Has any school in the world ever tried to change the conventional way of educating students?

You must have observed people, groups, websites and social media platforms advocating the change the way our kids getting educated. Not only in India, but most of the countries in the world have also been following the same outdated methods of teaching kids. Such conventional methods include stuffing knowledge, burdening them with textbooks, hardly connects them with nature resulting in no overall development. Such an education system not only obstacles their natural physical and cognitive growth but also causes many health issues.

England is one of the countries where obesity in school going kids has become a common phenomenon and changed lifestyle is the major cause behind this. On the contrary, the schools in Wakefield city in England have set an example to make the kids fit.

One of the schools in the city has changed the rule of making kids sit in a class for hours. Rather, they are sent to a playground or a mini forest where they are encouraged to take part in the activities like tree climbing, swimming, rope climbing, jumping, treading on the land and running.

Apart from these, the teachers of Green Hill School taught gardening and carrying stuff to the students and the results of this exercise were phenomenal. The parents also got happy after observing a drop in the weight of their kids. They appreciated the efforts of the school and stressed upon implementing the same across the country.

Now, the Green Hill School formula has been embraced by many other schools. Some schools have started teaching students in the open grounds and created such syllabus that can nurture the concept of studying while playing. This also fetched amazing results. Moreover, students are taught to grow vegetables like carrots, tomatoes, etc. which are further cooked by the chefs of the school and served in their meals.

Martin Fenton, a senior teacher at Green Hill School, puts it this way,

“Children are also enjoying new ways of studying. We should bring newness by changing conventional methods. They get fresh vegetables in the lunch, which has no match with packed food and extremely healthy for the grown-ups.”