Dr. Mamta Bansal founded the JoyLap Play & Pre-School in 2017. She was driven by four noble intents:
to bring more compelling paradigms to education at large, so that Indians acquire world class grooming right away
to lend true meaning to social prosperity and environment care initiatives away from noise and distortion seen of late.
Coming specifically to JoyLap Early Education Centers, she saw that a certain number of CRIMES of omission and commission were occurring all over India – she travelled visiting some 30 schools in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chandigarh. On her visits to Europe, and US, she was amazed to see the approach was very different than in India. She consulted many Principals and teachers in Norway, Sweden, Japan, Australia, and US, looking for best of ideas. In fact she found many good practices in traditional Indian system too.
This is her fight to tell the world that:
what a child experiences over birth to age 5 shapes 85%-95% of a child’s attitudes, psychology and intelligence. And most of society, even parents, and entire education system take this age very lightly and non-seriously. Imagine that as a child you fell down, and the parent told you, hit the cheenti (=ants) with your footwear; and now as a grown-up, you try to hit back at whatever hurts you. Isn’t road rage seen between drivers of age 18-50 because of this early childhood wrong conditioning? A girl is told that she looks “Pretty, like a doll”, and now she focuses more on trying to be like that; the boy child is told, “you are brave” – and so later on girls become soft women and boys become tough men. She has seen to it that JoyLap Schools are Gender Neutral. Even the school logo has both colours, pink and blue, for all children.
a child needs orderly organized light colour learning spaces, as such an environment encourages deep focused learning. Many schools try to be loud in colours, very gaudy and bold. Such colors actually disturb the child’s mindset. Remember, the child has to everyday come to that school, and not once in a while. When the parents pick a school, they should not try to buy a multi-coloured toy (=school) for the child; they must view things from point of view of the child. JoyLaps are in soft pastel colours, but primarily white and off-white, the colour of peace.
JoyLap schools have more than 2000 activities and drills and lessons etc. packed over 4 years of Toddler-Nursery-KG-Prep levels. Many of these are at 3 feet level, which is a child’s eye level. Parents are requested to bend down, or sit on fours and traverse the school. Then they would absorb the detailed carefully laid activities in the school.
Piaget and Montessori, alongwith Reggio Emilia and Steiner’s Waldorf methods are factored in her school curriculum. Many schools may have no understanding of these. In fact, since she could herself develop the curriculum, in contrast with franchised schools (which have Head Offices in Metro cities), hers has freedom to bring in the latest research.
Research has shown that the culture of selfies is creating disturbed souls amongst adults. Similarly, putting up photographs of children in fancier outfits, too often, is ruining normal healthy education of children. They are getting overexposed to media, without knowing one has to work hard and earn fame. Children need to be left away from showmanship – a school is NOT supposed to be an Events Company. She sees to it that privacy etc. of her students is maintained.
JoyLap doesn’t believe in rating students – let them have a carefree childhood. Early Education means Celebrating the Childhood. This is why, JoyLaps have big grounds with Obstacle Courses, and Outdoorsy feel etc.
The pedagogy at JoyLaps is unique. Alphabets and Numbers are not taught linearly (A for Apple, B for Banana, etc.). The learning material has been researched and compiled with Scandinavian approaches. It shows real world to the children. It has been found that learning of vocabulary and increase in knowledge is 10-50 times faster in JoyLap system (her research paper COPE, i.e. Cultural Orientation and Potential Exploration on these findings is awaiting publication in a world renowned journal).
JoyLaps are indeed unique. They add immense Joy and Happiness in lives of children.
