When in doubt, ignore the operation symbol, add all the numbers in the equation and pray!

I have been convinced for a long time now that the children in the schools I visit are having a hard time with the three most basic Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic). When asked by the schools to help them conduct remedial lessons, the basics were definitely high on my list of priorities. Imagine my surprise when I was informed that remedial lessons had to act merely as supplements to their existing class-work. Schools were disinterested in creating opportunities for students to develop these basic skills and were far more interested in having children pass their exams.

To help schools understand the gravity of the situation and also to collect some pre-remedial, base-line data, we created short tests for both Math and English to check students' understanding of basic concepts. Despite our lack of faith in students' grasp of basic concepts, we thought the tests were designed to take no more than ten minutes apiece. Imagine our surprise when students in fifth grade took three times as long to write 4 simple sentences and underline some parts of speech. They took even longer to solve problems which involved simple operations.

The question they puzzled over for the longest time was an equation that looked like this: 4 + 5 - 2 + 5 = ___ + 5. Answers ranged from 4 + 5 - 2 + 5 = 16 + 5 (totaling up all the numbers on the left, ignoring the signs) to 4 + 5 - 2 + 5 = 4 + 5 (copy the first number and hope that it is a pattern). This question should not have been the source of so much consternation to ten year olds. If children understood what it meant for two sides of an equation to be equal, these sums would be as simple as pie. Alarming as these solutions are, at least it is possible to isolate the problem and misconceptions and find strategies to address them.

It is much more difficult when a ten year old, who is asked to make a sentence with the past tense of run, writes, "I run the very fastle." When asked if he wanted to correct the sentence, the child confidently shook his head and handed in the paper. These English medium schools are not equipped for ESL (English as a Second Language) learners, nor are the teachers fluent enough to detect these errors when they are made in written or spoken language. It is impossible to know where to begin to sort this problem out but we are trying to create plans that address the needs of the teachers and the students in the quickest possible way.

It is difficult knowing that we only have a few more months to put these interventions in place, partly because we know that it will take more than a few months for the results to be tangible, but mostly our worry is that if teachers are not yet able to identify these problems, it is unclear how they will be able to tackle them on their own when they are no longer supported.

From sterile, nut-free environments to sensory overload.

It has been six months since I began working in Bangalore and started writing this blog. If these last few months have taught me nothing else, they have shown me how adaptable and resilient the human spirit can be.

Sometimes, I think back to the day when I first walked into one of "my" schools. I remember getting out of the auto, walking across the road and looking around to find the school. I peered at the names of the stores, most of which had badly peeling store fronts and poorly lettered signs, and none of them proclaimed the existence of the singularly unfortunately named school that we were trying to visit. P1, my now boss, was trying to give me a dose of reality before I signed my contract and I looked at her questioningly, wondering how the elusive school was so well concealed. She smiled in answer to my questioning look, and led the way down a narrow alley.

The alley took us between two dingy buildings, past a one-room house carved out of the back of a building. The house had barely enough room for a single cot and a chair and there were people spilling out of it. In front of the house some chickens and a rooster ran loose. There was a dead rat lying in a puddle of water and garbage just piling up against the wall of the building next door. I looked beyond the rat and the garbage to a door set unassumingly into the side of a narrow, multi-storey building. That was the school? I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

I had, ostensibly, come back home to work and try and use my fine Harvard (and Mount Holyoke) education to set things right! I realize now that I had not a clue and was completely unprepared! My previous teaching experiences involved model pre-schools associated with great research departments in prestigious colleges and universities on the East (privileged) Coast of the United States. The adult-child ratios were dream-worthy, the funds available to create teaching-aids seemingly never ran out, and the parents had any amount of disposable time and income to spend on their three-year old prodigies (or so it seemed!). To go from saying, "Now it is time for you to put away this wonderful, 6 ft square, block structure that you have been working on for two hours and go to circle" to having teachers "afraid children with their eyes" and say, "YAH, put yer books away and go for nature's call!" was a huge change to say the least.

Compare my previous reality to that first school visit and you will understand why the approach to the building nearly had me running for the hills. I was not sure what to expect, but I was quite certain that given the external conditions, there would not be much teaching and learning occurring within the building. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the school and met a firm, kind head-mistress who had once been a teacher, leaving her classroom only to open this school. Her school functioned like clock-work and since that very first day, some of my favorite observed classes occurred in that school. The children are bright, eager and motivated, and despite all odds, are succeeding in a school system designed to make them fail.

It just goes to show, doesn't it? One really cannot ever judge a book by the cover!

Spare the rod and spoil the child? Yes, please!

My resolution for 2011 was to write more frequently. Given that it is the 6th of January and this is my first post, it does not augur well for frequency but I shall try.

There have been several reasons for my posting less since September (ok! Fine! not posting at all) but the foremost was the fact that I was just overwhelmed. At first, my experiences in schools were just hilarious anecdotes to share. Then I realized that this morass of disorder was going to be my reality, at least for the forseeable future, and I was too exhausted by the thought to write about it. Now, almost six months in, I am finally getting to the point where I can accept the mire, do the work and still analyze the situation (somewhat) objectively. Well, at least most of the time.

Some things still catch me off-guard though. For instance, the other day I walked into a school to see the newly hired co-ordinator (a glorified term for prison warden) shouting indiscriminately at everyone - adult and child - around her, and finally smacking a child sharply on the arm. After the incident, I had a tete-a-tete with her and asked for an explanation of her conduct. She contradicted herself several times during her convoluted explanation which involved a reference to the Headmaster's disapproval of corporal punishment, her own conviction that one must not spare the rod, and her assertion that she never uses a stick and was only seen carrying one when she had taken it off the other teachers. My personal favourite was that in her overzealous effort to prove her innocence, she claimed that she does not hit children simply because it does not work. Also, in answer to one of my questions, she proudly stated that she had never once hit a child. (Rest assured that despite her delusions, the appropriate authorities were informed of the situation and have since taken "positive disciplining" action against said prison warden.)

What was also interesting was that I, a young, relatively inexperienced person was able to make a teacher with 30+ years of teaching experience behave like a cornered rat with a single question.

A few days later I was in the Headmistress' office at a different school when a parent came to talk to her. The parent was distraught because the child was performing poorly at school and tearfully begged the Headmistress to have the child slapped if his poor performance at school continued. Aside from the millions of problems with using corporal punishment as a sanction for academic problems, what struck me was that a parent was pleading with the Headmistress - not for lenience but for harsher punishment.

I was reminded of Freire's theory about the Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Paraphrasing loosely, his theory suggests that when an oppressed person has access to power he becomes more tyrannical than the oppressor because his understanding of power cannot be separated from the oppressor-oppressed paradigm.

While Freire's theory is illuminating in its simplicity, it is incredibly frustrating to watch this paradigm being played out daily in the lives of these children, especially given that they are far more earnest, sincere and motivated to learn than many of their wealthier, more-empowered contemporaries.