Our Story
- SIDH started in 1989 when some village women approached Pawan Gupta and Anuradha Joshi to start a school for their children. These same women, three years later, told Pawan and Anuradha that their children were ruined by the new education.
- The women were pointing to their experience that the SIDH school, based on the current system of education, was creating a break between the home and school, giving the children a false sense of superiority that made them look down upon their own. A non-literate mother advised, “बच्चों को होना सिखाओ, दिखना नहीं !” (“teach them how to be, and not how to appear to be”).
- This was a turning point for SIDH. It started the introspection on the aims of education and helped gain clarity on the links between education, lifestyle and happiness. The experiment that started in this manner, led to alternative models of learning and to the 35 village schools and the numerous publications brought out by SIDH over the years.
- Over the years, SIDH has evolved its field of work from running schools, to influencing educators through workshops, courses and seminars to more widely spread the learnings. In effect, SIDH today is more a research (and dissemination of research) oriented organization than one focussed on implementation.
