I am reproducing below a Blog sent to me by Chethana on her experience with Sikshana while she interned with us in 07. Comments are superfluous.
Ramamurthy
November 4, 2009
This is an extremely belated blog post on my internship with the Sikshana Foundation in summer 2007, but one that probably benefits from the experiences I’ve had since then.
The summer after my third undergraduate year at RiceUniversity, I contacted Asha for Education to be placed as an intern in Karnataka.Although I’ve visited relatives living in Karnataka throughout my life, I wanted to try living with a host family from a different geographical, linguistic, and social background than that of my own extended family.I also wanted to make use of two of my guaranteed assets: brown skin (a superficial ability to blend in) and conversational ability in Kannada. I ended up working in Kanakapura through the Sikshana Foundation, which seeks to empower and improve government schools.
While the true beginnings of my interest in independent travel and research are vague and may involve some clichés about life as the child of immigrants, I credit my academic semester abroad in Cairo (Fall 2006) with inspiring my ongoing pursuit of opportunities abroad.And, as the first in a string of subsequent internships overseas (in South Korea, Israel, and the West Bank), my work with the Sikshana Foundation in Kanakapura laid the foundation for my hopeful career in international development research and planning.
From the beginning, the internship ran smoothly.The Foundation placed me with a wonderful host family.Uma, Muthuraj, and Hitesh welcomed me with open arms, and never treated me as an outsider. They helped me learn a different dialect of Kannada, took me on trips to visit their relatives, listened to my frustrations about development work (I had—and still have—a lot to learn about this sector), and always seemed to understand my personal and social choices as an Indian-American without being judgmental.In terms of work, I benefited from the Foundation’s numerous contacts with local schools.I selected MaralebekuppeSchool as the site for my volunteer work: 3-5 days a week, I served as an extra English teacher.I also played games with the children during recess, had numerous enlightening conversations with the school’s dynamic headmaster and school staff, and even learned to read and write Kannada letters alongside the first standard children.
Although I had taught English to adults in Cairo, my work with the Sikshana Foundation gave me the opportunity to adapt English lessons to fit the needs of children.I experienced first-hand the joys and difficulties of designing a curriculum, interactive and challenging enough for kids who saw me as “America Madam” first and Teacher second.Their genuine interest in gaining English fluency was exciting.However, I was troubled by their lack of comparable respect for Kannada, as well as the challenges of properly implementing English instruction in a nation with distinct social and educational disparities.This observation led to my decision to complete an independent research paper on English language education in India during my final year at Rice.
I am writing this blog entry from Bangalore.I just completed an internship with the Deshpande Foundation in Hubli, Karnataka, and decided to visit Uma, Muthuraj, and Hitesh on my way back to the States.I am delighted to report that the Sikshana Foundation has only grown over the past two years: while it served 36 schools in the Kanakapura area in 2007, it now works with 120. Teaching volunteers who once filled in for absent local staff are no longer needed quite so often; the Foundation and its partners have made progress in improving school quality.I was also informed that the Deshpande Foundation, coincidentally, may be planning to sponsor the Sikshana Foundation’s expansion to the Hubli area.This future collaboration will no doubt be of value to both parties and to Karnataka’s public education system—I look forward to hearing all about it.
I accompanied our Sikshana mentor and two interns this Tuesday on a visit to three schools - Shivanegowdanadoddi (SGD), Iyanaaru Gollahalli (IGL) and Mullahalli (MUL). SGD must be one of the remotest school in Kanakapura situated just a few kms from the State border. A visit to this school was long overdue.
SGD is a delightful little hamlet,located near the confluence of Arkavati and Kaveri rivers. It is surrounded by lush green lands and rocky hills. The approach road is narrow and riddled with pot holes. The school consists of a barrack of classrooms enclosng a small playground. Part of the playground has been converted into a vegetable garden patch.
The school HM took me to sixth and seventh standard classrooms for a chat with the students. They had responded very well to our library program and started reading books on a regular basis. But they face a mental block when it comes to reading textbooks. A prevalent myth amongst students (found even in city schools) is that a 'textbook' is teacher's book and one should not read any lesson until it is covered by their teacher. I took the help of their class teacher to break this myth. We got the children do a quick estimate of time needed to complete one reading of their biggest textbook (science) if it was treated like any other library book - under two weeks came the answer. Even if they spend just one hour per week reading textbooks, they could have completed all books in just two months. What if they don't understand some parts? The teacher stepped in to say that he would gladly take on their questions.
Other teachers joined us and talked about their initiatives. They have already started using Stellarium for their class lessons and wanted to know more. I introduced them to time acceleration keys and its use in showing Moon phases and the north-south movement (uttarayana-dakshinayana) of Sun. The teachers connected easily to the concepts. Etoys is another popular program in this school. One student showed me all the drawings that they had done on Etoys. It was clear that they had mastered the mechanical skills of using keyboard and mouse and were ready for the next stage of learning Etoys. I introduced teachers to scripting tiles and offered to demonstrate how it works through a Mathland game. In this game, random shapes are drawn on the floor. A blindfolded student is guided by a helper through verbal instructions - move forward 'n' steps or turn 'n' degrees left or right. This turned out to be big fun. Soon, students broke out into discussion about how much, how far and so on. Initially, the helper would call out hesitantly, "move two steps", ponder a little and then add "move three more steps" and so on. After a few repetitions, they learn to eye-ball distances and yell out confidently, "move eight steps". One helper instructed a 10-degree left turn instead of a 45-degree left turn. I saw a girl pull out a protractor to compute how many more degrees he should turn now to turn a total of 45 degrees. The teachers were quick to grasp the implications of this game where students could talk 'mathematics' freely and they took over from me. They made plans to continue the game using larger figures traced on their playground so that students get to deal with larger magnitudes. It is a far cry from a curriculum that postpones lessons how to add 3 to 98 to third standard just because The Method uses a carry!
Our next stop was at Iyanaaru Gollahalli (IGL) school. The Physical Education teacher, posted newly to this school, turned out be proficient in lunar calendars. He evinced keen interest in learning Stellarium. Here again, the students had created many painting projects in Etoys and were fluent in their keyboard and mousing skills. Their teachers had started exploring scripting facilities and posed a few queries about it. I repeated the 'tracing game' in this school too. The PE teacher and his colleagues helped me in guiding students to trace out chalk trails on the floor. IGL does not have any playground and their school compound is very small. After some discussions, the teachers agreed to use small chalk pieces or sticks as Etoys so they could get students to deal with large magnitudes.
Later, the seventh standard class teacher invited me to his class. Two girls had read all the lessons in all the textbooks. One boy had completed all the lessons in Social studies textbooks. The class teacher got me to hand out spot gifts for these students. This school was doing well in both reading and writing exercises but they were still stuck with the 'textbook' myth. I spoke to them briefly about this myth.
Our next halt was at Mullahalli school. The teachers were already using Stellarium to teach students about eclipses and planets. They wanted tips on using it for other lessons. Winter has just begun and the waxing Moon looks lovely as the days get shorter and the nights grow longer. I showed them the keystrokes for watching Moon phase changes and the movement of Venus and Mercury around the Sun. Teachers handed out a homework for the students - early morning just before sunrise, they have to look out for Venus and Saturn in the East. In villages, many festivals are based around astronomical events but the connection is rarely studied or taught in schools. Stellarium helps in training students in anticipating these events and explore them in detail.
Here again, the teachers had been using Etoys for a year and wanted to know more about scripting. Children playing with a volleyball in the playground inspired an exercise for simulating a falling ball in Etoys. I invited them into the room and had them drop the ball from a height a few times and observe it falling down and bouncing back up. The students, in seventh standard, had already been taught about velocity, force, acceleration and gravity. I then showed the teachers how the same behavior emerges when an Etoy ball is scripted for varying velocity. Unlike real life bouncing ball, an Etoy ball can be observed in slow motion or simulated under different gravitational forces.
I also showed the teachers the Mathland game - tracing shapes on floor using instructions. Mullahalli school has a medium-sized playground, so children could play it out on a much larger scale. One girl offered to draw large rangolis for tracing. I left them with these ideas.
All three schools are on the way to become relevant and meaningful for their community but we have our work cut out for us. Projects created by children span a narrow range of topics suggesting that the children are understimulated and lack exposure to wide variety of reading material. Given their relative isolation from the towns, their library collection is woefully inadequate. The library needs to be expanded to include more variety of books and audio/visual materials and cover more languages. This will stimulate them to think wide, think deep and think big while working on the computer.
The schools are making progress in adapting computing technology for their own uses, although the pace is slower than my expectation. While the questions from teachers and students are getting more and more specific, there is still a residual reluctance on the part of teachers to use them freely and fully in the classroom. Lectures are held in the morning and children are allowed to use computers in afternoon sessions only. I reiterated the importance of letting students use the computer at any time. A switched off computer cannot motivate children to learn. As long as a computer is underutilized, they cannot make out a case for getting more computers for their school. At the same time, I didn't want to impose any particular schedule on the teachers. Local conditions differ from school to school and the teachers have to balance the need for free use of computers with the risks of damage or loss. For Sikshana, this is all uncharted territory. We have to learn to work patiently with the school to evolve a schedule that maximizes the former and minimises the latter.
During the recent coaching sessions that we conducted for the 10th Std students, we came across a serious issue. In English, some kids could barely copy a sentence without errors; in Maths, they could not even multiply or divide numbers. The teachers we brought in were extremely competent and well versed with the vagaries of the secondary education system and the exams conducted under it. After a preliminary assessment on the first day, they came and asked me a sensitive question: would you want these kids to be taught English and Maths or do you want them to be coached just to pass the examinations! ( My Response is given below at the end of the post)
The reason why this choice came up is simple: one can pass the exams without knowing either even to sub-minimal levels. This has a lot to do with the way the questions were normally framed until last year. In English, 30% of the marks can be had without writing a sentence in the language, while another 15 can be had if one can write one sentence, errors permitted; you do not have to score the mandatory 35, since with the moderation permitted even 25 should be enough. The scene is no better in Maths. And what did it produce? Kids who fared so badly at the next stage - which is the PUC exams - that the pass rates as well as their overall competence at this point became the center of attention.
The State responded to this during the current academic year by tightening the system in Tenth through introduction of more 'qualitative' questions that call for 'written' answers, a skill that the kids are poorly equipped to handle as now. This may solve the problem faced at the PUC level, but will most certainly create new ones in 10th. Belatedly it struck some one in the hierarchy that the teachers themselves will need re-training to face this change ; this is just being organized in Oct , half way through the academic year. It is anyone's guess when and whether the kids will have time left to get familiar with the new pattern in the exams and perform adequately.
While all this is happening, no one is asking the most obvious question: how did such students get through the past nine years of academic stint? Were there no tests or checks on the way laid down by the system? Let us look at what the latter stipulates :
From 1 to 4th Stds: Tests to be conducted periodically to check the acquisition of specific academic skills, parents to be informed of the progress through skill charts- Remedial action taken for the lagging students until they acquire them
5 to 10 Stds: Exams every Semester with Grades ; remedial action as above mandatory.
The unique feature of this system is that all exams up to 10th are at the school level and no detention is permitted till 8th Grade. While some provisions exist for such penal action on extreme grounds such as prolonged absence in 9/10th Stds , even these are rarely used. As a result, the exams are rarely taken seriously by the schools and the kids. Worse still, a kid who gives a blank answer paper and gets 0 as a score is equated with another who tries and gets 29 , both being classified as having obtained Grade C in the exams; of course both go on to the next level.
It is in the first year of High School, that the teachers feel the real pinch from this system: they get students with near zero skills from primary schools and are still held responsible for getting them to pass the open Board Exams in the 10th Std. Incidentally, this is the first time any kid under this system gets exposed to an external assessment. Their lack of skills would normally have gone unnoticed even at this point; the snag was with the PUC exams that the students who pass 10th have to take, if and when they choose to do so. Here, they have to compete with students from other streams and show their merit; it is the poor performance of these students that made the government to tighten up the screening process at 10th, as above.
In the meanwhile, the Govt would prefer to think that the situation is fine and improving - fed with manufactured numbers such as 75 % pass in 7th, 65% in 10th and increasing scores every year . While all these figures do look impressive, especially when compared to those from other states, one should pause to ask: what are they really worth?
Going through nine years of schooling without an effective system of checks and balances looks to me like playing soccer without goal posts or cricket without stumps. I have dealt personally with tens of thousands of kids; I found that at least all those who would like to break out of their present socio-economic barriers feel the same. There are plenty of them out there in the field and they deserve a break. I have always been feeling that we have so far tapped about 15% of the population to achieve the remarkable progress that we see to day in the country; to go any further, we need to reach the next block of kids. The potential candidates for this are there in the Public Education System; it is for us to identify and provide them with the window of opportunity that they badly need.
The current situation reminds me of the story of the Emperor and his missing clothes. He is convinced he has them on ; unfortunately, the 'boy' to tell him the truth is missing...
Ramamurthy
PS : Now to the promised response from me. I told them honestly- " You can assess , categorize them into two groups and proceed accordingly: the marginal one may be taught the subjects so that they really acquire the skills; and the other could be coached and pushed through the exams" . Considering that we started this program in September, we cannot aim much higher , can we?
It is five years since we started our rural initiative with 18 schools. That we landed in Kanakapura for this venture is entirely due to one person - Mr K N Shivakumar. We had at this time three possible locations in view in the State; it is entirely because of him, and his zeal and dedication, that we ultimately landed in Kanakapura. The rest is history; Sikshana now covers all 120 upper primary and 33 secondary schools in this Taluk. The positive response from this cluster of schools has now given us enough encouragement to step into other school zones, resulting in our entry into Anekal, Hoskote, Chikkaballapura and Madanapalle.
Shivakumar has been working closely with us for the last five years, with no expectations and nothing to gain personally. Often he used to spend entire working days with us visiting schools and attending meets - not to mention organizing many of them - neglecting his own personal commitments. He is probably better known among the staff, the kids and the communities which we serve than most of us in Sikshana- not just known but also looked up to and respected. The schools often were more comfortable sending their feelers through him to us about the issues faced by them; the reverse was equally true too. Lots of people have asked me : what is he in Sikshana? I wish I had an answer to that query.
He exemplifies a simple management concept which is widely accepted: that the utility and importance of a person in a chain has nothing to do with his designated slot in the Organization; it has nothing to do with the incentives offered either.
Shivakumar is a self effacing personality; he recedes into the background wherever publicity is involved. Most outsiders would never have come into contact with him; in the context of this, I felt it was time I brought him into spotlight through this blog. Let us all join together and wish him through this column : " Hats off to you and keep it up"
Those who read this post and have a message for him can respond through a comment here ; or better still email it to me at esrmurthy@gmail.com and i will forward it to him.
Ramamurthy
PS: There are lots of Shivakumars in this country; it is for us to find and get them involved.
People tended to get cynical when I used to say that Sikshana is all about small things and that we learnt bulk of them from the kids; I got a taste of it again recently. The first was when I was visiting the school in Nandi and talking to the kids in Seventh Grade. I spoke to them vary passionately about some of the issues for half an hour and at the end asked them if they have any questions to ask of me. No one stirred; there was pin drop silence in the class. I had to ask them bluntly: how is it that a bunch of seemingly bright kids cannot bring themselves to ask an intelligent question even when given all the opportunities and encouragement. One of the girls got up with a lot of hesitation and said: we have been taught only to answer questions, not to ask! I was amazed at the response which went to the core of the issue. After all, this is the environment in which they have brought up in the school; to be considered a good student one has to keep quiet – awfully quiet- and not pose problems by getting up to talk, even if it is to ask a valid question. No wonder a much harried teacher with an overcrowded class would prefer silence to inquisitiveness; but then , unless these kids are given a chance to express themselves often enough, how will they ever acquire the skill to do so? Every one of these skills – reading, writing and expression- need constant practice for a kid to acquire them. We have been pushing the teachers give them such a slot at least once a week; equally well, we know that this is not going to happen because of our prompting. The teachers need to believe and accept that acquisition of such a skill is an essential part of primary education – even if it is not included formally in the curriculum.
On yet another occasion, I was present when a special Coaching Class organized by us for Tenth Grade students was in session with an invited Guest Faculty. The kids were all selected based on extremely poor past performances in their respective classes; the positive aspect was that they had opted to come for this session foregoing their mid-term vacation in order to equip themselves better to face the oncoming examinations. This Teacher was doing a commendable job eliciting maximum response from the kids. During a lull, she asked them : how is it that they sound so much interested in learning English while she was teaching them, while the same spirit was obviously not seen while the subject was being covered in the school. One of the boys got up and told her: " You are teaching English ; the teacher in the school was teaching them 'lessons' ". There is a lot of wisdom in this cryptic comment too for the teachers.
Recently, I was on a tour of Tamilnadu, when I had to travel from Mayiladuthurai to Chennai via Pondicherry. The road in the first lap was State owned , and with two lanes and a reasonably good surface it was a pleasure to drive on; and it did not cost me a packet.
The second, with the glamorous name of ECR- was laid under the PPP scheme and is a tolled road. I was disappointed- but definitely not surprised - to see that this was no better than the first in any way. It too had two lanes and no more. It did not have controlled access or even a divider, which one would expect from a 'premium' road - or any road under this category in any other part of the world. The road was winding through villages - with not even a barrier for pedestrian crossings- and had its quota of slow moving vehicles, stray animals and everything else you can name. There can be no excuse for making this a tolled road, except that it was built under the much touted 'private sector participation' and the excuse that the State did not have the funds to build it. In the normal course, the State should have constructed it as a part of the State Highway System out of the tax revenues and we should be using the same without having to pay a hefty sum. If this concept progresses unchecked , where does it stop? We have emanating signs already; the State is actively considering 're-laying' the present State Highways and in the process make them tolled roads.
Why am I discussing all this in our forum? There is a major emerging link in the strategic term - PPP. The HRD Ministry is waking up to the 'immense possibilities' under this approach for Secondary Education. We should be seriously concerned about the likely consequences.
The State can - and in all probability- will start phasing out its responsibilities towards Secondary Education. The precursor for this is there: the current State Policy in Karnataka does not allow starting a Govt school when there is an aided school within 'X' kms of the proposed one. With PPP schools also coming in, there may be no more new Govt High Schools, especially in urban areas where PPP may work to some extent; the kids from the most deprived sections of the society will be forced to opt for one of these expensive options, under the threat of losing their only life line for a better future.
It is not what appears on paper, that one should be concerned about; it is the manner in which these policies are likely to be implemented over a period of time. When we talk about PPP in roads, we normally think of the Mumbai - Pune Expressway or the NICE Corridor in Bangalore.; we prefer not to look at the likes of ECR. Considering the vast difference in the 'discerning' abilities of the beneficiaries for a tolled road or a rural school, there is every reason to believe that we will get the 'clones' of the latter rather than the former.
Notwithstanding the above, PPP may work to a limited extent in urban areas because of the attraction offered by the percentage of seats allowed for 'open sale in the market' or the real estate involved. However, only the most naive will believe that the Private Sector will get involved in setting up Schools in the rural areas, where neither of these factors come into play. After all, any one can see what happened when banking was thrown open for private sector; how many of them have opened branches away from major cities?
In order to place these factors in the correct perspective, let us look at the numbers - with Karnataka as an example. We have 8 million kids in the primary school system, out of which 6.5 million go to a Govt school. No PPP model at the secondary level can cater to these numbers without substantially increasing the drop out rates on account of reach and affordability.
Let us come to the crux of the issue: It concerns the rights of a child to be educated by the State from the age of of 6 till 18. Through various processes of dilation and dilution, we have whittled this right down to a band of 6 to 14. Still, if the State continues to extend a helping hand at the existing level, the kids passing out of the primary stage may successfully brave it till 16, as they are doing now. The proposed changes will remove this fragile chance, increasing the presently unacceptable levels of drop out rates even more. Worse still, the promised enhancement of quality may also be a non-starter, except for a chosen few in urban clusters.
This is in keeping with our practice of thriving on tokenism on all crucial issues. If we cannot provide a universal educational system with minimal integrity, we promise one Navodaya school for each District under which 400,000 kids compete for 25,000 seats. As if this is not enough, we announce that- sooner or later- all private schools will be made to take in students from the deprived sections of the society to an extent of 25% of their total capacity; simple arithmetic will show that this will meet the aspirations of less than 3% of the kids waiting in the wings. When will we learn that there is no short cut or alternate to State funding of education through State run schools till they are at least 16, if not 18 as in all civilized countries? There is certainly a case for improving the delivery of this service, not for downsizing it.
When WB funding under DPEP ceased, we were courageous and far sighted enough to come up with a Sarava Siksha Abhiyan for primary education. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot come up with a similar response to the need for a Rashtriya Madhyamik Sikshana Abhiyan without external funding. All that is required is a national and political will to recognize the ground realities and act on them. Ramamurthy
I have been seeing a spate of voluntary sector efforts hogging the limelight on the subject of redeeming slum kids; the last one which appeared recently in the Media could be taken as the proverbial last straw. For me , the 'deprived kids' are the same, whether they come from an urban slum or a remote rural community. For some indiscernible reasons, there seems to be a major chasm in the perception of certain sections of the society and the media between the two.
By now, we are all immune to the dual standards applied by our society to issues pertaining to the two levels of living; a casualty from swine flu in a City is considered any day a far more serious issue requiring national focus and attention than a few hundred who meet the same fate from a totally 'avoidable' one from common Diarrhea. To be fair to the media, some Columnists have been makng this point very forcefully, but the buck seems to stop there for all the rest.
It is when this gets applied to the lives of kids that I find it difficult to accept the situation as it exists. Some of the queries that crop up in this context are:
Why should we encourage one section of deprived kids to get a mid-day meal at Rs 6 plus, while others have to be content with Rs 3 minus ?
Why should so many Voluntary Sector agencies vie with each other and spend scarce resources in providing 'designer' uniforms and shoes/ ties to one section while the other goes without basic apparel ? That the latter are most inappropriate for the environment in which the kids live only makes it worse.
Why should so many new efforts pop up for bringing in 'volunteer teachers' to teach in already well staffed City schools, while there are any number of rural single teacher schools at our backyard?
Why is it that an event which affects a few 'out of school' kids in the city make it to Page 2 of a Newspaper, while a far reaching grass root effort in a place like Arekere focused on kids who have braved it to the school against great odds is ignored?
Has any one cared to find out and compare the cost of such ongoing efforts in terms of Rs per kid in a city and a rural environment? Worse still is the huge gap in the number of such active programs in the two spheres.
The questions are endless. Is it too much to ask of all voluntary sector institutions and funding agencies:
Please treat all deprived kids on an equal footing; every one them deserve a better deal. After all, a kid should not have to emigrate to a slum in a City to become eligible for your tender mercies.
Last Saturday, I sat through a training session for teachers on notebook computing in Kanakapura. About 90 teachers, in two batches, were introduced to our notebook computing programs that day. Each session lasted two hours. Srivatsa, one of our trustees, introduced the concepts during the first half. Asha, our field mentor, followed with a quick tour of important software in the computer. She presented OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc, Stellarium and Etoys. The last two proved to be a big hit amongst teachers. They wanted to learn more about them right on the spot. This was just an awareness course to get them started on exploring the possibilities of using computers in their schools. Mentors assured them of ongoing assistance during their weekly school visits.
Two batches had already been trained a few weeks back taking the overall count to 190 teachers. We still have about 400 more in our waiting list. After the sessions are done, there will be a pool of 600 teachers spread across 120 higher primary schools in the villages of Kanakapura. It will be interesting to see what kind of teaching and learning materials they create on these computers to help their students learn.
Watching Asha, Roopa and other mentors manage the sessions confidently and independently, I reflected on how far we have come from the early days of this experiment. We still have a long way to go to reach a critical mass of teachers who can reform computing curriculums in our schools.
In a few months time, around 16,000 students in villages around Kanakapura would have touched a computer, used it and even programmed it to do their bidding. A computer is no longer a picture on the wall.
That is a strange question; still it needs an honest answer. Maybe, the following episode will provide one.
Yesterday, during our visit to the Madanapalle Cluster, we came across a Teacher who has just been shifted to this new school. He found that many kids in that school were writing with very small pencils- often less than an inch long. He bought a couple of boxes of pencils at his cost and brought them to the school. He did not know how he should proceed with the distribution of this scarce commodity. At this stage, he did a remarkable thing that no one else in his position would have attempted.
He placed them in a 'Honor Box' open for all kids; any one who is in need can go up to it and help himself/herself. The system works!!! Words fail me here
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