"In the space between learning and leaving."

by Shrey Rawat

On the edge of many villages in Uttarakhand stands a familiar sight: a locked school building. Its paint is fading. The courtyard is overgrown. The tricolour pole still stands, but the classrooms are silent. A few years ago, children ran through those corridors. Today, their families have left. Some moved to Dehradun. Some to Delhi. Some simply disappeared into the long story of migration that has shaped these hills.Between 2001 and 2011, over 3.5 lakh people left Uttarakhand. More than 1,048 villages were completely abandoned. Since then, another 700 plus villages have emptied out. In just the past few years, over 1,600 schools have shut down across the state. Nearly 59 percent of government schools operate without a principal. Thousands function with a single teacher across all grades.These are not abstract statistics. They are lived realities. To study well, the assumption goes, you must leave.

Education has slowly become the reason families migrate. Not because they want to abandon their land, but because they do not trust what remains. When a school has no teachers, no continuity, no imagination, hope quietly packs its bags.

I remember the first time I felt this fracture personally. I was teaching a food chain lesson to a group of third graders. The textbook diagram showed tractors, warehouses, supply chains, supermarkets. I followed the script. I explained how rice travels from farms to factories to markets. One child raised his hand and said, “Sir, but rice is just outside our house. We cut it and eat it.”The class nodded. At that moment, something shifted in me. I was teaching them a version of the world that erased their own.The system we have built assumes that knowledge flows from cities to villages. That relevance lies elsewhere. That textbooks must standardize imagination. It measures learning through compliance, not curiosity. It rewards teachers for avoiding hill postings. It closes schools when enrollment drops, instead of asking why trust has dropped.

The crisis in Uttarakhand is not only about infrastructure. It is about narrative. We have quietly taught children that what surrounds them is not worth studying. This work is not about asking children to stay, nor is it about glorifying leaving. It is about asking a different question: What if learning began from where a child stands?

At SURAAH, the alternative school we are building in the Dehradun hills, that question shapes everything we design. In our fifth grade बारह अनाज (12-seeds) project, students began by simply noticing the farms around them. They observed monocrops. They spoke to elders about how twelve grains once grew together. One afternoon, a grandfather ran his fingers through the mixed soil and said, “When crops grow together, the land does not feel alone.” The children paused at that.

They planted two plots. One with a single crop. One with diversity. They measured growth. They tracked soil moisture. They argued about pests. They drew parallels between farming and friendship. One girl looked at the thriving mixed patch and said softly, “It looks like our class.”

This is what changes when context becomes curriculum. Head, heart, and hand are no longer separate periods on a timetable. They move together. Observation sits beside analysis. Emotion sits beside inquiry. Creation sits beside critique. We call this integration Jagat Gyaan and Swagyan, the outer world and the inner world in conversation; Khoj and Mauj, scientific inquiry held alongside wonder; Yogdaan and Abhivyakti, problem-solving rooted in responsibility and expression rooted in joy. And something else happens. Children begin to see themselves differently. They stop asking how far they must go to become worthy. They start asking how deeply they can understand where they are. If Uttarakhand is to reverse migration, if ghost villages are to find life again, it will not happen through announcements alone. It will happen when schools become places that honour identity, build competence, and cultivate responsibility to land and people.

The mountains do not need charity. They need imagination rooted in dignity. If education here can help children see their village not as something to escape but as something to understand, question, and strengthen, then whether they choose to stay or leave, they will carry the hills within them.

And perhaps that is where reinvention truly begins.

Shrey is a filmmaker, educator and Circle Partner who has returned to his hometown Dehradun in order to run an alternative school, SURAAH. This school is catering to tribal children, encouraging students to engage with nature directly, making their learning more meaningful and experiential.