The theme of public education is one that affects every society across the globe. All over, there has been fundamental dissatisfaction with the systems, though the idea itself is intimately linked with a democratic society: one in which the individual is taught her place in the larger society. In India there has been disaffection with both public and private schooling, especially in urban centres, where private schooling flourishes at exorbitant cost, many times with inadequate space, facilities and less than adequate teaching. Every single person in the country is crucially involved in what form education takes, since it matters to us what the future of our society is going to be. It reveals too the tremendous hope that we all have that there are solutions, elusive perhaps, but they exist and it is for us, and others who follow, to find these solutions. This hope is all the more attenuated when we hear stories, as we do, of our public schools in the remotest of places, where teachers are doing a wonderful job, coming to school braving the weather, working under very challenging circumstances, their enthusiasm unabated.