The Origin

The principles of StoryPedagogy® are based on India’s traditional storytelling practices and on the 2,000-year-old treatise, Bharata’s Natya Shastra. Katha sees story as a powerful, uniting tool in nation building. The pedagogy, over the past two-and-a-half decades, has shown new ways of looking at teaching, learning and making learning child-centred. Tapping the transformative effect of story, Katha has, over the years, seamlessly connected grassroots work in education, teacher training and publishing.

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The Principles

Stories can create new ways of seeing the world we live in. We foster writings that break social, cultural and gender stereotypes and help us see the other side of pictures by helping us develop our narrative imaginations. We valorise kindness and equality, compassion and caring. Lokāḥ Samastāḥ Sukhino Bhavantu – stories can foster cultural linking – between peoples, languages, cultures of India – historically and across the miniscule chasms like caste, class and religion. In supporting writers for our child-readers who are creative – iconoclastic or traditional –and explore life thoroughly and empathetically. We support our writers who, in their creations, steadfastly refuse to be drawn by economic need to commercialize or follow conventional thinking. We applaud and admire writers who create good and sensitive pieces of work which recreate the magic of life. We desire stories and poems that enhance our understanding of the contemporary and the historical in our lives: what we are now, where we come from, and what we aspire to be as a country made up of, predominantly, children. We revel in the readers and the joy they feel after a good read. We believe in our good editors and the strength they bring to texts, honing their appeal and charm, and in the good and sensitive teachers who help us bridge them through close reading of stories and texts. We see the humanities as a tool to transform the self, and through it, the society we live in.

The Process

And so the technique of delivery process of StoryPedagogy^TM was evolved: Active Story Based Learning (ASBL) which takes a child through the process of thinking, asking, discussing and acting using stories. Without a textbook, the story can teach language, science, mathematics, general awareness and critical thinking. The integrated subject teaching was possible through branch story technique. Soon teacher training on the StoryPedagogy^TM started and age-appropriate, quality books were published by Katha to ignite the minds of young ones. The cradle of this innovation was Katha Lab School. The StoryPedagogy^TM based Katha Relevant Education model is being delivered in Katha Lab School for the past 25+ years.

Central to the innovative StoryPedagogy^TM was RUCHI—to transform a child from a passive learner to a leader. RUCHI (Read, Use, Comprehend, Holistically and Intuitively) is Katha’s encouraging assessment tool which connects learning in the classroom with community issues and challenges. There began the process of community resurgence because it did not alienate the child and parent from their realities, rather propelling the will in each child to do something to change the situation. Through the inquiry process and contextual stories a child could think of solutions for her own community.