Posts Tagged ‘school’


October 6th, 2009

Birth of an institution

Once upon a time, there was a very young school in the land of long, cold winters and brief, short spring. Like any run-of-the-mill school, it was ambitious but clueless. It had capable but complacent teachers, innocent and innovative students and conservative but cooperative parents. The owner-principal of the school was a humane and hardworking lady, who ran the school with the support of her fantastic family.

One day, she dreamt that she needed to make things better in her school for everyone, and within a very short time. She believed in it but only because she didn’t want not to believe in it, camouflaging the self-doubt with bravado in order to lead others. She sought guidance from the powers-that-be to make this into a reality. It dawned on her, from enlightened but worldly quarters, that to make the slightest of positive change, there needs to be tremendous effort, most of which goes into fire-fighting and dealing with resistance to the change. She armed herself with this belief and initiated the movement.

But, there was something amiss.

There were devilish forces plotting against her in the form of greed and jealousy. Caught up within the vortex of her goodness and working towards the change, She was blissfully unaware of these undermining forces. She had mixed counsel and was unable to differentiate the genuine from the superficial, or chose not to. At this point, what she lacked was courage and wisdom. Good intentions alone are never enough.

Then she met another person, with whom she shared her dream and sought help. Both teamed up and this was now to become a veritable army of two with few well-wishers and many opponents. She now had the power of vision and an ally who had the power of wisdom to achieve that vision.

But, time was running out. While this new alliance worked tenaciously, the opponents gathered strength and struck a body-blow to the dream. It was battle time – time to separate chaff from the grain. Their army was strengthened by the loss of rotten apples and by gaining and nurturing capable team players.

There were other problems threatening to thwart the dream but this fast growing, and now an army of many, overcame every challenge with wisdom and solidarity. It was time for everyone to take ownership and responsibility of the dream and make it into a reality. What was once a place with one leader and no followers, now became a powerhouse of individuals, each a team player and a leader in her own right.

The dream is today a reality and this very young, small school is an inspiration, a beacon of hope acknowledged by the Goliaths in the land.

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Posted in Education, Internationalism, Sustainibility in Education | 5 Comments »

August 14th, 2009

Text-books as curriculum

A long time ago I read, “Teachers are designers”. It has taken me years to understand the implications of that simple sentence. As a teacher who has taught across the grades and continents, I have struggled in designing curriculum (as per school, board, provincial and national standards), teaching-learning activities and assessment tasks. It takes a lot of time and creativity, both of which teachers find themselves deficient in! As an administrator, I have empathised with and supported teachers struggling to play the designer of their students’ learning.

So am I implying that textbooks have no place in a classroom? Certainly not! Textbooks are a tool, one of the many learning tools that a teacher/school uses to make students learn as per expectations/ standards. They are based on a certain syllabus but they are certainly not the syllabus. Textbooks are useful as sources of organised information about topics from the syllabus providing many exercises for reinforcing key knowledge. But they distort how understanding of an issue develops, since they present “only the cleaned-up residue”, “a simplified summation of findings”. The school in general and teacher in particular, need to use it as a resource for what it does well and compensate from other sources/ resources what textbooks do poorly.

Driven by convenience and profit motive, it seems that teachers/schools are abdicating their responsibility of designing students’ learning, passing it off to publishers, who have evolved into a powerful lobby. With the backing of the Who’s Who in the educational boards, they have successfully positioned and marketed textbooks as curriculum itself. Some publishing houses are also making inroads into training teachers about teaching. It’s simple quid pro quo, where the schools order textbooks in bulk from a particular publishing house who in-turn commit to train teachers about teaching learning. It goes unsaid that this training is a means to an end, the end being more sales for the publishing house.

It seems that convention has been turned on its head with teachers becoming a resource for the textbook instead of it being the other way round – textbooks being one of the resources for the teachers.

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Posted in Curriculum, Education, Teacher Training | No Comments »

July 29th, 2009

Safety in Indian Schools

Last week we were informed of a horrible accident that took place at a well known Gurgaon play school. On that fateful day, two weeks after a boy had been admitted into the school, the two year old boy had a nasty accident and suffered severe facial injuries resulting in a badly bruised face and the loss of a tooth. While injuries can happen at school or for that matter anywhere, what is most surprising is the response of the school officials who called the incident “normal” and “minor”.

I am not really certain by what measure can an injury of this type be described as “normal” or “minor”. The word normal is used to describe something that happens regularly or is widely prevalent. The word minor describes something of no or low consequence, and therefore no corrective action or precaution is necessary or desired. Do I hear the school as saying that a loss of a tooth by a student is matter of routine at this educational institution? Do I also hear that the school thinks that a 2 year old’s (or for that matter any child’s) face being bruised black and blue is insignificant and is part of business as usual?

If the answer to both the questions is yes, then I think that this educational institution needs to be closed down by the authorities, with immediate effect.

The fact of the matter is that most schools in India do not pay any attention to student safety. There does not seem to be any requirements, regulations, standards that prescribed a minimum level of safety that a school should implement. Six months ago, my wife and I visited a number of schools (including the school that is the topic of this blog), for our 2 ½ year old. Having lived overseas for over 10 years, and having become acutely sensitised to safety standards in anything and everything that forms a part of his environment, we were shocked to see the apathy of schools towards implementing, what would be considered even basic safety measures in most countries, overseas.

We even came across one school (an equally reputed play school as is being discussed here and which has built for itself a successful brand franchise) that had installed in its garden flood lights to light its façade. This garden was also the main playground where children of ages 3 and up were designated to play and had all the children’s play equipment neatly laid out. The floodlights had been joined to a lamppost within the same playground, with the wiring exposed to natural elements and for the children to touch and pull. I am not sure why anyone would want to send his / her ward to this school or how this school is being allowed to operate. Another school, we visited, had stored toxic materials used to clean toilets within easy reach of the kids. Yet another exclusive Delhi based day school, as part of its counter measures against the swine flu, has introduced disposable paper towels for use by children in the toilets. However, earlier plea’s by parents to have the school introduce paper towels in the bathrooms had fallen on deaf ears. Why is it that our schools need a major scare or catastrophe before they act (Last week, the Delhi based school was closed for a week due to swine flu)?

Schools in Canada (and in other western countries), the country that I lived in for the best part of the last decade, have been closed down for offences much smaller than these. I know of a school that lost its license to operate daycare due to negligence, all because of a single nail protruding from the walls (in a part of the daycare not frequented by kids), which was considered injurious to the students.

We did eventually admit our child to a play-school in Gurgaon. One of the biggest considerations for putting him in that school were the visible efforts made by the school’s administrators to child proof the school area.

It is time that we start prioritising the safely of our children and make conscious efforts towards it. If certain schools choose not to do participate, then they should be forced to shut shop; and in certain circumstances, the administrators held liable for injuries suffered by our children.

Jaago India Jaago

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Posted in Education, News | No Comments »

July 22nd, 2009

The Animal School

I found this incredible write-up/poem about an imaginary animal school. Did I say imaginary? The setting may be imaginary, but the characteristics highlighted are widely prevalent.

-x-x-x-

Once upon a time the animals decided they must do something decisive to meet the increasing complexity of their society. They held a meeting and finally decided to organize a school.

The curriculum consisted of running, climbing, swimming and flying. Since these were the basic behaviours of most animals, they decided that all the students should take all the subjects.

The duck proved to be an excellent swimmer, better in fact, than his teacher. He also did well in flying. But he proved to be very poor in running. Since he was poor in this subject, he was made to stay after school to practice it and even had to drop swimming in order to get more time in which to practice running. He was kept at his poorest subject until his webbed feet were badly damaged that he became only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in the school, so nobody worried about that-except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of her class in running, but finally had a nervous breakdown because of so much make up time in swimming – a subject she hated.

The squirrel was excellent at climbing until he developed a psychological block in flying class, when the teacher insisted he started from the ground instead of from the tops of trees. He was kept at attempting to fly until he became muscle-bound and received a C in climbing and a D in running.

The eagle was the school’s worst discipline problem; in climbing class, she beat all of the others to the top of the tree used for examination purposes in this subject, but she insisted on using her own method of getting there.

The gophers, of course, stayed out of school and fought the tax levied on education because digging was not included in the curriculum. They apprenticed their children to the badger and later joined the groundhogs and eventually started a private school offering alternative education.

-x-x-x-

PS: I would love to know whose figment of fantastic imagination this piece is !

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Posted in Education, Learner centric teaching, Poem | 2 Comments »

June 25th, 2009

About School

I came across this poignantly inspirational poem by R. Nukerji in “Global teacher, Global Leaner” by Graham Pike and David Selby. It would be a shame not to share it.

He always wanted to say things. But no one understood.

He always wanted to explain things. But no one cared.

So he drew.

Sometimes he would just draw and it wasn’t anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky.

He would lie out on the grass and look up in the sky and it would be only him and the sky and the things inside that needed saying.

And it was after that, that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under the pillow and would let no one see it.

And he would look at it every night and think about it. And when it was dark, and his eyes were closed, he could still see it.

And it was all of him. And he loved it.

When he started school, he brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to have it with him like a friend.

It was funny about school.

He sat in a square, brown desk like all other square, brown desks and he thought it should be red.

And his room was a square, brown room. Like all the other rooms.

And it was tight and close. And stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil and the chalk, with his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor, with the teacher watching and watching.

And then he had to write numbers. And they weren’t anything.

They were worse than the letters that could be something if you put them together.

And the numbers were square and tight and he hated the whole thing.

The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all other boys. He said he didn’t like them and she said it didn’t matter.

After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about morning. And it was beautiful.

The teacher came to him and smiled at him, “what is this?” she said. “Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing? Isn’t it beautiful?”

It was all questions.

After that his mother bought a tie and he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else.

And he threw his old picture away.

He was square inside and brown, and his hands were stiff and he was like anyone else. And the thing inside him that needed saying didn’t need saying anymore.

It had stopped pushing. It was crushed. Stiff.

Like everything else.

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Posted in Education, Learner centric teaching | No Comments »

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