Could be bitter ,could be sweet...but always a treat!!

I got hit by reality!!

    We all love talking! Well at least most of us do. I do!  It is great when each day we meet ,sit in a comfortable class room, with our laptops by our side, pondering over one of the gravest problems our country is facing, that of education. We talk at length about everything related to the field of education, curriculum, policies, drop outs,RTE among many many others. All  these sessions immensely insightful and hugely enriching. After each session, I feel even more invigorated. I love putting forth my point of view,giving suggestions, discussing, analyzing,debating.  In an environment where everyone is out there to create a difference, amidst all these highly enthusiastic charged up people, you seriously start considering the possibility that maybe what you do could create that change you want to see.

   I was happily sailing in the same boat where after almost 2 weeks of rigorous training, I had started to feel that I too would create waves across the country in the field of education. But my smooth sailing boat met with a little accident day before yesterday during our outdoor task. In the task with trees, the tree we had chosen was located at the backside of the campus. This is also a construction site full of  workers. So while our group was examining the tree as part of our task we also had a chance to meet the children of these construction workers who were camping under the tree. 4 girls , around 7 -8 years of age with a little baby. 

  One of the girls was looking after the baby and the rest of them were with her. We started conversing with these kids. Thankfully we had a Kannada speaking member in our group. We asked them their names, tried playing with the little one, simultaneously doing our task too. In the course of our conversation with them, we found out that they are not going to school. In fact on probing them further, we found out that none of them had ever been to a school. Their parents apparently were migrants from some distant village in Karnataka and were helping out with the construction work.

   What is ironical is that the same place where we are vehemently talking about educating each and every child in the country, there are children who haven’t been to a school ever.  This irony is my tryst with reality. Its all hunky dory when you have to debate and discuss about educating children, the difficulty comes when you realize the scale at which you have to do this. Not just remote villages, towns, districts but in your own city, in fact your own neighbourhood. 

  My boat of ambitions got hit by reality. But I am certain that this accident will only be an impetus for my boat to sail farther and faster with more vigour and more energy and also with more focus.

Explorations, Experiences and EVS!!

Our very first outdoor task was a truly enjoyable one. Getting together in groups and setting out to explore nature around us was our task. We were left alone, with no one monitoring us, except a list of guidelines that were to be fulfilled. Trees were what our task was based on . We set out on our exploration and I went back to my school picnic days. As goes a popular saying , necessity is the mother of invention.  We had little resources, and a seemingly monumental task.  With a 12 cm ruler, we had to profile a tree and ironically the tree we chose was a gigantic one. Everyone in  our group got working, and looking at the kind of creative inputs everyone was giving, I realized how much there was to be learnt from others in my group. It was a great team effort but along with the fun, we also learnt quite a lot of things. We used our existing knowledge of maths, and art and creative writing all in one task.  My most favorite part about the task were the poems by each group, since these brought out the never seen poet in each one of them. Great first hand learning experience!!

We spent the latter half of the day discussing the lesser spoken about EVS. I had actually forgotten that EVS was a subject that was taught in school, so revisiting school in trying to remember what EVS actually consisted was and relating it to what we have learnt in the last few days was interesting. But today I realized that EVS is in fact an extremely important subject that sadly hasn’t been given its due. I always considered it as a sidey sort of a subject that only served as a break from the heavy duty ones. But today, after discussing in length about the subject ,I realized that EVS is the first time students are introduced to the environment around them and they start relating themselves with the environment.  I awakened to the fact that EVS holds its own and is in fact deserving of far more weightage and importance than what is given presently.

Hearing between the lines...

   When I heard that there was a session about language for an entire day, the immediate thought that floated across my head was “A session on language for the whole day, how much can be learnt that we don’t already know?” Little did I know that I was foraying into the amazing world of words and languages where everything that seemed mundane and ordinary had much deeper secrets to be unfolded.

   Language for me has always been the ladder used to climb to the higher worlds of Sciences and Mathematics. Which precisely explains why I would never really open my English or hindi book for studying because for me neither of these languages had anything new to offer. Once you have read a story, you know what there is in it and there would end my ordeal with the subject. I would rather use that time studying Maths  or Science that appeared more mentally stimulating. 

   But the session on linguistics pretty much changed all that I had ever perceived since the last 15 years which is long enough  time to think that what you believe is what is right. The different languages spoken in our country have always intrigued me. I knew that various languages and dialects borrow words from each other freely specially those having geographical proximity. But never once did I know or even tried to know that there was common thread running across all languages of the world. 

   The consonantal and vocalic sounds common to most languages of the world was a fantastic revelation on its own.  In fact the fact that all languages can be represented by means of one single script is something that I always knew. But I had never paid heed to these simple things that hugely simplify means of communication across boundaries.  The tasks with plurals and constructing negatives and questions  in different languages gave me fascinating new insights.

  The most fascinating of them being how closely mathematics and languages can be linked.  I always thought that mathematics was the most logical subject and English the most illogical one. You either knew it or you didn’t. But with the play with sound structures I realized how logical English plurals are. You can actually construct a theorem that can be applied to almost words English. In fact not just English we actually formulated a common rule with negatives and questions across 30 languages.

  I learnt amidst the rich diversity across nations and languages, there lies a common thread that binds them all, that was always there but I was too ignorant to notice it.

WHY???

   The Philosophy of education isn’t as straightforward as one would like it to be. Its almost like a treasure of questions, and you have to go deep inside it to hunt the answers down. You could lose your way in the middle, feel directionless, feel lost, but, you would eventually arrive at the answers and then maybe the process might make sense to you.

   Today’s session was exactly that. Who would have imagined(except of course a student of philosophy) that to unfold a concept as familiar as ‘knowledge’ would require layers and layers of unpacking to be done.  Every answer leading to another question and each of those questions taking us a step forward to understand what exactly knowledge is. 

   

 Concluding knowledge as a set of validated beliefs is what most of us consented to after endless  rounds of heated discussions. All very well, I think to myself.  But what do schools today do? Do they give their students knowledge or just truckloads of things to believe in! Do they justify what they teach or do students just go back in the belief that what was taught to them was probably what is correct. Maybe the answers to these questions will emerge subsequently. Maybe why we did what we did today would be make sense eventually. But till then, the question that haunted us in the session still pretty much remains. WHY???

I have more potential than you!!

     A 'google' result defines potential as something '  existing in possibility : capable of development into actuality'. So I wonder, if potential is something that exists in possibility,  then how is it that some child would have greater potential than the other.

   During my parent-teacher meetings, my chemistry teacher would always say ‘she has the potential to do much better’ and I would always think to myself ‘then why is it that I never do well?’ I answered the question for myself. Yes, I did have the potential of doing much better in chemistry, but what I didn’t have was the interest. Chemical reactions to me meant nothing more than visual imagery and so that was the reason I would hardly open my chemistry book to study. On the other hand, while I didn’t open my chemistry book,I did open my math book. Numbers fascinated me, solving a question and getting the correct answer gave me a high. So yes, I did have the potential in me to do well. What differed was my ‘agency’!

    Each child possesses the same potential and I actually believe that each one of us possess infinite potential. What differs is his or her inclination. So while you can have a poverty stricken man from a village in Bihar answer questions about world history, or a small town belle waltz her way to success or people from the tiniest districts exhibiting extraordinary musical talents or a small town boy captain the Indian Cricket team, you can also have people from  the richest backgrounds not being able to come up despite all the facilities given to them. In fact two children from the same house, having the same facilities might be completely different from each other. One could be exceptional in Physics, the other could be a great sarod player.

   Having said that, there are no two ways about the fact that the environment given to a child hugely determines his or her proficiency at a skill,but that is because those skills have been honed and polished because of the resources available. Each child starts off with the same potential, obviously with different interests, but how well his or her potential is tapped is the question.

Reflecting on the last 3 days of sessions.

  The last 3 days have been a mixture of sorts. There were some very engaging activities and great presentations along with the "not so great ones" accompanying them. Reflecting on the sessions I didn't quite like would be pointless because there isn't really anything that I take back from them except a truckload of information that I would anyway get in the next few days. So, I would stick to the sessions I liked. 

  Shashi's session on 'working with the government' was an eye opener of sorts because after really long I met someone who actually had nice things to say about the government. All along, there has been a certain stereotype attached to the government and this session made me look for a possibility of breaking the stereotype.But only a possibility! Whether it gets broken or not remains to be seen.

 Today's session with Hardy made me realize how nuanced and layered policies have to be.If there is a problem that needs to be addressed, there are a dozen sub problems of the same problem that need to be looked into. Today's session has actually compelled me to finally sit down and read what the RTE actually proposes and delve deeper into what else needs to proposed.

 My favourite part of each day continues to be the activities that Pradeep and Nisha and their team does with us. Great way to learn new things (and waking us up from slumber)!! :)

 And finally this reflection would be incomplete without the mention of Radha who instigated us to reflect on how useful it is to reflect :)