How do we enable school system to experience paradigm shift from despair to hope and disability to
special ability? Many a teacher or parent must experience challenges and migraine with those kids
who refuse to settle and are always active. Many complain about children who struggle with or misfit
into multi-subject syllabi. Some score a full in math and fail in languages, for example. A few are
excluded from mainstream because they love sports or art or music but take least interest in rote
learning or sitting loyally in the seat. These get excluded and are the nightmare of parents of children
when it comes to readying for examination or 100 per cent school results. How are they addressed?
Do they leave school and later emerge as actors or drivers or camera persons or skilled workers? How
do they view themselves in comparison to their PhD holder friends or those who court mainstream
success? Educational democracy and demography thus experience a seismic shock. Amid this, a silent
revolution has sprung from a compassionate, inclusive liberal experience of Kaveri Group under Pune
Kannada Sangha in the state of Maharashtra, India.
A backdrop of 21st Century skills education in India
21st century with digital living has provided extra ordinary opportunity and tools with innovation in
the core. All-inclusiveness, disruption and diversity are the new mantras. Gearing up for a new global
role, India is witnessing diverse educational innovation, often undocumented or unsung. India has
rising number of global schools under IB or Cambridge boards. On the other hand, about 95 per cent
of Indian schools have vernacular medium education in majority with a mix of English medium. Based
on socio economic affordability, parents opt for these variety of schools under the provincial and
central boards. Other than the Central board, under new education policy drive of government of
India, no handbook or initiative on structured 21st century skills exist as of now. This handbook can be
expanded and modified customised to Indian reality. Gifted education is one such pleasant and perfect
modification.
The Kaveri Gifted Education approach
Such promise for the precious exists in Kaveri experiment. Based on sound research and concept in
Education and psychology, the idea of ‘Gifted Education’ has taken shape in 2014, under the patronage
of Pune Kannada Sangha mentored by Dr RA Mashelkar, an eminent scientist. It culminated in an all-encompassing model with an inclusive gifted program for the multi-talented, high ability ‘gifted
children’ who approximately compose 3 to 5 per cent of a given student population. Woven around
the shared care of school, home and society, talent profile is nurtured after developing ‘whole’
understanding of the child. After assessing the potential of the child, identifying vulnerabilities,
appropriate intervention strategies and guidance are rendered to the child as well as the parent.
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