All and Sundry

Which is your favorite district in India?

2010-10-09T09:46:00.001-04:00

Which is your favorite district in India? Do you know how many children can read a simple text and do basic mathematics in that district? Here is a chance! ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) is the single largest social audit in education in the world. Participate in this large scale testing of children by either sponsoring the survey of a village by donating $33 or $1000 for an entire district.
I have worked in this organization for 3 years and I can assure you that every dollar you spend will be put to good use. If you have any questions regarding ASER, please feel free to contact me.
For more details visit : http://asercentre.org/
http://www.prathamusa.org/dnn/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx
Thank you!
Radhika

Gandhi ji at Union Square

2010-09-19T13:09:00.004-04:00

My husband and I, like true Indians, live in New Jersey (and not in New York City), right opposite to the Indian market. But most of our time is spent in NYC, again like true Indians. I look for Indian things here and there and New York as multi-cultural as it can get, often gives me many reasons to smile. On the weekends, we frequent one of our favorite parts of NYC - The Union Square at 14th street. It is an interesting place, flanked by tall beautiful buildings and in the middle of it, a park. It is not a usual park with green grass and children playing. It offers much more. On the weekends, it hosts a beautiful farmer’s market where farmers from neighboring states and upstate New York displaying their fresh products for sale. My husband and I have favorite things that we like to do there. I make a bee line for my favorite chocolate milk which comes in glass bottles. It’s large by normal standard, but I can easily gulp it down in a few minutes. My husband likes to have his usual blueberry muffins. After those extra pounds in our bellies, we stroll around to see many environmentally conscious stalls about recycling, reducing wastes and animal care organizations etc. There are also more socially conscious groups doing their usual processions against the war in Iraq which I always listen to and encourage.

In short, Union Square is the heart of New York City with many interesting activities and people. Talking about people, this Sunday, I manage to locate probably the most interesting person of all times, Gandhi ji. Amidst green bushes at a corner of Union square, very visible to all, stands a tall black statute of Gandhi ji. I was thrilled to see him. Carrying the usual stick, and marching away stood a man who started the non-cooperation movement against a large salt making monopoly. This is very symbolic to the farmers, who come with a hope of selling their produce, in a country of the largest chains of everything. Like earlier times, when a crowd used to follow him everywhere, Gandhi ji even now is not alone. Many people hang around, admire and take many pictures of this statue. There was even a candle right below his feet.

They say that you know when you are in New York, when in the subway your neighbors are all speaking in a different language. It is a place where people want to learn from others, including their languages, dresses, eating habits and even from their history. The presence of Gandhi ji is a live example of learning the good from others. Gandhi ji at Union square gave me yet another reason to smile.

YouTube - Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge

2010-07-17T10:00:00.000-04:00

YouTube - Kiran Bir Sethi teaches kids to take charge: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Comparative Education Society Conference Presentation 2010- Jhabua Case Study

2010-02-28T12:01:00.003-05:00

http://www.tc.edu/news/article.htm?id=7216

2009-11-04T22:09:00.000-05:00

Measuring School Readiness in Very Young Children

Published: 11/2/2009

New research from Teachers College centering on a unique social experiment undertaken by an entire county in upstate New York offers some of the strongest evidence to date that the “school readiness” of young children upon entering kindergarten can be dramatically improved by providing them with stronger non-academic social supports along with informal education at home.

Since the famous Coleman report of the 1960s, one truth has been held self-evident about the achievement gap separating poorer, typically minority students in the United States from their wealthier, mostly white counterparts: that children’s family background, physical and psychological health, and other non-academic factors weigh as heavily on their chances for academic success as the quality of their schooling. More recently, that idea has been reinforced by research suggesting that the achievement gap gets locked in during the first three to five years of children’s lives, a critical period for developing language and mathematical abilities, social skills and much more.

The TC study lends new weight to both hypotheses. The research focuses on the Chemung County School Readiness Project, a grass-roots, communitywide collaboration that’s providing an array of child and family services to all residents in the region through a multi-agency partnership. The project’s goal is to increase school readiness levels and overall well-being in children during the first five years of their lives. The study’s authors are Madhabi Chatterji, Associate Professor of Measurement-Evaluation at TC and Director of the college’s Assessment and Evaluation Research Initiative (AERI), and her graduate assistant, Radhika Iyengar.

It will take another 10 years – the period during which the current kindergarteners in Chemung County will complete elementary, middle and high school – and several more studies for the Project’s ultimate impact to be known. The current research by Chatterji and her team, which profiled the school readiness of 2007-08 entering kindergarteners, is a baseline study designed to provide points of comparison for a long-term evaluation of the Project’s effectiveness.

Nevertheless, a number of key findings emerged from the study, which includes data on 300 of the county’s 934 kindergarten-enrolled children in 2007-08.

The children who were more “school ready”, the researchers determined, tended to have mothers who were at least college-educated; had been exposed to more informal educational experiences in the home; had received continuous and consistent parent care; were female; and had received pre-schooling at age three.

The children found to be less “school ready” tended to have more sleeping abnormalities; had been exposed to more traumatic events (high levels of family mobility, exposure to assault or incarceration within the family); had a medical history of ill-health or had received professional services for diagnosed special needs; and had mothers who smoked during pregnancy.

“The notion of ‘comprehensive education’” – a term that describes the kind of wrap-around services being provided to Chemung County residents – “has been in the early childhood literature for some time, enacted in the past through legislation such as the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971,” says Chatterji. “Recent thinking is that children who are more school-ready will tend to come from families that can provide more all-round opportunities and supports, such as informal education at home and protection from adversities during childhood.

“Our study validates these ideas using a comprehensive measure of school readiness in kindergarten as the outcome. The data from Chemung County support the project’s theory that providing these community services will promote school readiness in a broad sense. The project staff could use the results to build awareness among parents about the need for comprehensive education and encourage them to make use of county services if they haven’t already done so.”

A key feature of the study by Chatterji and Iyengar is the development of the first comprehensive measure of school readiness (CSR). Typically, school readiness has been defined mainly in terms of children’s literacy and facility with numbers and number concepts. However, the study measured readiness using both cognitive and non-cognitive factors, including children’s health, and social and emotional adjustment (such as their capacity to pay attention and follow rules in school). The study’s CSR is a composite indicator derived from eight such measurements.

To gather data for the study, Chatterji and Iyengar surveyed parents regarding the health history of their children, asking about the kinds of services they used from the county to support development. Each child also was observed by kindergarten teachers during the first semester of the school year. A vast majority of the children (87 percent) were five years old during the period the study was conducted.

Chatterji and two other TC students, Jennifer Mata and A. Brooks Bowden, have also produced a case study looking at how the Chemung County School Readiness Project came together.

“Other, similar efforts have often been initiated by the federal or state governments, but the Chemung project is purely grassroots,” Chatterji says. “It’s unusual for people in a community to band together on their own and attempt something so long-term and far-reaching, so we wanted to see what’s needed to make that happen. What roles did people take on? Who were the visionaries and catalysts? What was the role of local universities and foundations?”

The two studies are the first released by AERI, which was created in 2006 with an expressed goal of evaluating comprehensive initiatives that promote educational equity. The co-director of AERI is Edmund W. Gordon, Richard March Hoe Professor Emeritus at Teachers College. Further information can be found at http://www.tc.edu/aeri/

Anthropology to me……..

2009-10-02T15:43:00.004-04:00

One of my prime reasons to apply to a graduate studies program was to bridge the gap between policy and practice. I worked towards universalizing education for marginalized children for many years in India. I hope that after my Ph.D. in Economics and Education, I will be able to compliment my past experience and will be in a position to critically analyze and evaluate basic literary issues in India. Therefore, coming from a background, where literary needs to be taken up in a campaign mode and where the Millennium Development Goals for 2015 almost seem a never attainable dream; I hope to use my education towards the literacy mission. With these overloading thoughts intertwined with my masters in Economics, Anthropology made me confused at the beginning, wonder a bit during the middle and enlightened me in a particular way by the end. The following is a story, of my journey as a novice anthropologist.

Me: Anthropology to me, are stories about people from different cultures. But then, [scratching my head], do I have time for stories knowing that even going to a school is a privilege of the few? Why should I be interested in Sierra Leone and its native people when I have my own problems to solve?

Wise Me: Anthropology taught me the “insider” and “outsider” approach of looking at a particular context. Anthropologist’s during their field work try to get the insider’s perspective, but since they are themselves an outsider, they perceive things differently. Similarly, an anthropological writing may be about an unknown country, but it may still talk about educational issues similar to India. This gives us a chance to look at the same issue in a completely different perspective. Here, Boas’s notion of “cultural relativism” becomes important, as we cannot make generalized conclusions without taking into account the cultural differences (Levinson 2000, p16).

Wise Me: The stories about people with different cultural backgrounds give a much deeper meaning to policies and practices in a particular cultural set up. Schwab points out that the children of an Australian Aboriginal community “failed” in school because the schools were culturally different from their society and they felt powerless in the unfamiliar education system (Schwab 2001, p249). Also, education was not seen as an investment since the aboriginal community does not stay in one place permanently. Therefore, they demanded elements of their culture to make their schools more relevant. In other words “Cultural Maintenance” would make their schools benefit the students. This gives an insightful “story” to what can be applied in the Indian context also.

Me: My goal has been to put children in school, so that they can read and write and be successful in life. Did Anthropology help me to define my goal?

Wise Me: Anthropology helped me to dissect and analyze my stated goal. Do children need to be in school to be educated? What is education and what is its purpose? Does education mean reading and writing a particular set of things the teacher wants the children to write? Fuller says that “throughout the world, schools have come to form part of our common sense, the normal way of “growing up modern (Levinson 2000, p5). The world culture theorist prioritized the learning from schools more than any other form of learning. Bourdieu’s “social reproduction theory”, suggests that schools propagate elements of the dominant culture. Therefore, if you are a part of the “dominant cultural habitus”, you have more probability to “succeed” in schools(Bourdieu 1970). If parents belong to the dominant class, it becomes easier for them to maneuver the system for the benefit of the children. Lareau talks about activation of this cultural capital when parents try to get the most out of the school to benefit their children(Lareau, 1999). She gives the example of Mrs. Marshall who “intervened“ in her daughter Stacey’s education at school and helped her to get into the “gifted-and-talented program”. One the other hand, Mrs. Mason’s argument that the school showed “patterns of racial injustice” was not taken in a positive light by the school, as she was a “black” parent who did not voice her opinion in a socially acceptable manner.

Wise Me: Anthropology brought to light my unquestioned assumptions about schooling. It taught me that what goes on inside the school may be more detrimental to the children than staying out. Therefore, it is important to recognize the “hidden curriculum” of the school and be critical about it.

Me: Why do I need to study ethnicity? Is it going to be related to my work with the non- government sector in India? Is ethnicity related to policy making and implementation?

Wise Me: Anthropology studies how group identities are formed. Malkki presents a narrative on identity formation of refugees in Tanzania (Malkki, 1996). She says that social imagination triggered by voiceless photographs of refugees played a crucial role in their identity formation. The way the refugees think of themselves is in conflict with the camp organizers and international organizations. And that group identities are constructed by historical and political experiences of the groups. On similar lines, Fordham, describes the story of “”high school black girls” who had to struggle against their negative societal image to develop a “meaningful and empowering” image (Fordham, 2000). Therefore, group affinity and common behavior aid in identity formation, also shown by Bateson in a dialogue with his daughter that discusses the characteristics of Frenchmen (Bateson, 2000). Here the Frenchmen are taken as an ethnic group and their behavioral patterns are generalized to being French.

Wise Me: Policy decisions based on “labeling theories” that form group identities may lead to disastrous outcomes. For example, like minded ethnic groups tend to stay together, therefore an education policy like school desegregation led to many families dislocating and children moving to new unfamiliar environments.

Me: Do anthropologists focus more on stories or more on theories? How micro can an ethnography get? Why do we need an historical background for anthropological studies?

Wise Me: The writing style of Anthropologists is very detailed. The detailed description helps the reader to add the cultural context to the writing. Ethnographies present interviews or dialogues as a ways of communicating to the reader. In this context the reader is given a free hand to interpret the dialogues. To place the ethnographies in a certain context, historical and comparative narratives are added as background knowledge. This gives more cultural relevance to the micro oriented ethnographic work.

In the end, though all approaches to ethnographical work are not methodologically convincing to me, but it was a good exercise to get an exposure to such writing. For example, I have apprehensions to the policy level usability of research written in a poetic form. Or adding too much verbosity to the text may defeat the activist purpose of ethnography itself. This is more so when the audience range from being a school administrator, to a senator and the purpose of their read may be different. I also do not like the idea of the interpretation of dialogues to be left to the reader because this may add more subjectivity to the research. The use of culture in ethnographic writing seems to be omnipresent and thus drawing policy conclusions from the entire picture becomes next to impossible. But I acknowledge the fact that anthropology gave me new insights and meanings to common terminologies that had only mainstream cultural meanings before.

References

Bateson, G. (2000). Why do Frenchmen? Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 62-65.
Bourdieu (1970). Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction. Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change. B. Richards: 56-69.
Fordham, S. (2000). "Those Loud Black Girls": (Black) Women, Silence, and Gender "Passing" in the Academy. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Lareau, A., Horvat, E, M. (1999). "Moments of Social Inclusion and Exclusion Race, Class and Cultural Capital in Family-School Relationships." Sociology of Education 72(1): 37-53.
Levinson, B. (2000). The Symbolic Animal: Foundations of Education in Cultural Transmission and Acquisition. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. et. al. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc.: 15-23.
Levinson, B. (2000). Wither the Symbolic Animal? Society, Culture, and Education at the Millennium. Schooling the Symbolic Animal: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. B. Levinson. Boston, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc: 1-9.
Malkki, L. (1996). "Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and Dehistoricization." Cultural Anthropology 11(3): 377-404.
Schwab, R. G. (2001). "That School Gotta Recognize Our Policy!": The Appropriation of Educational Policy in an Australian Aboriginal Community. Policy as Practice. Levinson, B., Sutton, M: 243-263.

Why do children go to school? Some thoughts from the field

2009-09-13T18:52:00.005-04:00

May 2004

Pratham Resource Center

“The initial disposition of children towards schooling is usually positive, when a school functions their motivation is easily sustained. Even in schools where classes are far from exciting children, often look forward to going to school: It a chance to interact with other children a welcome change of atmosphere and a liberation from the chores of family labour”. (PROBE Report)

The PROBE data confirm a basic pattern observed in a number of other studies: that work hours of young out of school children in rural India are relatively short. When children work rather than go to school, the direction of causation need not run from child labour to non-attendance. In many cases it’s the other way round: children work because they are not in school. Unless family labour involves rigid work hours that consistently clash with school timing it is unlikely to prevent children from attending school with reasonable regularity.

In the last few months I have spent some time in a rural education project in Gauriganj block of Sultanpur District in Uttar Pradesh. My observations and experiences there have made me think even harder about why children go to school. In this block more than 90% of children in the primary school age in the villages are enrolled and a majority of them show up in school daily.

This my belief in the above hypothesis has become even firmer. While observing the 28 demo classes being run by Pratham trainers in 28 different maujas in Gauriganj, it was clear that the children needed much more than drab basic “education”. Even though the average attendance is more than 90% in most of the schools in the district, we need to think on the reason behind such high attendance, is it because of education? Meeting their friends? Going out of their houses? Escaping from work? Or out of sheer boredom?

In Prathmic Vidhyalaya in Darpipur, it was exactly 9:30 am when I entered the school, I saw a huge number of children walking towards the school from the nearby mustard fields, some were on cycles, some walked from the main road towards the school. Guruji came at exactly 9:55 am. The children were already in proper lines ready for their morning assembly and prayer. There was a huge crowd, but no chaos, everybody knew exactly where they had to stand, after the prayer finished, they sat on their bories and neatly took out their slates to write on with the kalam. The school was two-room structure, with a green line on the wall, denoting the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan symbol. Most of the children sat outside under a tree. Guruji took attendance and started taking one class at a time with classes 1-5 sitting in front of him. He was not the headmaster but the “shiksha mitra” in the vidyalaya. The “shiksha mitra” is a “para teacher hired at about half the salary of a regular teacher and posted in a regular school in under staffed schools, with the prospect of getting a regular post after ten years of service”.

The children were amused and curious to see the two outsiders and observed our every move. They wanted to speak to us, hold our hands and told us a lot about their school, few of them came and told us that they walked for miles and came to school from the nearby poorvas (or hamlets). The Shiksha Karmi was very cooperative and allowed us to take a simple language test of all the children present in the Vidhyalaya. Between my colleague and I, a in few hours we had spent a few minutes with each child and had a good idea about the reading ability of all children who were present in school that day.

The table below shows what we found: First of all, most of the enrolled children were present that day. Second, there were many more children in Std 1-4 than in Std 5. Of the 125 children present in Std2-5 on that day only 30% could read simple paragraphs. 70% of children in Std 2 to 5 could barely read alphabets. Reading is the first and most essential step for further learning. But close to 70% of children Std 2 and above could not read anything other than letters.

Enrollment: Std 1 -42; Std 2- 34; Std 3- 41; Std 4- 43; Std 5- 17

Could read simple material (easy paragraphs or stories) :
Std 1- Did not test; Std 2-0, Std 3- 8; Std 4-17, Std 5- 5

Could read only letters or could not read anything:
Std 1-Did not test; Std 2-32; Std 3- 33; Std 4- 23; Std5-7

Note: Figures refer to number of children.

The numbers made me think even more: why do these children come to school regularly, walking for miles and not learn anything? What makes them come to school? There was no instant answer. With the Shiksha Mitra trying to manage nearly 180 children by himself alone, it was not surprising the children’s reading capabilities were so low.

As part of the education project in the block, Pratham people started classes as “demonstrations”. Each person worked with 25 children who could not read. Simultaneously he/she also started mobilizing local volunteers in the nearby villages to join the effort to get every child to read. There were finally 11 local volunteers who agreed to start classes in the village. These classes would meet in the school and in the community. The volunteers were mostly 10th class pass married women from the Darpipur area and got to know of the Pratham classes from the Pradhan. They took interest in the reading program and liked the way the children improved the reading skill so quickly.

They carefully watched the progress of children in the demo class. After around 8 days the progress of the demo class was something like this:

Reading level:

Feb 23 2004
Story & easy paragraph- 0
Word- 0
Letter & nothing- 25
TOTAL 25

March 1 2004
Story & easy paragraph-7
Word-7
Letter & nothing- 1 1
TOTAL 25

The volunteers watched the demo, observed the reading technique for about a week and finally started with their classes from the 1St of March. I visited 4 of the local volunteers’ community classes in Darpipur itself. Amongst the children I found a girl who had been in the demo class in the school. I asked this girl why she was attending the class again. She said she found it interesting and likes to come for the class. I visited the other classes in the area during the day and found 3 children who were there attending all 3 classes at different times all through the day.

This was the first day so the volunteers were told to keep track of children and not duplicate so that there would be room for more children who needed help. On asking these children why they attended all 3 classes, one girl told me that she gets bored at home and there is nothing to do at home especially on holidays. Her mother does all the household work.

Imagine the situation when the child learns nothing till class five and is probably a drop out after that. She comes to school because she does not have enough to do at home. Now with an interesting learning opportunity in village, she is willing to go and sit in 3 classes. Is it because she wants to read? Is it because she likes her new reading teacher? Is it because she likes stories like “Rumki” in the books that the teacher has? Children’s demands are so small; they need little effort to keep them interested in learning. This is very different from an urban set up; in the cities, the child has many distractions. They have a TV at home, a cinema theatre to go to, run out of school to sit at their father’s shop in the community. The rural needs are very small as compared to the large distractions in the city.

A Pratham type intervention is what children in Gauriganj were thirsting for. One Pratham person says, it was very difficult for her at the beginning to ask children to play word games with them, ask them to write anything they wanted to on the board. The children were not in the habit of thinking on their own. They have become so accustomed to the rote method of learning. But it is remarkable that without any active learning in the schools and so many children still come to school each day, and day after day.

Some children carried books: the Hindi books looked pretty tough. One child was carrying a mathematics book in English. “Who bought the books for you? “ “Father”. These were not age specific books nor were they books for first generation learners. Even if the parents are interested in the child’s education, relevant education material is not available to them.

I wondered if they came to school for the 3 kg of grain that they are supposed to get every month. I asked a mother nearby poorva about the grain that the child gets in the school. She said that the grain doesn’t come every month. The grain is distributed every third month and is given in bulk. She said, we don’t require the grain and don’t depend on the grain the child gets.”

The shiksha mitra finds himself helpless to manage 180 children at the same time. How much can he do alone? The head master was sitting on a chair under the tree and doing paper work all through the day. The shiksha mitra had not received his pay for three months now but he still was very devoted and helped us to take our classes with his children.

What needs to be done to improve the situation? How can people collectively take more responsibility? The Guruji needs to be more serious towards his responsibility? The Government more strict on monitoring? Are we waiting for an external intervention like Pratham? These are questions that still need to be answered. Do parents care if the children are learning anything at all in the schools, or does their responsibility end if the child merely attends the school?

In the meanwhile, girls and boys are still going to school in Gauriganj and still collecting near the hand pumps to fill their little bottles with ink. They are still sitting on their bories, waiting to be wooed by the world of books.

2nd May 04.

Some of my past work

2009-09-13T18:24:00.001-04:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4555163.stm

It is a hot summer mid-morning. The temperature is pushing close to 35C.

But in a narrow lane in east Delhi, the discomfort of the heat and the dust is forgotten as a group of excited children surround a young woman who is carrying a bulky bag.

As Satyavati Sharma opens the bag to reveal a collection of story books, the children get ever more excited.

Ms Sharma is a volunteer with an Indian non-governmental organisation (NGO), Pratham (First), which runs mobile libraries for the children of Delhi's slums.

The NGO has developed a novel way of helping under-privileged children learn to read - they deliver books door to door.

Total literacy

Only 65% of India's billion plus population is literate and among them, millions are unable even to read a paragraph.

Radhika Iyengar, Programme Coordinator with Pratham
It's the children who can't read at all who are the biggest beneficiaries of our libraries
Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham

India's school infrastructure is of poor quality, and more than half the children enrolled never make it to the end of primary school.

So, it is hoped that the mobile libraries may play a key role in achieving total literacy where the schools have failed.

Radhika Iyengar, programme co-ordinator with Pratham, says that every morning of the week Sharma and 200 volunteers carry a variety of books in a bag and go around the community.

"First the teacher goes house to house and tells the children that we're running a library here. And then the teacher decides on four to five hot-spots in the community where she can sit and where children can come."

Ms Iyengar says there are no criteria for joining the library and all the children between the ages of six and 14 are welcome.

Applause and laughter

"They see these picture books and when our librarians tell them the stories, they want to borrow the books and try and read them. It helps build their confidence too."

To sustain the children's interest, Pratham also organises lots of fun activities.

Children attend Pratham session
The reading project has become enormously popular

Satyavati Sharma gives out five words - boy, girl, Hindu priest, Muslim priest and village - and asks the children to weave a story around them.

The boys in the group are excited by the challenge: the girls require some cajoling to join in. The final result is greeted with applause and laughter.

Through its volunteer system, Pratham libraries cater to 40,000 children in Delhi. In a country where 30m children in the age group of six to 14 years cannot read at all and 40m children can read only a few letters, Pratham's collection of picture books and big bold lettering has become a resounding success.

Kirti Kumar Bahadur is 11 and a regular at this road-side library.

"I study in class four. I love reading books. They have nice stories, and great pictures. In the last three months I've borrowed six to seven books. My favourite is Suraj ka gussa [Anger of the sun]. It's a story about how the sun gets angry with all those who wake up late."

Teething problems

Ravinder Singh Air says he has borrowed several books from the library. I first thought I'll have to pay money to borrow the books. But then my friends told me it's free. They have some very nice books."

Pratham library books
Books were previously unavailable for many slum children

One Pratham volunteer, Suman Lata, not just lends books, she also helps children learn to read. She sits in the corridor of a run-down building helping about 50 children recite a poem from a book.

As I watch, the number of children continues to swell.

"My library has about 500 children as members, and about 50 of them come every day. I take classes for three hours every morning - we do drawings, make newspapers, do a bit of role-playing. One day if I don't turn up, they come to my house to call me. They know where I live."

The first library started about eight months ago and today, there are 200 mobile libraries operating around Delhi. Although the libraries have now begun to draw in the crowds, Ms Iyengar says there were initial teething problems.

"We had a problem convincing parents about our libraries. They felt it was not directly related to the school curriculum and it was difficult explaining to them that it's part of the holistic approach to the studies.

"It was difficult to convince the parents that it will expose their children to a lot of reading material and will open their minds to new ideas. We had to sit down with parents and counsel them," she says.

Lok Awaas Yatra

2009-09-11T20:15:00.003-04:00

Checkout the Marathwada Trail videos. They are edited by my sister Pooja.

http://lokawaasyatra.net/multimedia/video

The Voices of Jhabua

2009-08-18T11:59:00.003-04:00

“If I send my child to school he cannot work with me in the fields or become a daily wage earner, nor does he learn to read or write, why should I him to school then.”

“Its been 2 to 3 years and my daughter doesn’t even know “a” se anaar [alphabets].”

“We are illiterate that is why we can’t complain about the headmaster who doesn’t teach my daughter.”

“In twelve months, my son should know how to write his name. He doesn’t even know alphabets, what is the point in sitting in school then. If he doest learn how to read and write, I might as well teach him how to work with me. It is a waste of time sitting in the school.”

“If we complain to the panchayats about the headmaster, they fight with me.”

Dear friends,

These responses are not confined to a few schools. During my fieldwork, I have visited 12 villages in 4 Blocks (out of a total of 6) and more than 20 schools in Jhabua district. In this letter I present a glimpse of the problems and potential solutions.

During my visit to the schools, I noticed classroom without teachers, missing headmasters, teacher-student ratio on an average of 1:60, students from grades 1 to 5 sitting in one room, children below 5 years sitting in the classes with their siblings, no utensils for the mid-day meals, no toilet facility for the teachers and the children, schools begin late and get off early as the teachers come from far. Therefore, pretty much all problems that one could potentially think of are present in Jhabua. I carried with me the ASER(www.asercentre.org) testing tool and tested 5 children per school. With an exception of one school, which has the reputation of having a hardworking headmaster, almost all children tested cannot read letters and only a handful could read words. Children sat with difficult books in their hands, these books were as per the grade, but the children are atleast two grades behind their present grades in reading. Blackboards were full of 3 digit addition sums, but the children were unable to even read the title of their math books.

I must comment on the “partnership” structure which is responsible for the functioning of the schools. Each school has a Parent Teacher Association (palak shikshak sangh). The President of the PTA is a parent from the village whose child goes to the same school. The funds allocated for the school come into the bank account of the PTA President. His/her signature is required to draw out the funds for any repair work in the school. I spoke to Presidents of these PTAs and they are not even aware of when the money was withdrawn from the account and how it was spent. The bank passbook is with the headmaster, while the account has the name of the President PTA. The mid-day meal administration is done by another stand alone group in the village. The group independently manages the funds for the meal and has the responsibility to purchase the grains and the lentils and get the meal cooked daily. In the schools I visited, the mid-day meals were infrequent, some had missing utensils, others gave the utensils only on “special” occasions and some complained of lack of funds. There were multiple reasons for not preparing the meals regularly.

During my discussion with a Ranapur Block Janpadh(elected local government member), he mentioned that the Panchayats(village level government) are kept away from the schools. There is no link of the panchayat to the schools. My discussions with Sarpanch (head of the panchayats) also came to the same conclusion. Therefore, the Sarpanch cannot listen to the complaints of the parents about missing teachers and take action accordingly. The PTAs, village education committees, mid-day meal groups are isolated groups which do not have any reporting structures nor do they have any authority over the schools. But I noticed that the parents in the villages have not given up on the school, they are looking for structures and opportunities to complain to. Only a handful of private schools run in the district and parents report that they will stop sending their children to private schools, once the government schools start functioning. On more than one occasion, as soon as I entered the school, the parents would come in and start telling me that their children are not given the meal today or that the teacher is not regular and that their children are not learning.

What is needed is a comprehensive structure that has the authority to address their problems. The first solution could be to have all the local groups like PTAs, the mid-day meal group, NGO’s under the panchayats, which addresses education related problems in the village. The panchayats could conduct gram sabhas (panchayats meetings) once a month and discuss education issues. The second solution is through the NGOs who will help to mobilize people. For instance, in Jhabua two NGO’s Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua(www.jssjhabua.net) has collaborated with Shalum Mission with about 150 volunteers who will be given an ID card and the ASER testing tool. The card and the testing tool empower the volunteers to go to their local village school and test the children’s Hindi reading abilities. They also check on the teachers’ presence and if the mid-day meal was being served. This “flying –squad” is empowering the village locals to inquire about their schools and take ownership. It gives them the courage that they can also enter the school’s premise and ask questions.

Community ownership of the school cannot be done by building structures, but by making the existing structures work or by social activist group who have the right to know about their village schools. The government schools need to be owned by the people themselves and they should stop waiting for higher authorities to make their schools work.

Radhika Iyengar

Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)

How do you get information about the village primary school?

2009-08-18T11:59:00.001-04:00

How do you get information about the village primary school?

Information flow, as we know, is the key to efficient delivery mechanisms. If so, from where do the villagers get the information about the school? “I don’t ask anyone, because no one knows” is a common response. “The school master comes to my house”, the key informants in the two villages said. Teachers have to do a yearly survey to get the numbers of children eligible to go to school. They go from house to house to gather this information. From a different village came a reply that they got the information about the school from the Panchayat (the local government). Only one of the villages said that the PTA is an important source of information about the school. Every village has a ration-shop which is often the hub of all activities. This was cited as another source of information about the school. Some mention that they get information from the Janpath (elected govt. members) meetings at the Block level. A local haat (market) is also another source of information. Women from the village mentioned that the only source of water in the village hamlet (a public Hand-pump) is near the school and they can keep a check on the school when they fill water in their pots.

I visited Dev Jhiri village today and asked them the same question. The key informant was an old man in the village with a red turban and a long mustache. He said that he gets the information about the school from his grandson. After school, he asks his grandson “what did you do in school today?” His son tells him “today I got food”, “today the teacher came late and we played”. The old man also said that the hamlet folks keep track on children loitering around and ask them to go to school. They would also tell the parents whenever they get a chance that they saw their child playing and not going to school. I am told that the village also has a very strong PTA. The PTA President oversees the school functioning along with keeping a check on teacher absenteeism. “This won’t do in our village” the PTA President would say to a teacher who would come late to school. Surprisingly, this community ownership of the village school is completely community driven and not initiated and promoted by an NGO. Infact there are no NGO’s working the village. What makes some communities different?

Radhika Iyengar

Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)

Democracy at its best

2009-08-18T11:58:00.001-04:00

Democracy at its best

The Indian government officials take bribe! Diluted forms of the government schemes reach the villages! But India should be labeled as a “corrupt nation”. I was fortunate to be a part of the Janpadh meeting today, where only people’s representatives were invited. Let me give you a background. Each district in India is divided into blocks, Jhabua has 6 blocks. Ranapur block in Jhabua has 96 villages. Five elected members oversee all development work in about two or three villages called the Panchayats (Panch means five). There are 47 Panchayats in Ranapur. Above the Panchayats is another elected body which oversees the functioning of the entire block called the Janpadh (people’s post). Ranapur has one Janpadh which has around 15 members. Janpadh meetings are presided at the Block office under the CEO Janpadh (earlier called the Block Officer), the President and the Vice-President Janpadh. They have all government operated and funded development related projects under their jurisdiction. They meet at the Block office regularly which is a closed meeting of the Janpadh members only. The Block also has public grievance meetings called the Jan Sunvaai where any villager can come and put forward their petitions and complains to the Block officials. Janpadhs also have the power to call government officials from various Departments in their meetings. For example, if there is a complain regarding mid-day meals, the education department officials can be called to address the grievance. Janpadhs are the key to reach out to the villagers. They are an important means of information communication that goes both ways between the block officials and the villagers. In short, they hold the key to democracy in India.

It was hard for me to understand this complicated structure and to think it works was impossible, until today! The CEO Janpadh Ranapur Block accepted my plea to sit through a Janpadh meeting meant only for the elected officials. I was curious to know what they discussed in these meetings. The meeting room was newly built, with white paint and was large. CEO Janpadh, President and Vice President Janpadh addressed a meeting of 15 Janpadh members. Members came with red turban and light blue shirts over white dhotis (a traditional Indian wear). Some were more “modern” who carried a cell phone and wore a pant and a shirt. Women Janpadhs came with their husbands who held no posts. The husbands occupied the front row and their wives draped in colored sarees with their faces covered sat behind. The meeting began with the CEO complaining that everyone should come on time and everyone should be quiet to start the proceedings. 15th Aug was approaching and the CEO was asked everyone to plant trees as a celebration and to take care of them, among other things discussed. One of the Janpadhs stood up and walked towards and CEO with a slip of handwritten paper. There were so many handwritten application slips circulating around that I wondered if they managed to keep track of all of them. This particular application was about the mid-day meal in a particular village school. The Janpadh explained that there was no mid-day meal in his village because there were no utensils to cook the meal. The CEO promptly replied, “but I see in the accounts that the money was given to the PTA in your village and the AEO (Additional Education Officer) himself visited your village”. The Janpadh member insisted that there were no utensils. Other members also joined in and supported that this was true in their village also. The CEO now looked puzzled. He announced that in the next meeting education officials will have to present their case. He also stated that the PTA Presidents will have to show where the funds for the utensils had disappeared. He also added that if any education officer visited the village, they will have to sign the log book kept at the local Panchayat office. This will help keep record of their observations in the village school.

How much of this will be implemented is yet to be seen, but it is a promise for a better system. I am pleased to see that the meetings were not one-way instructions and were truly democratic!

Missing in action!

2009-08-18T11:57:00.001-04:00

Missing in action!

This note is focused on the government schemes and infrastructure in Jhabua. Missing in action in the villages is electricity. Though each house has an electricity connection, most of day goes without it. There are also no streetlights in the villages. The mothers complain that at night children cannot study, no work can be done as there is complete darkness. They complain that the electricity situation has worsened, complained the villagers. There are no landline telephone connections and only a handful of the people have mobiles. These mobile phones are shared by neighbors in case of emergency or they travel 2-5 kilometers to make a phone call. There are no public telephones in the village I visited. The main source of water is the hand-pump and a nearby pond. These hand-pumps are dug by the government and are located in almost every hamlet in the village. But the water level has gone down. There are pockets in which the fluoride content is much more than the permissible range, but people drink from the same hand-pump. Brown teeth, nimble and bent bones are a common site in schools and in scattered villages. But lack of awareness of what causes this is common. Most villages do not have a public market. There is a ration-shop that is the center of the village activity. Transportation facilities have increased with more public buses and bus-stops near the villages. The Prime Minister’s Road Scheme is hard at work. Construction is on its way to connect the highway to the main falia (hamlet) of the village. Employment guarantee scheme implemented by giving employment for village development work is in place. The villagers get paid for community work like deepening a pond for more water, construction of road etc.

Aaganwadis (govt. preschools) are completely missing in the villages. I haven’t been successful to observe a functioning aaganwadi during my entire fieldwork. I also asked neighboring houses if the aaganwadi ever runs and the answer I get is “Yes, the teacher came yesterday and only today she not here”. My observation of closed aaganwadis has been uniform throughout my visit and so is this response. Aaganwadis don’t function in Jhabua! I saw some primary schools with the mid-day meals being cooked, children lining up for food, also spoke with the helper who cooks the meal, but other schools I visited complained about lack of school funds for preparing the meal. So far, there has been a mixed response to mid-day meals. The cycles promised to the middle school girls are missing, they are still walking miles to come to school. I see children in the primary schools, but I also see school verandas converted into classrooms. Children sit on their mats, with no furniture. It is common to find grades 1 to 5 sitting in a single classroom with no teacher. Only one out of five villages I visited had a primary private school, leaving the government schools to reach out to everyone. This tribal belt does not promise a lucrative business for private schools. I asked the key informant in the village, do you feel that the number of teachers is sufficient in the school? They say yes, but when I ask them about the teacher student ratio, they say it is around 1:60-80. This ratio has become an acceptable norm in the villages. There is a perception that the main responsibility of the parents ends when they send their children to the school in the morning. There are also no adult-education programs in any of the villages I visited, and during my focused groups interviews, all the women I spoke to were not educated. Have we given up on our mothers, I ask?

Who do you trust?

2009-08-18T11:54:00.000-04:00

Who do you trust?

These notes are from the Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. There are three main tribes in Jhabua-the Bhils, the Bhilalas and the Patelias. 30 percent of the population in the district are the Patelias, 50 percent are the Bhils and around 20 percent belong to the Bhilala tribe. The Bhils are reputed to be the “lowest” caste or the “untouchables”. I am attempting to measure the extent of social capital in tribal dominated villages. Two main domains of social capital are confidence in institutions and mutual trust. I start with the hypothesis that mutual trust and confidence in institutions is a function of education levels and awareness.
Do you trust people from your own caste, was my question to a group of women in a predominantly Bhil village. In unison, the reply was no. Do you think that your neighbor (from the same caste) will help you in times of need? The women denied. Do you trust people from a different tribe? No again. Are there differences in your village based on caste, education level, social status and the answer was in affirmative. I was bewildered at these answers since the entire village was from the Bhil tribe with similar educational and economic background. What could cause such low level of social capital? The next day I visited a village which was inhabited uniformly by the Patelia tribe. Do you trust people from your caste? Yes, we do. Do you trust people from a different caste? “No, not at all”. Are there differences in your village regarding education levels, social status? “No, all of us are the same”. Two questions came to mind, how is it that there were similar replies from all women in each of the village. All women in the Bhil village reported that they don’t trust each other. Similarly, all women in the Patelia village informed that they completely trusted each other. Secondly, is trust a function of the caste? If so, trust is a quality that you are born with? Does trust come with the way you are treated in a society? Since the Bhils are the “lowest” caste, they have a history of being exploited, generation after generation they are indoctrinated to stop trusting one another. Patelias in contrast are said to be honest, hardworking and are mainly agriculturalist, the have no reason to distrust their neighbors. I asked the Bhils, who do you think would help you in times of need? Their reply was baffling! They trusted the money lenders in the market. The same money lenders who charges 10 percent interest monthly if they borrow an amount. The same money lenders who are extortionists! Probably, it is only the money lenders who give them money in times of need. The Patelias replied that they trusted their family, their friends and neighbors. Trust seems to be generational and tribe or caste depended.

Okay this is one of my favorite one- Do you trust the following institutions: Military to defend the country, Police to enforce law, State government to look after the people, Local government (Panchayats) to implement public projects, schools to provide good treatment, politicians to fulfill promises, hospitals to provide good treatment? The Patelias trusted the schools, the hospitals and the Banks. And had no trust in the police, the politicians and the Panchayats. This reply may not be as clear as it seems, as they may trust the schools but won’t actually know what goes on inside the school. Their main responsibility as reported is to send their children to school, what goes on beyond that is not known. The Bhils in contrast, has low confidence in all institutions except schools.

If you need to improve the social or economic situation of your village, where will you go? The Panchayats, was the reply of the Patelias. If you need help with some basic minimum need, whom will you go to? They replied, in order; extended family, nearby friends and neighbors. The Bhils for basic help will go to the money lender and for improving social and economic situations would not go to anyone.
As basic as it may seem- mutual trust and confidence in institutions- is critical for any development work in the villages. Before, starting any development work, it may take a lot of effort simply to gain the trust of some tribes. My initial hypothesis that information and awareness drive trust and confidence may not be true as the status of awareness and information channels were the same in both villages. History determines mutual trust and confidence in institutions among tribes.

Radhika Iyengar

Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)

When was the last time you visited a village?

2009-08-18T11:52:00.003-04:00

I write this letter from Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh. Are you aware of the demography and the geography of a village in a remote tribal district? I decided to visit the villages of Jhabua to learn and tell you about the education issues of the villages in the district. This will be the first of a series of letters reaching you, in the hope that you will also contribute to bring change to this forgotten district.

Pipalia, just five kilometers away from the Jhabua main city is very close to the main road that is busy with trucks and buses. Villages in Madhya Pradesh, are a cluster of hamlets called falias. Each falia belongs to a particular caste. In Pipalia, the main caste was the Bhils tribe and each sub-caste inhabited a single falia. When I say clusters, I do not mean that these hamlets are located very close to each other. In Jhabua, these hamlets are very scattered and may have a distance ranging from five to even eight kilometers between them. They almost appeared to be separate villages existing on their own. Each falia had its own hand-pump as the main source of water. The village boasted of an impressive primary and even a middle school which was located in the main falia of the village. Next to the school were the ration shop and also the aganwadi (Government preschool). The aganwadi was closed and the primary school teacher said that it runs in the morning. The ration shop was compensating for the lack of activity in the aganwadi by a huge line of people waiting for their food rations. Lack of any other market in the village, the ration shop was by far the busiest spot in the village. These scattered hamlets had one thing in common-no electricity. The electricity came for only a couple of hours a day and the nights are pitch dark as even the main road had no electricity posts. No electricity also meant no television and I found out that only 4 households from the total population of 1800 possessed a TV set. There is also no common place for the community to watch TV or read a newspaper together. The Panchayat ghar or the community room was newly built next to the main road.

Thatched roofs, mud-baked and individually owned houses belonging to joint families disrupted the greens. Thin alleys connected the houses splitting the greens on either side. Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana (Prime Minister’s Road Scheme) reached out from the main busy road to the main falia of the village. As I walked from one falia to the other, I was amidst lush green fields with crops of maize. It will take two more months for the crops to get ripe and will culminate with a festival. I also noticed that only women worked in the fields. Men either have migrated to Gujarat to work as a daily wage earner or are in the Jhabua city working in the market. I asked the women if they read newspapers to get information about government schemes. All the answers negative, not because there is another source of information, but because almost all women I spoke to are illiterate. Women in the fields were also accompanied by small children playing along side. I was curious to know why they weren’t in school and I didn’t get any answer to that. They did not seem to be working with their mothers, nor did they seem over or under-age for primary school. Later, I discovered that there was one reason for the children to be out of school, which was based on their caste. The school principal told me that a couple of houses from the other side of the main road did not like sending their children to the government primary school because of caste differences and also because they did not get along with the Sarpanch (elected Panchayat head) very well.

The previous Sarpanch, proudly showed me his vast expanse of rose bushes, bamboo plants which he was able to cultivate with the help of subsidized seeds from the Government’s agricultural outlet in Jhabua city. He explained the government’s organizational structure in the village. We know that a Panchayat is the local government body which comprises of a group of villages. The number of villages under each Panchayat depends on the distance between them and the population of the villages. The Sarpanch is the head of the Panchayat (local village government) and has five members called the panch (literally meaning five) under him/her. I was very impressed to find that Pipalia had a woman Sarpanch, only to be disheartened to find that this liberation translates into the husband running the show and the wife (Sarpanch) only complying to his actions. Group of Panchayats form a Janpadh (literally means people’s post), which is a team of ten elected members from multiple villages at the Block level. Jhabua district has six Blocks. All the panchayat proceedings and petitions are handed over to the Janpadh. An interesting post which is also government recognized is the village Tadvi, who resolves small disputes in the village. The village Tadvi has a hereditary right to the post, i.e. the post is not an elected one but is passed on as a family lineage from one generation to the other. Apart from the government officials at the village level, there is also a Parent Teacher Association in the village which does not seem to be very active and the reason given is that the parents themselves are illiterate and cannot make any decisions. Every school by law has a Village Education Committee (VEC). I found that this VEC seems rather mysterious. Everyone I spoke to had a different interpretation of a VEC and I am still unclear about who these people actually are. The government primary school principal informed me that the VEC is a single member who is a part of the Panchayat and is the education representative in the Panchayat. This person puts forward the problems faced by the village school and discusses other education issues in the panchayat meetings. Some say that VEC is the same as the Parent Teacher Association. I am yet to unravel the mystery of the missing VEC. Along with the missing VEC, which is supposed to monitor the mid-day meal, the mid-day meal itself was missing. The reason as narrated was that the prices of lentils have gone up causing an increase in the per-child cost of preparing the meal. This is accompanied by the fact that the government budget was not revised yearly thus not taking not account the increase in the prices, resulting in the meals to be unsustainable at the village level.

One observation which is hard to miss is the busy NGO volunteers in the village. Multiple NGO’s partnering with each other to provide wooden benches in the government primary school, running preschools, working on forming self help groups and if nothing else showing interest to learn about the problems in the village. My transect walk in the village helped me to understand the demography and the geography of a tribal village. Stay with me to understand the village dynamics up-close and personal.

Radhika Iyengar

Doctoral Student, Teachers College, Columbia University
Consultant, Jan Shikshan Sansthan, Jhabua (www.jssjhabua.net)

ISRO: A Journey from the Moon to Dumpada

2009-07-27T12:26:00.003-04:00

While India was developing, I missed this silent revolution called ISRO or the Indian Space Research Organization. ISRO is commonly associated with scientists and engineers who work on communication and broadcasting through satellites. Their networks spread through multiple universities to educate the masses. During my recent visit to Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, I saw a very face different and an inspiring face of ISRO. It was a journey from the satellites to the villages. It was hard to believe enthusiastic engineers from ISRO traveling with us to the interiors of Jhabua District in one of the most remote parts of Madhya Pradesh. Mr Darji and Mr Gopani from ISRO led our vehicles through the treacherous roads to the village of Dumpada. I had always presumed that going to the villages and talking to the tribal localities about development issues was a terrain of the people like us in NGO world. It was surprising to find the same enthusiasm from the ISRO technocrats.

Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS), Jhabua is a Human Resource and Development sponsored program to promote adult education through awareness campaigns and community projects. In collaboration with ISRO and the Sate Government of Madhya Pradesh; JSS, Jhabua initiated a unique project. The project will install satellite terminals in 60 villages covering all the 6 blocks of Jhabua. This will be a two way interactive education model through satellite communication. The programs will cover social issues in the local language through the Direct Reception System (DRS) deployed under Jhabua Development Communication Project (JDCP). The process will involve regular monitoring and maintenance through the dedicated staff of Jan Shikshan Sansthan Jhabua.

JDCP attempted to run a pilot program in 1996 and had two major components broadcasting and the Interactive Training Program (ITPs). After a year the project was handed over to the State Government. One of their terminals was installed in Dumpada. Led by the ISRO engineers, our platoon finally reached Dumpada. It is a scattered village in the Ranapur Block of Jhabua District.

We were all eager to hear from the villagers about the fate of this interactive terminal. From afar to our disappointment we saw the dilapidated satellite on top of the Panchayat Ghar. Panchayat Ghar is a room allotted to the local government for their administrative work. The satellite was tattered and torn from all sides. We all looked visibly disturbed, but mustered the courage to go inside the Panchayat Ghar to see if we could find any reminisce of the terminal. The terminal, which had a TV like appearance, was covered with pieces of rags and had a thick pile of dust covering it. Mr Darji removed the rags and was able to catch a glimpse of screen. Mr Darji narrated how he had traveled to Dumpada in 1996, without any roads then, all covered in mud carried the heavy satellite and terminal with much difficulty to the village and had installed it. The villagers explained that the satellite program was very useful, but later on because of lack of maintenance was stopped abruptly. They showed keen interest on the viewing of the program again.

Our visit to Dumpada made us realize that community based projects should be run in collaboration with the Government and NGOs backed by strong technical support. The Government helps to find existing resources from the community, the NGO’s help to understand the pulse of the community and mobilize the locals. Technical assistance is needed to run the nuts and bolts of the program. This tripartite alliance between ISRO, JSS Jhabua and the State Government is a first of its kind. Like JSS Jhabua, NGO’s have the potential to become the interface between the bureaucrats and the technocrats. NGO’s build civil society participation and ownership into the projects and make it sustainable.

For pictures see:
http://picasaweb.google.com/radhikaiyengar/FieldWorkJSSJhabua#

Think......not remember!

2009-07-27T12:24:00.000-04:00

When I joined Teachers College, in my first semester, one of my Professors said this "Write about anything that you like". And my first reaction was "What sort of a teacher is she? She doesnt even have a topic for us to write on". In a few seconds, my thoughts changed to "Ok so now since I have to write on a topic that I am interested in, what could that topic actually be". Believe me, this was the toughest assignment I was ever given. I had to come up with a topic that I like and write anything that I wish to.......I hadnt done this EVER! I had a masters degree before I came here and I was so used to tests and exams and more tests and more exams. I had to derive equations, solve mathematical problems all the time and this made my life very symmetrical and orderly. Write what I want to write was so vague! Besides it was never really an option given to me before. I write only in exams and I write based on rules and guidelines given to me.

Reading today's news about making the 10th grade exams optional is like bringing India to a new age. I feel that I have learnt much more in my PhD program than in all my past years of education. I really enjoyed my classes here. And yet, I put in fewer hours of study than what I used to. There was a time in my school days that my mother used to tell me that one day she would see roots growing under my chair. I sat on my study chair days and nights to prepare for my board exams. Do we really need to study that hard? Is it actually learning? I know I did it and so did all my friends.

So coming back to my first assignment at TC... which seemed totally illogical at that time...What do you mean by write anything you want to? Absurd! So my first challenge was to figure out what I want to write about. I started to think, what do I really like? I realized that I had never written about anything that I really liked. My next task at hand was that I was required to think and not remember anything. Thinking, is another thing that I never did, but I remembered everything. Till now I have a great memory. I had to memorize Hindi poems, Sanskrit grammar rules, History dates and events and standard procedures to solve math problems...I had to remember everything. So now I am thinking what to write for my assignment.....I thought for a day and didnt really know what to write....It was hard! Think....and not remember, difficult! But since that assignment my quest for knowledge never stopped. I think more, read more, discuss with my friends, write about anything under the sun and I really love life.