Dalbir Kaur Madan is on a mission to make
lifelong readers out of children.
In 2011, she set up the One Up library and
bookstore in Amritsar, in the north Indian state of Punjab, with that view. “I
also realised that there were limited public spaces for children. The only
options were the shopping malls,” she told Quartz.
What began as a physical space gradually
evolved into a larger project to breathe new life into school libraries.
Madan began consulting with schools in the city and signed up for numerous
courses in pedagogy and learning methodologies in New York.
While there are several new initiatives that
are trying to engage children and offer them alternatives to smartphones and
gadgets, Madan’s consultation projects with schools is unique. A school’s
library can often be a static space, and no new books may be added to the
shelves for years. When Madan works with a school, she helps it design reading
programmes and an ever-expanding, comprehensive list of books.
After a successful run in Amristar, she moved
to New Delhi and set up the One Up children’s library in the affluent
neighbourhood of Vasant Vihar in 2017. Through this space, Madan helps children
as young as 7 months to build a relationship with books.
She has also helped institute one of the first
awards that recognises school librarians. Quartz spoke to Madan about her
journey from a bookstore owner to a champion of the library. Edited excerpts:
While there are several new initiatives that
are trying to engage children and offer them alternatives to smartphones and
gadgets, Madan’s consultation projects with schools is unique. A school’s
library can often be a static space, and no new books may be added to the
shelves for years. When Madan works with a school, she helps it design reading
programmes and an ever-expanding, comprehensive list of books.
After a successful run in Amristar, she moved
to New Delhi and set up the One Up children’s library in the affluent
neighbourhood of Vasant Vihar in 2017. Through this space, Madan helps children
as young as 7 months to build a relationship with books.
She has also helped institute one of the
first awards that recognises school librarians. Quartz spoke to Madan about her
journey from a bookstore owner to a champion of the library. Edited excerpts:
At the end of the day, a school’s library was
as good as the person it was blessed with. Principals and librarians would
sometimes display great ambition, but I felt the library spaces weren’t
empowered to think differently.
This led me to speak to school heads and to
work with them to develop reading programmes as part of the curriculum. I
wanted to help schools and parents change the way they nurtured their readers.
When children come to a school at 3 years, they are curious, they are readers
and they want to read. But how do we ensure that when those children step out
of the school at 18 years, they continue to be readers?
How is your library different from a
traditional library?
Research suggests that if a parent reads out
aloud to their children for 15 minutes every day, up to the age of 3, a child
can develop a subconscious vocabulary of 157,000 words. A research in the US
says that there can be up to a 30-million word gap between kids born into a
family that reads or where parents read aloud to the child, and those who
don’t.
So ours is a library where facilitators read
out to children. We encourage the parents of our members to accompany them and
read out to the toddlers themselves. As the children grow older, they not only
develop a thirst for reading but also the stamina to stay focused. What I try
to emphasise through One Up is the fact that reading—like any other activity or
hobby—needs practice and focus.
I also try to keep parents engaged so that
reading truly becomes a habit for a child. For instance, we have fun
competitions where we tell parents to send us photos of their children reading
on vacation. We host activities like “drop everything and read”, and encourage
children to write book reviews so they are thinking critically.
One could argue that One Up is a space for
the affluent alone.
That may well be true, but I am hoping I can
help raise privileged children to become responsible adults. Our books offer a
window into all kinds of realities that privileged Indian children are shielded
from.
Besides this, One Up has also helped set up
the Bandana Sen community library in a South Delhi slum area. I have taken
children from One Up to visit this space and even that I feel was a learning
experience for them.
What is the motivation behind setting up an
award for librarians?
I feel the role of a librarian is often
diminished to that of an administrator. They are not even eligible for national
awards for teachers. I instituted this award with the help of an independent
jury and consultants in the memory of my friend and mentor, Bandana Sen. She
was a librarian at the American Embassy School in New Delhi and was a huge
guiding force for One Up to become what it is today. After her death, it seemed
like an appropriate tribute to her to institute the Bandana Sen Library Awards
for librarians, whose job often goes unnoticed and who can have a huge impact
in shaping a child’s mind.
Source | https://qz.com/
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