Learning- First time learners vs Us

Most of the rural and urban slum children are first-time learners. There is considerable difference between them and us.
Textbooks: Most of the examples given in the textbooks will be familiar to us or to children from our milieu. Even if it is not, or if there are things in the textbook that we do not understand, we can approach our parents, our teachers, and now of course the Internet. The point is that we have an entire support system. Our parents are educated and there ways and means of getting to understand what is written in the textbook. For a child who is a first time learner these support systems are lacking. The parent does not know what is written in the textbook, the teacher might or might not know (most often not know), and the entire social structure is such that the child feels disconnected from what is being taught at the school and what is happening around him or her. Jean Dreze and a group of other researchers conducted extensive survey and published the results in form of a book called PROBE report. I used to possess this fantastic book but in all the shiftings I have lost it. It is still available from Amazon and it is a must read for all of us who wish to understand the problems facing the education sector. Two NGOs who have brought out excellent books are Pratham and Ekalvya. These books are written in simple language and easy to read manner.
Language: Which brings me to the second point. Most of us who are in the urban milieu speak a different dialect than the kids in the rural area. As an example, we were interviewing kids for the KVPY scholarship instituted by DST. One of the child was from rural Bihar. He could only communicate in Hindi so we conducted the interview in Hindi. Now, in Hindi, a boy uses masculine gender and a girl uses feminine gender. So a boy will say Main Karta Hoon and a girl will say Main Karti hoon. This kid, a boy, constantly referred to himself in the feminine gender. So he would say Main aisa karoongi. At the end of the interview we asked him why he was speaking like this. He said this is the local dialect. So irrespective of what the textbook says, the child was using the language that was prevalent in the village. This is only Hindi. Imagine English!
Reading materials: Most of the children living in the rural areas have no access to reading material. The cities also lack libraries but most of us can get books from the school library or our parents will buy them for us. For a child who lives in a remote village, this avenue is closed. The only reading material for them at many times is the textbook. And if it is dreary, why should the child read?
I never realized the importance of reading materials till I started writing stories. I had grown up on a staple diet of Enid Blyton and Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. For me to write a story in which the characters were all Indians was so difficult because my thinking was completely Western. I had to make a conscious effort to redo my thinking. So reading materials do color our perspective. Our lives are to a large extent Westernized but not for a rural child. The disconnect is much larger for a rural child than for a child from our surroundings.

I was going to reply to Suresh's comment. Instead I ended up writing an entire blog on this.