India: Students make the rules in this space for learning in Bengaluru

Bengaluru: Imagine a learning space where there are neither teachers nor students, neither textbooks, nor blackboards, no fixed timetables to follow, nor any boring lecture to endure.

Visualise an environment where there is no race to finish a lesson, no exams to sweat over and no competition to beat, rather a space where the only thing learners have to beat is the ‘fear of failure.’

No, this is not some imaginary idea of learning, this is Project DEFY, a self-learning movement that started in India eight years back, defying all the established norms of education.

Creating ripples among the learners as well as educators, the movement has now grown beyond borders, building learning spaces called ‘nook’ across India, Asia and Africa, providing learning opportunities free of cost.

So, what exactly is Project DEFY and why does it exist?

DEFY - Design Education For Yourself - is a project that enables learners to find meaning and purpose in their lives. DEFY creates environments where the learners experiment with their ideas free of judgments, punishments or rewards, rather than just acquiring a set of information and skills to find a job.

“Project DEFY is a non-profit organisation that enables communities to have their own self-learning environment. At the same time, our role is to develop the conversation around education, and question the status quo, putting forth arguments for radically changing education as opposed to making small changes to the same 400-year-old education philosophy of educating for work or jobs,” said Abhijit Sinha, Founder, Project DEFY.

Abhijit sees DEFY as chilly that stirs you or wakes you up when you bite it.

“At DEFY we are trying to wake people up to a reality that shows that the human life is not isolated. We live in constant collaboration and coexistence with people, animals and the environment around us. So, to hope and expect that our individual development is all that matters is a ridiculous belief. The way to grow and move forward for us is together with all the creatures as a living society,” added the 32 year old engineer, who quit his corporate job to reinvent education.

Pointing out the fallacy of modern education system he says that people right now are living in an industrial dream which has reduced the human existence and purpose to just wanting a job.

So, how does DEFY change that?

“We don’t do anything special. We just prevent the creation of barriers to thinking. DEFY is trying to reduce the influence of the outer world that curtails the eccentricities, curiosities and distinctiveness of the child by not just giving them opportunities to dream but also facilitating the realisation of those dreams,” added Abhijit, whose movement has so far created more than 30 self-learning spaces.

Set up mostly around the marginalised communities, DEFY designs little cosy centres or nooks of creativity. With freedom to express and experiment, learners love the nook so much that they just can’t have enough of it. They enjoy their time at the nook so much that they prefer it over their schools and homes.

“As a non-profit, we work in communities based on the interest we receive from them and the magnitude of their needs. An amazing thing has been that almost all the communities we work in, we were invited there by someone associated with the community, who saw the need for such a space for the development of the community. The ideas our learners generally work on in the nooks are mostly beneficial to communities,” he added.

Nooks mostly operate through corporate funding but they have been designed to become self-sustainable within five years through generation of local revenue.

The impact DEFY has had so far in the communities it works with is quite discernible, particularly in the way community members perceive their life.

Take the example of Prem Sagar, an 18-year-old who has been part of Bengaluru’s Whitefield Nook for the last three years.

Having no dearth of passion or aptitude and with the nook facilitating his ambitions, Prem Sagar has made great strides in his learning journey so far.

His recent success in building an electric scooter from scratch with co-learner Vinay shows the level of confidence the boy has already acquired.

“Over the last few years, Project DEFY has given me great opportunities to experiment with my ideas. My experience in the nook has boosted my confidence immensely, but more importantly, it has moulded my perspective on life and has given me a higher purpose, which is to create a meaningful difference in the society and lives around me,” said Sagar, who is now a first year student of mechanical engineering.

Another learner whose life has been transformed by his experience in building machines at the Whitefield Nook is Balaji.

Until three years ago, Balaji was an average high school student from a lower middle class background with distant dreams of engineering in his eyes.

He had never imagined he could engineer anything so soon in his life and that too so close to home.

Son of a painter and a housemaid, Balaji dared to dream and the nook gave space and resources for the young man to give shape to his aspirations.

Over the last three years, he has lead teams that has designed various projects in the nook, the latest being a 3D printer.

Equipped with loads of fire and imagination, Balaji is now pursuing a degree in artificial intelligence.

“All the learnings I have had in the nook so far has helped me in choosing my career and put me ahead of other students in the knowledge and experience about my subject. I wouldn’t have been the same without the exposure I have had. I feel I have a great advantage others and I am aware that I need to use my learnings meaningfully,” said Balaji.

It’s obvious that the nook is a space where learning and the learners are at the heart of the education that happens. All one needs is a space, some tools, an internet connection, a laptop and loads of passion.

However, Project DEFY is not just about technical skills or innovation, it facilitates the aspirations of learners in every field.

How does the Nook work?

Nook is a democratic learning space, where choice of learning and projects happens through mutual consultation and teamwork.

The beauty of a space like Nook is that in every learning cycle of three months, learners form new teams and work on new goals.

Every day as the teams and individuals work on their goals, each one of them assesses their progress. Assessment, feedback and collective reflection is the central part of how the learning happens in the Nook!

With every new goal, learners get insights into a range of subjects which could be anything from baking and stitching to robotics and artificial intelligence.

This has ensured that boys as young as 12 years of age pursue the subjects such as AI, not just for the fun of it, rather as an attempt to fulfil the need of his community.

More importantly, most of these boys and girls are invariably from marginalised neighbourhood who would otherwise hardly get opportunities to acquire new skills and learn anything beyond their school textbooks.

“This is role we see ourselves playing, creating access to dreams and choices for those who usually find them out of reach,” said Abhijit.

However, the impact of nooks is not confined to learners. Being a community space without any age bar, nooks have a positive influence over the communities it work with.

The confidence and the spirit of possibility nooks infuse among its learners obviously resonate around.

So, what do you think? Do the schools need to change? Can nooks be the way forward?

-- Shafaat Shahbandari is a freelance journalist based in Bengaluru and founder-editor of Thousand Shades of India