Classroom  is the playing field for a teacher. We expect all kinds of players – quick learners, slow- learners, lazy ones, laid-back students, hyperactive kids, students with varying abilities. That makes a classroom interesting. It gives us a platform to experiment, to understand students better and to throw open different challenges to students with different abilities.

What if we work in institutions were the target is to produce students who can crack the IIT entrance? Where the students are trained to deal with the rat-race? Do such institutions really accept and understand the mosaic of students in a heterogeneous classroom? Or, is classrooms to them a laboratory  where the students are identified, classified- under various categories, sorted, labeled and packaged into different classrooms – students who have a slow  thinking pattern sit together?

Anyways, such homogeneous classrooms do exist in a country like India. It is patronized by many educationists – (that’s how they call themselves). I always ask a question to myself when this debate arises in my school – who are we to classify students and segregate them? Who has given us the authority to do so? Who are we to decide the future of a child? Is there a guarantee that a homogenous classroom provides open-minded students who later on, in life will be able to accept people with differences? Are we providing education for life  or are we achieving the literacy target?

Instead of making the  classroom transaction  interesting, why do institutions and teachers chose the easy way out to make classrooms even duller and shift the responsibility of learning onto the learner in the most barbaric way rather than adopting a creative approach during the classroom transaction?

A heterogeneous classroom is like an Indian wedding feast – it is a feast throughout the year. Homogeneous classroom is like a western  food- bland and leaves the diner unsatisfied.