Jigyasa Labroo Champions Kids’ Voices From The Margins
Jigyasa Labroo, who is ushering a critical change into Indian public schools and into the lives of low-income children, won a well-deserved spot in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. As the co-founder of Slam Out Loud, a non-profit established in 2017, she is trying to bridge the inexorable gap between the cultural haves and have-nots, a chasm that widens with each school year. Those of us who occupy privileged slivers are sensitized to cultivating the all-round development of children – of not merely fostering their academic skills, but their social and emotional learning, and creative self-expression.
However, children belonging to lower-income and even middle-income strata might be suffering from a “Matthew Effect.” Coined in 1968 by the sociologists Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman, the Matthew Effect is based on a line from the Gospel of Matthew: “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away.” While the sociologists were using the Biblical reference to describe how eminent scientists garner larger reputations, while lesser ones suffer from being perennially unknown, the term has since been used to depict other ways in which privilege begets privilege.
As Jigyasa and her co-founder, Gaurav Singh, rightly observe, low-income children suffer not just from academic gaps. Emerging from distressed family situations, they are likely to lack confidence in their own creativity. Moreover, their parents, used to occupying subservient positions, will be more inclined to use authoritarian methods to inculcate meekness as a way of functioning in the world.
Such coyness in self-expression is exacerbated by poorly resourced schools that do not prioritize artistic activities. In addition, these kids are mostly (and understandably) goaded into money-making streams – STEM, Commerce – while those with artistic proclivities are sidelined for not possessing the market-worthy inclinations. But it’s not just the tragic diminishment of future writers, actors, musicians or painters.
The deprivation of art education in early childhood takes away from the social and emotional development of future entrepreneurs, engineers and doctors. A study conducted by the Brooking Institute across 42 elementary and middle schools in Houston, USA found significant behavioral differences in students exposed to art education compared to a control group. Critically, their ability to feel compassion and to inhabit the other was heightened by art-based activities like storytelling and theatre.
In Indian government schools, the deprivation of art teachers and art-based activities is starker. Jigyasa found that we have a teacher: student ratio of 1:1400 leading to a paltry 20 hours of art education per year. And this is only the average figure. Many children in these schools are likely to be wholly deprived of such activities. Linguistically deprived to begin with (studies have found that low-income parents use a smaller range of words when engaging with children), these kids are not encouraged to develop their own voice. And it’s voices like theirs that the nation needs to heed more attentively if we are to devise empathetic and inclusive policies.
Slam Out Loud fills this void in three ways. By instituting a fellowship to place artists – expert painters, storytellers, poets, theatre practitioners, etc. – inside public school classrooms, to impart methods and engage with children. These artists each spend a year with a set of thirty children. Different artists are assigned to those children for a period of five years, imparting the kind of deep artistic engagement that upper-income children benefit from. So far, the fellowship has reached 6000 children and their in-person programs that train teachers to bring art-based learning into their classrooms have impacted 75000 children so far.
To reach the much vaster numbers scattered across the country, the organization has also created resources – like videos, lesson plans, workbooks, activity guidelines – that can be delivered to public schools through low-tech channels like WhatsApp, radio and IVRs to overcome bandwidth and device limitations. Through their digital and low-tech outreach, they have already touched the lives of 4.7 million children – showing them how art can be used to tell their own stories, create their own YouTube videos, photo exhibits and other forms of self-expression. Exposed to storytelling, theatre, spoken word poetry and visual art, these children are acquiring the creative panache required of 21st century jobs.
Citing how children are born “creators” and “leaders” till adults and institutions stymie their instincts with stifling curriculums or deadening school environments, Jigyasa and Gaurav mention an initiative sparked off by the NGO Chetna among street children. In 2002, Chetna conducted a workshop for street children to talk about their issues. The children realized, till then, that no one had really listened to their voices. That the general public does not understand the fears and insecurities that they are saddled with; or their surging desires. Most conversations centered around the disservice they were doing, by darting between cars, selling trinkets or engaging in other ‘troublesome’ activities.
After the workshop, the children were enthused enough to create their own newsletter titled “Balaknama.” It is, interestingly, the only large-scale, child-led news agency, which was kicked off in 2003 and has now spread to seven states, with more than 10,000 child contributors. In their stories, they articulate the struggles they face and the hopes they harbor. As Jigyasa notes, such evocative voices are rarely recognized in these children: “When we started working with children, we realized that one of the biggest issues we face as a country is the absence of children’s voice. It’s the lack of their ability to say yes; or no. Sometimes it’s the lack of their ability to say anything at all.”
Slam Out Loud is already changing that. Their interventions have led to 100,000 original artworks, 70 child-led workshops performed for about 75,000 people, and the delivery of many TEDx talks by their gifted storytellers and spoken word artists.
Jigsaya quotes Faiz Ahmad Faiz, who said:
bol ki lab āzād haiñ tere (Speak, your lips are free,)
bol zabāñ ab tak terī hai (speak, your tongue is still yours,)
terā sutvāñ jism hai terā (your slim body is yours alone,)
bol ki jaañ ab tak terī hai (speak, this life is yours, still yours.)
More impressively, her organization Slam Out Loud is going well beyond quoting the poet, to ensure that such ‘bol’ is made available, on powerful stages and in front of eager audiences, to kids that need it the most: to the ones that shelter under leaky flyovers, by railway tracks, on park benches, or inside flimsy tin-tarpaulin homes. The voices are slamming at us, sometimes angry, sometimes caustic, sometimes funny, sometimes upbeat. It’s up to us to listen.
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