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Writer's pictureAvinash Joseph Almeida

Deconditioning the Conditioning

It has been almost 2 months for me, but also 2 months ever since Payal, Palak, and Khushi have been coming into this space. When they started to come, they came with a schooled mindset. They considered something educational only if it was happening in their note books and not through play or other mediums.


How did we deconstruct their conditioning? To start with conversations, the kind of conversations, that we have is really important, as our choice of words and what we say. It has always been a tricky situation on how to handle this situation. Because humans are very complex beings, because of this complexity handling such situations does not come with a guidebook. The first 2 weeks, while I was facilitating, I was also observing their behavior and patterns. The way they speak, communicate, attitude, etc. In every situation, even if it came out in an authoritative way, there was always an explanation around it, which they can practically see and understand (read the article the irony of being nice for more context).


Not to make the previous paragraph sound vague. For example, I decided to do an activity with a basketball, the idea was to pass the ball around and communicate in English but just seconds into the game they were like “we need to study in our books.” I was surprised but had to improvise. Eventually, they began to observe what the other children were doing and started imitating that. Thanks to Satyam they started to play games, like cards which was taboo according to them (cause cards here were used to gamble.). I am trying to break the gender stereotypes. They were very surprised that I (An adult male) was doing the dishes and they claimed it was a women’s job, so eventually, we started to have conversations that were not academically related but important.


When they come today, they are more expressive and play also. They have finally understood the purpose of the space and what it stands for. As facilitators, we feel proud of this achievement that we have truly managed to create this environment.


It may look like a piece of cake, but this environment that we are trying to build does come with a price. Stay tuned for next week’s article.

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