Violence and The Indian Education System

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11617206

Once again, as per google news search, the India mainstream media has ignored the findings of this report. (If any one does see any coverage about this topic please let me know.) The report points to widespread “sociatal acceptances of violence” but widespread acceptance of sexual abuse? That does not match my experience of India.

Violence is endemic in Indian schools, and it is very much socially accepted. Sonu used to be beaten up by his ex-tutor, a disabled boy for who tutions were the only way of earning a living, the tutor used his crutches to administer the beatings. When he went home and complained, his mother beat him up some more. Shibu was tied to her bed when she refused to go to school. I had a demon first grade teacher who used to crack my knuckles with a ruler inlayed with iron so that it would “get the point better across.”

The thing about violence is that it perpetuates more violence: my memories of first grade are an angry blur but i do distinctly remember standing at the main water pipe, hitting it with stones, hoping to break the damm thing open and flood away the school with the scowling teachers, inlayed rulers, and smirking fifth graders. Sonu constantly hits his sisters and will probably beat his kids when he has them. Shibu would keep flinching when I was teaching her, waiting for me to hit her when i told her she got the sum wrong — again. Her vulnerability completely disabled  me as a teacher; I felt powerless to correct her, felt like I was hitting her everytime I tried to challenge her… I expected the least from her of all the children and as a result she learnt the least of all of them,

Education can be an empowering experience, and this whole attempt was meant to be empowering for them and for me; I wanted Laloo to think I’m not just a pretty face, I’m a fabulous mathematician and there are not many who can say that. I wanted Durgi, to emerge out of her sister’s limelight, and realize her own intellectual capabilities and get rid of her shyness. I wanted Sonu to embrace his books, embrace responsibility, and step off the drinking, stealing, good-for-nothing path that his father is on.  I wanted Shibu to see that she didn’t need to live the orthodox, married at 18 life. I wanted them all to see that school was not a bad thing, but an institution through which their wildest dreams could come true; through which class and social barriers can be smashed open and churned into dusty memories.

But school is a very very very bad thing, every border and wall reinforced with an accepted roaring violence, a labyrinth of blind corners and abrupt endings, that the rest of us, from our ivory towers outside, refuse to do anything about.

 

Long Delayed Update

So the girls passed!!! J J J I am ecstatic, though a bit disbelieving.  The miracle I prayed for, the miracle they worked for has come through

I’m now in the US, killing myself with 100 page readings and writing 10 page papers. I talk to the children every few weeks and they always assure me that they are doing well academically and personally. Laloo is a dancer in the upcoming Commonwealth Games, Durgi in the school basketball team, Sonu has stated learning Sanskrit and Shivani seems to be losing some of her shyness. They are learning how to use the webcam and skype to speak to me and show me grainy images of my dog, Sepia.

It’s easy for me to fade India, and more specifically home, into an ideal filled with hope and anticipation, full of smiling kids and a happy hyper-active dog. The children are certainly optimistic about their future, believing they will continue to pass and make their dreams of doctor, and air hostess come true. It’s not an optimism that I can share.

The Indian education system is, as this blog shows, woefully underperforming and failing its students. It is also, despite the lip service of politicians, not a priority to be fixed. The commonwealth games that Laloo is so looking forward to perform in have sucked up the very money that could have made the educational dreams of children like her come true. ( http://ibnlive.in.com/news/delhi-govt-diverts-dalit-fund-for-2010-games/128125-3.html) The reform movements catalyzed by the Right to Education Act have run straight into political obstructionism. Already the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (the state where Durgi’s family is originally from) Mayawati has said she does not have the money to fund the Right to Education Act. Even if the reforms were successful, Durgi, Laloo and now Sonu have nothing to gain from the act, being over the mandated 14 years of age.

In the last 10 or so years the education system has deteriorated to a shade of its former self. In the meanwhile India’s growth has been astronomical and people are experiencing the fruits of wealth that could never have been dreamed of before.  I don’t want us to be the stereotypical third world county with the corrupt politicians, absent-minded, selfish and self-absorbed middle class and gigantic sweeping mass of poor; exploited over and over again with no escape, no mobility just empty hope. My India is better than that.

Order of Operations

Despite my best efforts my attempts to teach both math and English in the same lesson period appear to be jinxed. Although I gave only five sums yesterday as homework, we once again spent the whole of the lesson time just doing math and didn’t even have time to play a game like we normally do. This is mostly because I was teaching Durgi, Laloo and Sonu order of operations which was a new concept for them. Most of the time went in my explaining how B.E.D.M.A.S works and then giving them practice sums to see if they are able to grasp and apply these explanations. As there was a lot of time spent with me going back-forth giving them sums, them doing the sums, me checking the sums, then clarifying concepts and asking them to more sums the entire process took quite a while. Still I am really enjoying the fact that I am now teaching them something new and that there has been concrete progress made in the last few days. Math has become more demanding and time consuming and I will have to spend more time with them on it because of that. While I would ideally like to schedule a second lesson where they learn English, this has proved to be impractical in the past. Durgi and Laloo have too many chores at home to actually spare four hours in these education sessions and I also don’t have enough time to prepare for both lessons adequately. As a result of this I have decided to teach the children English and math on alternative days and try to bridge the gap by playing math games on English days and English games on math days.

Alterations

The previous day’s ennui continues to permeate the education sessions and yesterday’s lesson was painfully slow. The students were not their normal enthusiastic selves and seemed almost half asleep. Again we were unable to do anything but go over the math homework and play another quick math card game. English, once more, was completely ignored and I am quite worried now that we have missed it two days in a row. So much of what I teach in English rests on getting the students familiar with English words and grammar, therefore they need constant exposure to it  – to miss two days is quite a lot especially when the older girls exams are coming up.  On the positive side, however, the three older siblings got 100% of their answers correct in their math homework. I feel extremely confident that they know how to do these sums and Shibu, who also got 90%, is not as far behind as I feared. I think it is time to move onto a new topic in math.

Taking stock

My plan to give the students a day to reflect over what we have learnt in the past week and let it all come together in their minds has not been as successful as I was hoping it would be. Instead the children seemed disoriented, yesterday and they struggled to adjust to the pace of the lessons. As a result our progress really slowed down and we were only able to go over their math homework and play a quick game of math war. As we were running out of time, English was completely ignored. What’s worse is that not only was the lesson slow but all the students appeared to also be floundering and having a hard time. While they still got 90 to 95% of their answers correct in their homework, it soon became clear that they are still getting confused between plus, minus, multiplication and division signs. Although it’s taking them less time to figure out what each sign means they are still making mistakes such as adding when the sign is “-”. Even Sonu, who is quite comfortable with math and makes fewer mistakes than the rest of them, still needs to pause and think about what each sign means before he can do the sum. I don’t really think they can progress further until their knowledge of the signs becomes instinctive. It would be hellish to sort out like terms, or apply formulas to calculate area or even basic algebra if you are unsure about what the signs means. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make the meanings of the signs stick in their heads. The last few weeks I’ve been giving them plenty of practice with sums that have all sorts of mixed signs but it does not seem to have as much as of an impact as I hoped it would. Yesterday, out of desperation, I made them write lines saying what each signs means but again I’m not sure if this will be effective and it’s quite horrible for the children to do. I think the only solution is to try to find a card game which uses all four signs that can be played by all of them and give them more practice with the signs but let them have fun at the same time. This is what I did with math war and it appears to be really helping them with their tables.

Day Skip

This is a short entry just to say that thanks to major electricity problems I had to cancel yesterday’s lesson. I’m not too upset about it; hopefully a day off will help cement some of the new concepts I have been teaching the students and quite frankly I am glad to have some time to myself. To make up for the missed lesson I might have a double session today but we will see how it goes.

Steady Progress

The last few sessions’ progress in math continues to hold with Durgi and Laloo maintaining their 90% average. More significantly, Shibu has caught up with them and is also getting 90% of her answers correct now. Sonu has also proven that he remembers how to do these sums by getting all of them right. I am incredibly pleased with their performance and I can’t wait to move on and teach them something new. However, I’m still not sure if Laloo, Durgi and especially Shibu completely understand why these sums are done in this particular way. The 10% of sums that they do get wrong are always the ones that slightly more challenging and where they need to apply what they have learnt. Once again, they are unable to do this type of application at home but during the education sessions they come up with the answers with no prompting from me. I think my presence somehow gives them the feeling that they can afford to experiment and not worry so much about getting the answer incorrect. Of course, I will not be there in the exam or in their schools so they need to learn not to be scared of being experimental and applying instead of memorizing information. To facilitate this I have decided to slow down and let them play with the numbers and concepts of subtraction and addition by themselves before moving onto an entirely new topic.

Plans

Yesterday there has been some more progress in the Math segment of our sessions which I am extremely grateful for. Durgi and Laloo both got 90% of their sums right – enough to pass over the “passing” threshold that I had set originally. Shibu, as well, got more sums correct than she normally does although there is still definite room for improvement. As the students were doing so well I didn’t want to add another idea into the mix and did not discuss number bonds with them after all. At the end of the day, however, I am not a hundred percent sure that either Durgi or Laloo are completely comfortable with the sums I gave them so I am going to work on them for another day, which will also give Shibu some more time to catch up with them.  I have also given Sonu the same sums just to see if he continues to remember how to do them or if he needs more practice as well.

Impasses

I once again have come to an impasse in math and am at a loss to know what to teach the students. Of the sums I had given to Sonu yesterday, he was able to do the division and negative number ones perfectly but was unable to do the fractions. I want to teach the others fractions as well because they are all fairly weak at them and they all need to know them. However, there’s no point in teaching them all fractions when they don’t know things like factors or multiplication and division (in Shibu’s case) or even concepts like area. Teaching Sonu fractions right now is problematic because he also needs to learn factors and multiples before he can truly understand how fractions work and start adding and subtracting fractions. So I have nothing really to teach him at this point as his sisters are still struggling with the addition and subtraction sums I had given earlier and I cannot move on until they are also understand how to do them.  I don’t want him to sit around doing nothing so I am using this time to tell him to do his holiday homework. This will also hopefully let me see what exactly he is expected to know in English and Math at this stage.

Slow Progress

Yesterday we made some tangible progress, with Sonu getting about 90% of the sums I had given him correct. When I originally started teaching the children 90% was the high bench mark I had set which I was going to use before “passing” the students and teaching them a new concept. It seems like a good indicator as I am fairly sure Sonu knows the sums I have given him inside and out and is ready to move on. Of course this means that the gap between all the children is now huge with Sonu having to be taught something new while the rest of them are still figuring out what I have given them. To buy myself time I’m now giving Sonu equations using negative numbers (which we had learned earlier), division (which seems to be a slightly weak point for him) and a little bit of fractions (which he is learning in school).  This is mostly to give him a chance to reflect on what he has learnt, and give me some idea of what he has forgotten and needs to more review on. Once he is able to do all of these sums and get 90% of them right as well, we will again move on to something new. Hopefully by then his sisters will have caught up with him.

Stepping back

I still haven’t got up the courage to try out my idea of empowering the students by letting them set up their own goals. It’s such a huge departure from how they are normally taught and as I’m already pushing the boundaries regarding their education by insisting that they learn and not memorize, I am hesitating about making another radical change. However, my teaching woes continue as the gap between the four broaden in math with Sonu becoming increasingly confident with the sums I give him and Shibu still struggling to find the answers. The children, however, continue to make progress in English, although the Dolch words have become more challenging for them. This is mostly because we have now progressed to words that don’t really have an appropriate translation in Hindi such as “have” or “will” and I have to explain English grammar concepts instead of just giving a one-word meaning. Thankfully the readings we are doing are reinforcing these concepts and while they think English is quite strange[1] they are beginning to understand how it works.

Goal oriented teaching

Despite my deep anger at Durgi’s and Laloo’s school I have realized that the only thing I can do for the girls is help them prepare for the upcoming compartment exams. I don’t know why the school has been so unwilling to release the new grades but I do believe that it is in the school’s best interest to have as many students pass as possible and I think if Durgi and Laloo perform well in the next exam they will pass. They have been given a third chance and I am determined to do whatever I can to help them make the most of it.

Ggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s entry Durgi’s and Laloo’s compartment grades were supposed to be released today. When they went to school there was a list with their grades– their grades in the original exams.

The teachers, of course, were conveniently absent and the Principal’s only advice was to study hard for the next compartment exam in June.

Why? Will they even actually bother checking that exam?

Strategies

Now that the exams are so close, I am really anxious to make progress during the education sessions and have attempted to make my lesson plans more focused and goal orientated. In English, I had thought I would teach the girls how to read by using a first grade English textbook. Unfortunately, the textbook (yes, it’s authored by NCERT) is far too advanced and complicated for them. The first poem has words like “laugh” which are almost impossible to explain phonetically to a child who has just learnt how to pronounce the letter “g”. Even with the words that can be read phonetically, some of them are quite difficult to explain by drawing or saying the Hindi equivalent, such as for the word “hardly”. The book does have some really nice exercises where students have to match words like “boy” and “girl” with pictures of boys and girls or fill in the colors for words like “sun” and “tree” but all of my students know what these words mean. The words that they are struggling with “laugh” “whole” “hardly” and “shade” are not explained by any of the exercises which is rather frustrating. What makes me especially angry is that most children in first grade are just beginning to learn how to read and are only comfortable with reading a few simple sentences with tiny words, but still the writers of the textbook have given such problematic readings. I think I have wasted my money by buying this textbook.

Second Chances and more…

Yesterday, Laloo came home without her report card but with some good news; the results of the compartment exams will be available on Monday. If they do fail an exam they get a third chance to make it up and can take the exam again at the end of June. I guess the thought of 90 students failing in one class is, after all, too much for their school to swallow and hence the students have been given another chance to make it up. If you know the subject at all, it’s actually pretty easy to pass the exams in India; the school board not only sets a very low bench mark for passing (33%) but gives you a fairly easy paper[1] and gives you more than one attempt to pass an exam. Unfortunately, the girls, and it appears most of their classmates, do not know some subjects at all. Although the school has given them another opportunity to pass, there is still a failure on the school’s part to own responsibility for the student’s performance. The students are expected to prepare by themselves during the summer holidays. There are no remedial classes being offered. However, in English Durgi and Laloo cannot even read the textbook let alone comprehend what is in it and in math their basics are so weak that nothing the textbook says makes sense to them. The thought of them being able to study hard by themselves and be able to pass is hopelessly naïve. Surely, the teachers in their school realize this and should try to counter it by helping their students. However, they do not appear to be interested in doing this.

The door is still open…

I have finally got my hands on Durgi’s report card. At first glance I am really disappointed – they haven’t given the compartment grades and failed her on the basis of her previous exams. I point this out to Durgi who tells me that the teachers say the compartment papers haven’t come back so they don’t know if they have passed or failed. As today is the last day of term before the summer break we will not know if Durgi or Laloo have passed until July, when school re-opens. I guess that partially explains why their teachers have been refusing to  teach them the last few weeks. They don’t know which of these 90 students have failed the compartments and are in eighth grade and who has passed and are now in ninth. Despite being able to see the logic behind their actions I can’t feel it’s misplaced. They are all behind, even the ones who have passed the compartments; surely the teachers should invest their time doing a few remedial lessons with them so that next year these students have an easier time passing.

Multiple Issues

Chutki showed up yesterday all contrite for missing the last two lessons. Apparently she finds it difficult to come on time – her mother complains it is too late and doesn’t want to let her out alone. She wants to have our lessons earlier in the day. This is not really an issue for me, so I have agreed and re-worked our lesson time table. Unfortunately, I still did not have a complete class yesterday as Laloo did not show up; she had gone shopping with her cousin. I’m quite perplexed as to what to do with the situation. Every time someone is absent my lesson plan goes awry as I need to teach the information to all of them. Part of me wants to just carry on teaching like normal but that means the absent person starts to lag behind and the whole point of this exercise is to catch them up. Yet at the same time it is unreasonable to expect full attendance everyday for the next two months. Indeed, I will not be able to attend the education sessions always and in fact, will probably not be there at all next week because I have to leave town. However, I would like some prior notice before they become absent so that I can change my lesson plan and make the other students practice weak concepts.

Anti-climax II

Chutki decided not to attend yesterday’s class. This time she has no excuse and just says that “she will not come today.” I am taking this as a sign that she’s not interested in these education sessions and is dropping out of them. I had said earlier that if Chutki would drop out I would be upset and offended. I am not. I am irritated but resigned. I had expected this to happen and I have to admit that it’s a bit of relief that she did drop out. The lessons are progressing faster and I find it easier to teach the remaining students. We covered number sequences, read a small story and played two math games all in 2 hours – something that would be unheard of a week ago.

School politics

The girls were supposed to have got their report cards yesterday but have returned home empty handed and fuming. They tell me that their main teacher was absent and the other teachers said that the report cards are not available as of yet. They have instructed the children to come to school every day to see if they are available. Laloo and Durgi, like their class mates, had taken their father along with them but the teachers did not talk to anyone’s parents. The students then demanded that the teachers return the papers so that they can check if the teachers had graded them correctly. The teachers have refused to release the papers. I am not surprised; in my school, we were never returned the final papers but then we were pretty sure that our teachers had marked the papers and checked and rechecked their calculations before giving us our final grades. The students at Durgi’s and Laloo’s school, however, are not sure of this. They are also extremely angry about their teacher’s refusal to show them the papers. The level of distrust and the resentment between the teachers and students at Durgi’s and Laloo’s school is quite disturbing.

Syllabus Formulations

After the dismal results of the compartment exams, I find myself wondering what will be the long term impact of these education sessions on the children’s life. Since the exams I have found myself making an almost unconscious decision to shift priorities; my main focus is no longer to teach the children how to score well on their exams, as it was with Durgi and Laloo during their compartments, but to make them implicitly understand and learn the basics of Math and English.  As a result what I teach them and the way I teach them is quite different from how they are taught in their schools. The children have noticed this disconnect. Some like Chutki, dislike it and keep asking me why can’t I teach them what their teacher is teaching them and give them practice sums? She persists on calling my sessions “tuitions” which in my mind brings up the image of a session that mainly consists of revision and where the main aim is to boost grades.  Others like Durgi and Laloo are just glad that they are being “taught” and not given lists of sums or English question/answers to memorize.