Thetrailblogger

Every once in a while we are faced with a grim reminder as people, as organization, as a country, that how callous are we when dealing with human life. The tragedy of young engineering students falling prey to the inviting sea near Alibaug when the college went on a “Picnic”?!! Not far back a school kid crushed his leg in one of the rides during a school trip. A year back we saw another set of young students of engineering from Hyderabad washed away in Manali when the sluice gates of the river were opened. We saw school children from Mumbai on a school trip, injured seriously while taking a horse cart ride in Panchgani tableland, another where the child was dragged by the horse and killed, and when a travel company took children to a high altitude camp in the Himalayas and had no clue why the child was having a headache. They gave the child crocin and the next morning the school child was no more having passed away in the night because of high altitude sickness. The company did not

Not more than a century ago an eminent poet Sir Rabindranath Tagore created a storm in Macaulay’s world by taking the classroom “Outdoors”. This happened in Bengal at Shantiniketan and the story goes on. The only replication of it is done by Trailblazers which calls itself “The Outdoor School”. Last year when we concluded another stunning outdoor workshop series on Environment, for over 500 B.Ed. students, I had asked if they had any question - a young girl got up and said she had a prediction. I was not sure what was coming. She said she wanted to join Trailblazers and then she predicted that the schools of the future would be such, which was being addressed by Trailblazers at the outdoor workshop! That the classroom will move outdoors. That there will be no rooms suffixed to class! The thought  led me to think  and I wondered why should classrooms be fenced off by walls, in a way fencing off children’s minds. My team of outdoor teachers and me, have been successfully conduct