By Stephanie Gottlieb
Learning to conform appears to be the aim of education for an alarmingly growing number of people in this country. This 'reason-not-why' mindset is behind the unpleasant truth that our learning systems do little to promote inquiry – the search for illumination through discovery – and exist primarily as instruments of social control.
When children's questions go unheard, they grow deaf to life's questions, as also to the answers it provokes them to find. A school is the response to a community's search for the tools to gift its children with, to mine life's richness. In this community thrust, the child is the focus of adult collaboration.
It is, thus, the responsibility of our community as 'guardians' (parents, policy makers, heads and managers of schools, teachers, caring citizens) to ensure that their collective wisdom makes school a repository of inquiry-driven learning – a place where the child grows, through its first working experience of democracy for humanization.
– Shilpa Kagal, Director of Parisar Asha, India
In this issue of Changemakers.net journal, we return to the topic of social entrepreneurs' contributions to education, exploring another fundamental, although often neglected, component of improving education in a profound, sustainable way. Accountability has been a key concept in education policy for over a century, with roots traced back to 19th century England
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