Educational Inequity is Solvable

biggest problems. So my solvable is to redefine education and to create curriculum, better culgy and school cultures which will enable children to think and behave like democratic citizens and not just be looking at and technical education for the labor force, so that in the next ten or fifteen years, all the children of the world, actually, but let's say just India can learn to be learned, to be educated to be good democratic citizens. That is doctor Urashi Sani,

the renowned educator and social entrepreneur. She's the founder and CEO of Study Hall Educational Foundation. Today's solvable is about social justice. It's about education that teaches us to think critically and become more engaged citizens. As you'll hear, all of these things are connected and they apply to every one of us wherever we live. Doctor Sannie's focus is in India. She grew up there and works there today. She believes that radically redefining education will enable young people

to solve some of our most intractable problems. Gender inequality, class inequality, and extreme poverty. She is really thinking big. Across India, almost forty percent of girls that are between fifteen and eighteen years old drop out of school and college. Most of them do so not because they get a job, but because they're forced to take on household chores or they have to start begging. Child marriage is a major

force taking girls out of school too. Indian girls account for a third of the world's seven one hundred and twenty million child brides. The benefits of keeping girls in school are enormous, and not just for the lives and opportunities of those individual girls. It's tough though. While poverty in India is declining, tens of millions of people still live in extreme poverty, unable to access any education. So

there's all that to face down. But the brilliance of doctor Sannie is that her work is much more than stamping out illiteracy and keeping girls in school. Doctor Sannie taps education for its potential to develop a social and political consciousness in students. Teaching girls and boys that no one person is more valuable than another and empowering them to live their lives differently is a solvable that crosses

borders easily. It's universal truth. Doctor Sannie has been working for the rights of children and women for more than thirty years now. Starting with a tiny preschool in her garage, her Prema Schools have expanded into India's public schools, and by doing so, she now reaches about one hundred thousand girls in a thousand schools and around half a million people in total. So let's take a listen now to

doctor or Vatti Sani in conversation with Ann Applebaum. Tell me what it is about this problem that made you want to solve it. I was raised in Puna, which is on the western part of India, in a middle class household, and my parents sent me to an English medium convent school which was one of the best in the country by the way, it had the best results, and I really did well. I finished a high school education and I did well, and within a year my

father arranged a marriage for Melian. I was married off. So as I grew up, I was married, I had two children, and I really reflected on my education and felt that though it gave me many technicals skills in that instance, it was a quality education, but what it didn't do for me, and that was critical. It did not teach me that I was an equal person and that I had the right to use these technical skills for my own life to give me some control over

my own life. I never thought to question my father when he arraigned this marriage for me and I was barely seventeen. And that's when I began to think that even though it was considered a very high quality education, it had really failed me as it failed thousands and thousands of young women in India millions reely. And that's what started me off on the journey of looking at education critically and thinking that a great deal, that it needed to be redefined, that it wasn't doing the job

that I think it could do. And I want to quote Pallyslavski. He's a dramatist and he said that the goal of education is not just to know, but to live. And so my education gave me skills, It gave me knowledge, it gave me information, but it didn't really give me important skills that I needed to live my life. And it, as a woman in India, most importantly, didn't teach me that I was an equal person, that I deserved everything

that everybody else got. So that my brothers went off to engineering college and commerce education, and I was married off. There was no opportunity for me to really redefine or even drive me the driver of my own life, and my education did nothing to help me think critically about a system that would assign this role of this position

to women and two girls. And that's what started me off on my journey, and that's how I founded my school, really, and within the school, the goal was that was really our lab to look at. Sorry, what kind of school

was it? It was a preschool to begin with six children in my garage, and the goal was to see what children want to learn, what the children need to learn, and how do you embed curriculum, how do you embed pedagogical practices in people's lives and lives are very complex really that even though I live in my life as an individual, my life is embedded in a social system,

which is embedded and impacted by a political system. So when you look at how people live their lives, you have to look beyond the individual to the social system, to the political system. And then education must help you address that. It must first of all take that into consideration, and they must teach us how to navigate that system. How to position yourself in the system. This is how we define the goal of education, that it must help us to ask and answer the question who am I?

And how am I related to the universe and others in it? What is the universe like? What is my universe like? And not just my physical universe, my social my political universe? When am I positioned in it? How am I related to others in it? Am I at the bottom of the ladder? Who has power? Who doesn't have power? So while we learn traditional subjects like mathematics and science and history and geography, they must enable us to answer these questions. And if they don't, that's a

job very poorly done. And so for the last thirty three years, we've been trying to find a solution to this problem. I can't say we you know, we've cracked the problem, we found the exact solution, but we have found many solutions to address this. Tell me how you have gone about designing and writing new curriculum. Have you studied how it's done in other places? Have you worked

out of your own experienced you consult teachers? So you know, I got my PhD and my master's in education from JUC Berkeley, which is a very diverse, very vibrant kind of university, and that's where I really gained the social and political perspective. In fact, a life changing event was when I read Paula Ferri. He's a great educator and philosopher from Brazil, and he really looked at literacy in a very different way. He said it was revolutionary, it

was a humanizing force. He said that you read the world in order to read the world, which means that if literacy doesn't teach you how to read your own world, then it fails you. And that was a real aha moment. I said, Yeah, I have a first master's in philosophy, so I liked metaphysical questions anological question but this was

really a way of marrying both my interests. And how did I go about it by reading many education philosophers, Christian Motiving one is it very great, and in philosopher vent the natric or John Dewey, Paula Frere, who was really very very influential in my thinking, and many others.

But most importantly, how we developed this curricular by it was by watching our students very carefully engaging with them, and that was our whole direction to the teachers as well, that you must engage with students very carefully and learn from them how to teach them. So in all my curricula, I've built a curricula on a critical feminist pedoglogy and it's based on critical dialogues, which are again Parli Frere's term. And it has emerged from a series of critical dialogues

with young girls, adolescent girls. And we've done that with boys now, and that's our method. We are way of developing curriculus a emergent one that it must emerge from grounded reality. It must emerge from students. Nobody consults students, and you know, you build, and we don't build anything in a lab. I write no curriculu sitting in my office. I will write them retrospectively after I have spent a lot of time working with students in the classroom. So

in fact, the students are the authors. Partly they are co authors of the curriculum with their teachers. I never go in with a blueprint that oh, I go in with an idea. I go in with a theory and a philosophy, and after that it emerges from conversations, from actual work with children in classrooms. Can you give me some examples of how this is different from how girls or eardie, anybody would have been taught in India before. Of course, I went to school fifty years ago at

the same time. Nobody ever ever, you know, it was the way good school, so I don't want to bash it. By the way, and the teachers they did what they knew, and the principal did what she knew. These were British nouns, and the teachers were Indian teachers, but they were guided by them. You know, they taught me. They never ever thought to ask me about my personal life. They never ever thought that that was relevant. They never ever thought to address the issue of how unequal things were, how

an unequal the patriarchal social structure of India was. And so it didn't change my life. I had to do that myself. So how it's different is that we think that of course girls students, boys and girls both or in case you asked about girls, they you should welcome

their lives into the classroom. For example, if we're dealing with a case of child marriage, a huge problem in India, by the way, which has a solution, I will tell them how my mind was really almost a child marriage, right, So I will tell them about what it felt like for me, and the girls immediately will talk about oh yes, and you know, Nandini was married off in fifth grade and nobody even told her that she was getting married.

When she came home, she saw that there was some kind of a party happening, and so her mother told her, get dress, get dressed, She's what's going on? She's you're getting engaged today? And she didn't fitness high school and she was married off. So I asked them that, okay, so what is it like for girls after they get married then? And then they will tell you, Oh, they treat it like servants. They have babies very quickly, they have sex when they're not ready for it, and they

have no power in their new households. Everybody they live by permission. Everyone tells them what to do, and their lives are pretty awful. Then don't their parents know this? Your parents know? That's so why did it just happened? Or because the social system is like that? I said, so let's look at the social system and why is it so cruel to girls? And do you know why can't it be changed? And do you think it. Can they say I should be changed? And can it? This

is the art? But how it is human made and human beings can change it and you and I can change it. So that's how the conversation would go. And from there you bring in history, all history and even you know, feminist movements that have changed things. Also, how there are laws that came into being because people realize it's cruel to girls and why it shouldn't happen. But nobody follows the law because tradition and culture overrides it.

And who makes tradition and cultures? We do? I think the goal is for them to understand that as citizens, you know, we the people give to ourselves, adopt and enact the constitution, right, so whose we the people? To help them think of themselves as we the people And it's very impowering. So through and nobody ever did that. Ever, no one does it in many schools the traditional curriculum and not just in India, by the way, I think everywhere does not think that it needs to include this

in the curriculum. These kinds of dialogues, these kinds of conversation to set aside school space. When people talk of progressive education, how do we get more technology so that you can do better teaching of math and science. Heck, we've had better teaching of math and science in the last fifty years and has to change the world. Are

we in a better place? Why do we not think that maybe we should drop fifty percent of what's going on in the traditional curriculum and include teaching for democratic citizenship. And it can be done while you teach math, while you teach science, while you teach history, and you should have a special space to teach it as well like you teach anything else. The pedagogy has to be a

critical pedagogy. It must include critical dialogues. It must include enabling and encouraging students to bring their own experiences in it, to reflect critically on them, and then to show them that things can be different, to become solvers, to become problem solvers. Okay, so you have worked in your own schools and you've designed a curriculumal a curriculum like this, Tell me how you spread it to others? How do

you convince other schools to adopt it? So what they have done in the last since twenty eleventh rarely that actually we were doing this and we video all these dialogues and somebody from UNICEF saw it and she said, hey, this is great, and we are working with these public schools with very poor adolescent girls and they could really benefit from it. Do you think you could turn it into a curriculum and help us contrain their teacher as it? Sure,

and we did it for thirty eight schools. So we got their teachers, we helped build a gender lens in them personally, first all to look at their own lives and see how gender it impacted it. They were mostly female teachers, and then we taught them how to practice critical pedagogy in their classrooms, how to redefine their role as teachers so that they became advocates of girls' rights and help girls become advocates for themselves advocates. So we

took it to thirty eight schools. They liked it, they asked us to take it to another hundred schools, and now we've taken it to over a thousand schools through teacher training and then a lot of offsite post training

support of teachers. We've also built a critical room for boys now and so we're training men on how men female teachers as well, how to think about masculinity differently, how to see men as advocates for girls' rights, because girls' rights are human rights, and that's what we've been doing

for the last year and a half. As well. We engage in large scale social campaigns, so that's girls and teachers and parents march in communities, you know, protesting against oppression of girls and women, and mobilizing public opinion for the girl's right to education and girls right to their own lives, against hid marriage, against domestic violence. And now recently the girls came up with this paternal alcoholism is

a big problem. They said, that's the next campaign we're going to do, and we want fathers to engage in that as well. What about traditional civics education, in other words, teaching people this is how the court system works, this is how the parliament works. It's about pride, it's about country, it's about the history of democracy, the constitution and so on. How do you incorporate that kind of education into what you do. See that is part of the traditional curriculum,

and of course we leverage that. Here's the difference, though, There are two ways you can approach it. One is where you explain the system as it is you take a technical approach where you describe the system, you explain how it works, and you said you should be loyal to the system and you should support it. Right. The other approach you can take is that you explain the system and you take a critical view of it, not

just the political system, but also the social system. And you get students to understand that they are responsible for following this system but also changing it where it falls short, but most importantly for understanding that what does it mean to be a citizen? Right, and to explain that these constitutions are wonderful. India has a wonderful constitution, by the way. So to feel responsible to realize the constitution and then to be feel responsible to also change it, to participate actively,

to understand power. That what the constitution has done is with its idea of equality, especially in very hierarchical societies like India and you know his historically even Britain and the US, that it has taught us that power should be equally distributed. That's the whole idea of equality. Now we all believe that equality, liberty, fraternity, these are the cornerstones of democracy. Right, who's following it? Our social structures

following it, our families democratic, our schools democratic? Is power equally distributed? If it isn't, will isn't that a problem? And so would you do? Would you do to realize that? So, especially in the case of gender, it is so unequal that patriarchal societies have no place in a democracy daily They should not exist, but they do. They're firmly entrenched.

So how do you come back that? How do you change that without having a war between the sexes in a peaceful manner, in a collaborative manner, Which is why we changed to boys as well. We said, hey, we need to get them to engage in this as well, and we need to teach them that patriarchy is not their fault, but it does give them more power, and it is very cruel to their sisters, their mothers, to all the women they love. So what are they going

to do about it? What's their solution? Can you give me some examples students of yours who were who were motivated by the kind of curriculum that you taught them, things that they've gone on to do afterwards. They have become decision makers in their own families. They have been able to stop their own child marriages and others. They have become the drivers of their lives, and in several cases they become the heads of their families, and they have huge They have inspired a great deal of respect

in their own families and in the community. And to give you a concrete example, when my students were in eighth grade, they came to me and they said that, you know, it's a great thing that this has happened, that we are changing. But do you know that many girls in our society and many people in our society, they don't look at life like this. So what can we do about that? I said, so, what do you think? So they formed a group called Nangana means a brave woman?

What are your women really? And what they did was we video all our critical dialogue. They took those videos and they helped public meetings, They helped meeting community meetings in people's homes, invited women to that and then had the same critical dialogues with the women and why do you tolerate this? Why does a woman never retaliate when a man beats up? When our husband beats up? Is

that right? Is that wrong? What can you do? And then the idea of the campaign really emerged from this work, right so, and this was really directed and spearheaded by our own students. In terms of the boys, that work is fairly recent, but even there, we had a focus group discussion with parents of the boys we've been working with for eighteen months and that's this is what they said.

These are parents, mothers and fathers both, and they said that our boys have started helping with household jaws more. They have started advocating for their sisters, also advocating for their continual education and for a delay in child marriage. Boys have said that they will refuse to take DALDI in their marriages. So they have learned to assume leadership roles in their own lives and they walk alongside with

the girl students for the campaigns. Most of us our alumni are now like twenty five, twenty six, the oldest one would be about that old. So so far, in their own personal lives and in their own local communities,

they've been very effective. What do you say to the people who say, all, right, this is all very well, and you know, we're glad there's some of this in our schools, but in the real world of work, people are also going to have to learn math and science, and those things need to take up time in the curriculum, and they require really difficult and focused education, and they're not you know, we don't have time for all this conversation.

We need to, we need to. We need to make sure that people are ready to live in this rapidly changing anywhere. Work itself is changing very quickly. We offer our own schools as an example. Our school has a retention rate of eighty eight percent, which is twice the

national average. Students have higher achievement scores, and ninety seven percent of those who we retain go on to higher education, so we are not short changing them where technical education is concerned, and we are able to do this alongside when you build the capacity to aspire, when you build a self and teach girls that you know you have the right to do things for yourself. It's a real driver so that they work very hard at trying to

succeed academically as well. And our results are very good. Our academic results, our achievement scores are very good, our transition rate to higher education is very good. So clearly there is a way to find the time if you think this is important. For example, in maths in seventh grade. We teach them proportion. We teach them how to derive area of a given room or any service. Here's what we did. We told our students, the middle class students

back away. These were middle class students who live very comfortably. And we told them, okay, here's the thing. Let's buddy you with stuod girls and boys from very poor homes. We have schools that also work with poster and said, then why don't you do this? If they let you, can you go to their homes and measure their home and derive the area of it and also find out what is the square foot area per person in that home? And now I want to do the same thing, just

to your bedroom. Find out what the area is and what's the square foot area per person in that So they did that, and then not only did they learn area and proportion, but they really learned how people live, and they learn to develop empathy and understand they severe inequality. That you had seven people living in a ten by twelve room, one room, and here was this boy living in a fifteen by ten bedroom all by himselves, and that was just his bedroom. And it was really an

AHA moment. That I think will change the way he looks at class and poverty and will automatically start thinking of solutions. Then, so I think in terms of, you know, the solvable, that you can't have just a few people thinking of the solvable. You need to educate everyone to be thinking of solutions to the problems. But you're not doing that if you only have an education system that is training children to fit into the world the way it is and to work the system for their own

personal benefit. To rise up the career ladder, that you have to have a generation of solution seekers, a generation of children who will look at problems they think of themselves as impacted by the social system, and even that they're not thinking that, they think it's some natural order. I know I did, and the sad part is, fifty years later, many girls still think. So. Do you think it's the curriculum that you've developed in the way of

teaching that you've been that you've been practicing. Do you think this would work in other countries? Oh? Absolutely, absolutely. The idea came from Brazil because it's a pedagogy. Really, it's not a curriculum as much as it's a pedagogy in terms of it's a teaching methodology, it's a way of transacting practice in a classroom, and so whatever the world, whatever the life, it can provide the content of education. How much can this be scaled? How many schools do

you think you can affect? I'm not going to be the only solution provider, right that. I think there are several ways of scaling. One is, of course, in a brick and motor way that in a school by school by school by school, and you hope to reach many schools. So far, we've been able to reach half a million students, teachers, communities, and we hope to really meet ten million in the next five years. That's our goal, and we want to do it by building partnerships with other organizations who are

working by trying to influence government right. We helped with policy briefs. We've written a policy brief help get them to see the importance of doing this and changing their curriculum right. And we help to campaign extensively in communities to change mindsets. And the campaigns are not just by us, thereby all the teachers we impact, so that it's an

exponential growth. Just recently we were co facilitators of a workshop in Washington, DC, where we had forty organizations from all over the world and we work shared our voice curriculum. There was a great deal of interest and from Africa, from Latin America, and so it's offered free of cost on their technology platform which they can use and we're

happy to help with training using webinars. So technology is the other huge game changer in achieving scale now so that it can be used to enable our reach to millions and millions of people. We video all our practices, so we not only offer print curricula, but we also offer dynamic videos which will show you how it's happening in the classroom. What can people listening to help spread these kinds of ideas and bring them to their own communities.

For one, I'm hoping that they will look at the scope of education differently with a wider, deeper social and political lens. And of course we are very glad to share everything that we have learned over thirty three years which we have on the web, and we're very happy to do webinars and to share all our work with them. We're also very happy to engage in conversations with people who feel that this is an important work to do and would like to learn more or share more their

own thoughts or have questions. We're happy to do that anytime. Our information is easily available, and what they can do is spread the word to other parents, other childre other teachers that this is the way the future of education should be. What a future that could be. Maybe you found yourself wishing that you had access to an education like the one doctor Sanny provides, not just learning math and literacy, but actually getting a social and political perspective

on the world. I certainly did, and I also I loved hearing about the girls in her schools forming their own warrior women groups and holding community meetings like engaging older women and parents and boys. It's just so exciting. For more on Doctor Sanny, you can watch her ted talk or you can read her latest book. It's called

Reaching for the Sky Empowering Girls through Education. Solvable is a collaboration between Putkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation, with production by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes from Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Neil LaBelle. Researched by sher Vincent Engineering by Jason Gambrel and the great folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal Wise and special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Fine, Julia Barton,

Carli Mgliori, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell. You can learn more about solving today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins. Now go solve it.