Thursday, March 13, 2008

Seeds of Change

So I believe I have written a blog about the dismal conditions of government schools: teacher's absenteeism and apathy, rampant beatings, rote memorization, low achievement levels, high dropout rates, etc. Our school have been working on an intervention with 28 government schools in Uttarkhand, providing trainings and materials in hope to significantly change the current educational order. Upon our initial survey of the schools, I must admit I wasn't very hopeful.

But I just got back from a week of surveying participating schools and was shocked to discover that a lot of what we introduced in the training has been applied in these schools. There were about two schools that did absolutely nothing and threw a fistful of excuses at us as to why they couldn't implement the program, which revolved around not being able to introduce anything new into the curriculum because they were already overburdened. This is pretty absurd considering that all the methods we introduced were meant to be complimentary to the existing government curriculum. But the rest of the schools showed dramatic change. At almost all of the schools, the children meditate regularly. These are government schools! This is truly amazing. The teachers were all accolades about meditation, they said that it was useful to calm the children, and by products included heightened concentration and ability to pick up new concepts easier. In many of the schools the teachers meditated with the students, just the symbolic act of a teacher sitting on even ground with her children is an amazing change from the oppressive school atmosphere we noticed before.

Also, it was quite touching to hear the children singing quite beautifully the APV songs in their school. Music is a very important piece to our pedagogy, we have about 35 songs or so and we taught about ten to the school children that came to our training. The children had memorizes many of these songs and sing them daily in school. We visited one school after school hours had concluded. The kids gathered with some of their friends to show off their skills to the APV team and gawk at the whitey. But when they began to sing for us, I was shocked to see that the children's friends, not enrolled at the school, had also memorized APV songs. This demonstrates that the children are sharing with their communities the APV pedagogy and perhaps that our intervention is having a farer reaching effect than we had initially planned.

To further this point, two teachers that participated in the program have become so passionate about it that they have set out on their own initiative to teach our pedagogy to neighboring schools. This is an amazing indicator that teachers would take time out of their schedule to spread our ideas because they feel so strongly for our methods of teaching and how it has brought about changes in their school.

Another important observation is the change in the learning atmosphere. The children and teachers seemed much more at ease with one another. In schools where previously we saw very timid, quiet children in front of their teachers, now were joking, laughing, asking questions with their teachers.

Finally, the substantive concepts that we introduced at the training, the math concepts have been covered in class, those children that attended our training have been teaching other children. For the most part the teachers have found our methods and materials extremely helpful

Hopefully this moment can be sustained. We have the government on our side which is very strange considering the uniqueness of our project. The highest educational government official, Pandey ji, is fully on board and told us that he wanted to make sure that our pedagogy is used to guide the direction that primary education in Uttarakhand. I am also working on a proposal with Plan International to expand our project under their new 'Learn Without Fear' campaign, which would enable us to touch schools all over India. Pretty exciting prospects, perhaps we are seeing the seeds to the children's revolution that my mentor has envisioned for so long.

Stars and Yars

Last night, while walking back to my room after night meditation, I became completely consumed by the sky. I couldn't make it to my room, my steps slowed gradually to a stand still, then I just stood there and gawked for about a half hour. You think that after seven months here I would become immune to the immense beauty in these parts, but not true. The new moon and power outage sucked away any possible light, leaving a cluttered fabric of stars, I would like to think all of the stars, sick of trying to shine over an overlit earth, all decided to move to this space of utter darkness to reward those in the rurals that can truly enjoy their splendor. And enjoy, I did.

My renewed beauty stupor probably has something to do with the influx of friends visiting. With every friend that comes, I get a new fresh set of eyes to reevaluate my surroundings, the extraordinary that became too ordinary when your day is spent doing ordinary things (the mountains lose their luster when I am handwashing my t shirts). My most recent visitor, Luther (or Slam Sahib 'Sir Slam' as we call him on the basketball court), probably had his hand in this star incident. He played papa with me one night and taught me all about the constellations. Actually, he taught me a lot of things, but constellations was about the only subject that didn't punch me in the face intellectually. He is a pretty smart kid, studying Sanskrit at Berkeley, so other conversations were about obscure 8th century Buddhist sects that he discovered while reading about them in original sanskrit literature, nerd. Luckily, he really isn't too bookish or really that anti social/nerdy/or just flat out strange as others in the Sanskrit field, thank god. Pretty interesting that luther fella, it was great to have him here.

Slam was here to experience Shivratri, an important Hindu holiday that I know nothing about. All I do know is that people fast all day, so I decided to join in on the self inflicted starvation for Shiva with the rest. My family is not really of the Lent persuasion, so I have never performed a fast before. And I must admit that it wasn't too hard for me, I really didn't feel too hungry. Perhaps it was because I remained busy all day. Luther and I decided to try to find an ancient Shiva temple located a couple miles below the ashram. But in the market, we got intercepted by a couple of my favorite children in the school, Heena and Shubam, who begged us to come to their house. I had been to their house previously and really loved the visit. They live in a very traditional stone house with slate roof, with a front yard of three water buffalo (quite possibly the chubbiest animal in the world and thus my favorite) and terraced fields, at this point of the year, filled with the small yellow flowers of the mustard crop. As an added benefit, they have this precious little 5 year old sister, Diya, who looks like a monkey and I love to play with. So we spent a couple hours playing cricket and drinking chai. We also ran into some more kids from the school, my other favorite family, the Balodis, at the village's small Shiva temple, where we played with more kids. After that we went to their house for more play and more chai, Preethi painted a mountain on my hand with henna, that looked more like a zen painting of shunya.

Unfortunately, no ancient temple found, but we did get climbed on by a lot of kiddus and receive quite a bit of chai and fruit in prasad, which one can eat while they are fasting and probably kept me from fainting. But I think my favorite experiences have been interacting with the children in their families out in the village. I live a pretty sheltered life in the ashram, and rarely get away from my room/school/dining room/meditation room routine, so it is always great to see how the children live outside of the school environment.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Chad's a'teachin

So it has recently occurred to me that I spend too much time on my computer doing the promotional, administrative thing, advocating for the school but not participating with the school much outside of the daily asssemblies and playing with the kids during recess. It also has occurred to me that I only have about four more months here, and to think that I will not be able to spend everyday with these children five months from now tears me apart.

So I have decided to take a more active role in their education, trying to utilize the holistic, challenging pedagogy of the school. I was inspired recently in reading an excellent book by Amartya Sen, Identity and Violence to make a lesson plan. Sen posited that recent academic thinking in regards to economics and politics has been surprisingly reductive, relying on the categorization of countries and their people's actions and decision making by overarching, stereotypical cultural norms, most commonly of the popular religion. This approach enumerates the differences between communities and puts in place large barriers in cooperation that we collectively cannot seem to surmount. But this frame of mind, views the individual and community as belonging to only one identity category, typically along religious lines (e.g. the muslim world). But this is highly flawed and is dangerous when used to shaped domestic and foreign policy, which increasingly is the case. As a result, we can clearly see that the currency in such policies in our recent history have contributed to a rise in violent factionalism and communalism in the last century, especially in the Indian context, the partition violence of 1947, Anti Sikh Riots of 1984, Bombay Riot in 1992, the Gujarat Muslim pogroms of 2002, which continues to this day with Gujarati CM Modi's dangerous rule and rhetoric.

This view denies, inherently, that every individual is made up of a complex multiplicity of identities that interact with one another. While one might ascribe to a religious tradition, that tradition in itself does not make up the totality of their existence, and while that tradition may influence and shape their decision making process, it is not entirely responsible for their every decision. If one critically thinks about who they are they will find a vast array of connections, communities, interests, etc. which can be quite contradictory to their stereotypes. For instance, I am an American who lives in India, a Christian by birth who no longer practices and is interested in the religious traditions of India, a heterosexual male who is also a feminist and a proponent of gay rights. And our varieties of identities also vary in importance contextually as we interact with others in the world. For instance, one's identity as a music enthusiast may be more important than one's national identity when at a record store, concert, or in discussions with other enthusiasts. While one is applying for a visa, the importance of one's national identity most likely would supersede music enthusiasm. But in no way are these two identities entirely exclusive: one's taste in music is regionally linked to other's musical taste and a person can take great pride in their own national identity because of the nation's musical heritage.

So I set out with my very limited Hindi skills to illustrate this fairly complex idea to the sixth grade class with a lesson plan called मैं कौन हूँ? (Who am I?). The first day, we had a brainstorm about the composition of our identities and we all made lists of about forty identities that we have ranging from familial relations and friendships, to religious, educational and political affilliations, future ambitions, character traits, passions, physical distinctions, etc. We all then made Who am I? Charts, writing all of our identities in Hindi and English and drawing a picture to represent each indentity on a large piece of paper.

The next day each child presented their identity chart and we made a group list of identities. The children were then to stand in a large circle while the teacher and I called out the identities. Those that ascribe to the identity would come to the middle of the circle and join hands. In this exercise, the children were able to see their similarities and differences with classmates that they might have been unaware of in the past. We then sat in this circle and I offered the question, 'Say that someone came from a distant country and wanted to know who you are, but they wanted a simple answer, just one trait from your identity chart, what would you say?' What happened next was quite beautiful. One child began with human being, yes, we are all human beings it is what separates us from all else in the world. Then we asked, but what about the differences between humans? Then another student piped in, oh yes, our Indian identity is by far the most important. Then organically the children started questioning each other. But South Indians live much different lives than those in the north. But I our lives are much more different than that of those living the northern plains, Uttarakhandi, that is most important. But Uttarakhand contains a loose ethnical split between Garhwali region and Kumoan, So Garhwali. Yeah, but there is quite a difference in between people living in different districts, so Tehri Garhwal district. But what about our villages. Oh, yes villages are most important. But then what about our families? That is the most important yes. Not until a half hour of discussion did we introduce religion, which then left the kids puzzled. They concluded completely on their own that it was impossible to view themselves as just one identity. It was quite an amazing experience for myself to see them work out this difficult question on their own and come to a conclusion without directly telling them it.

The next day we took the exercise a step further. The Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 to date has been the bloodiest single incident in the subcontinent's recent history. During this period, millions of Sikhs and Hindus migrated to India, while millions of Muslims went the other direction into newly carved out country of Pakistan. This dramatic flow of people, coupled with communal angers that spurred on the division, sparked unprecedented violence taking the lives of an estimated 500,000 to over a million people. I brought in the identity charts of three fictitious people who had been murdered during partition; a Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu. LIke many people living in pre-Partition India, they had many similarities, vocations, interests, ethnicity, language, familial relationship and frienships, etc. The only thing that separated them, and ultimately cost them their lives, were their religious affliation. I presented these charts to the children and they read out all of identities of each of the individuals and concluded that they had much in common and how it was unfair that the a person could be killed by one identity when they have so many important other identities. I then presented a two more Who Am I? Charts for two boys in the US. I remembered a story that I learned in class about an African American child from the North went to visit his cousin in a small town in the south during the summer break, I believe in Alabama. He said hello to a woman coming out of a store, a common practice presumably in the North at that time, but not in the South. Within a week he had been lynched by a hate group. I made an identity chart for him as well as from a white boy of his same age in the same community. I have found that working with boys in India that it is clear that boys all around the world share similar interests and I think one wouldn't be hard pressed to have find a white boy with very similar interests as the boy who was lynched. I then asked if this white boy would have said hello to the women, what would have happened?, and if they had so much in common then why was he killed? I then asked them to write a couple page paper about their feelings about the lesson and what they had learned. Pretty heavy stuff to lay on sixth graders but they really seemed to be engaged, thinking pretty critically and through their writings and presentation during assembly, I feel confident that they understood what the lesson was about and had reflected upon it.

Recently I have switched to lighter topics. I have been teaching English through basketball (we have a sparsely used basketball hoop, a situation I am trying to change), where I have also gotten to introduce to the children the joys of wall sits. Also I am working with kids on writing simple songs in English. I am currently in the process of teaching the second and third graders a song about animals that dance. I am very proud of my line about elephants, 'I cannot wear pants but I can dance.' Unadulterated brilliance.

But the more time I spend with the children the more impressed I am with their spirit, intellect, and wit. It is really going to be hard to leave this place.