stanford’s campus – serving as an education center for Rajasthan.

Thank you, GD Birla. His commitment and vision for Pilani is something both other wealthy families with roots in small villages and organizations should be looking to emulate. He invested in building a world class scientific institution in his hometown, BITS Pilani, and has supported this villages transformation. Streets are wide, lined by flowers and fields and full of students, scientists, and doctors on their bikes. Gandhi’s statue is prominent and while the town carries a sense of scientific advancement, at the same time, in holds Indian values and tradition at its heart.

After observing a Bharatnatyam class (pictures to come) at Birla Balika Vidyapeeth, an all girls schools in Pilani, I asked if any of them wanted to come to New York. Unlike in most other classrooms where I ask the same question, only one hand when shooting up. Another girl explained, “We all want to come to New York to see the city but not to work or live because we want to improve our country first.” I only wish I heard that in more of the classrooms we visited and hope that as we work with schools and communities, this sense of service and giving back can be one of the things we emphasize.

It was equally exciting to see a positive response to our eTutor product in such booming educational center and I am hopeful we can build some partnerships that we will learn significantly from.

And now off to Hanumaghar and Ganganagar, a small towns on the Pakistan border where I am sure our learning will continue….