New Light

 New Light-

The Kalighat neighborhood’s infamous red light district looked pretty benign in the afternoon as two groups of boys staged a kite battle in the main roadway.  Then we turned down a narrow concrete path with small open two room dwellings.  One had a person sitting cross legged watching a tv. Another seems to serve as a diner.  A goat stood outside another.

At the end of the corridor, the second floor of a former temple serves as office, cafeteria, school, and dwelling for nearly 100 children.  New Light was started by Urmi Basu who left the foundation world because the work felt empty (and as I later found out chose to leaver her husband, too, when given an ultimatum to choose him or her work). The organization serves sex workers, trafficked women, and their children providing shelter, food, education, and health services.  

Given write ups in the NYT, in Kristof’s Half the Sky, and recognition through various humanitarian awards, I expected more by way of  facilities. But that’s a common feeling here.  First we watched a dozen older girls do yoga on mats. Afterwards all of the 80-100 children lined up in rows for attendance and then meditation.  Seated on the floor in tight formation, they all closed their eyes and assumed a basic lotus position. The smallest ones were terribly cute trying to stay awake nodding perilously before quickly recovering.  

Afterwards we tutored them, after a fashion.  The first night I started writing letters and words and pictures that they would copy, then we moved to tic-tac-toe.  One girl beat me regularly, and not just because she cheated by ‘casually’ covering up her marks with a finger. These sweetpeas just loved the attention, as seems fitting for kids sleeping communally on the floor of a shelter without parents.  Their mothers may visit them sometimes, but largely this feels like something between foster care and orphanage. Tonight I worked with older students on their English homework from school today.  The levels vary widely, so I circled around working with small groups. One girl showed me her workbook with all the answers completed correctly, but as I was halfway through it, her friend ratted her out pointing out a cheat book with the answers in Bengali.  I teased her about being a cheater, a word she understood immediately, and made a joke about it.

While this place is far from the fancy school I visited this morning, the appreciation I felt there tonight seemed much more real. While working with them, it feels like any other teaching moment.  Sweet kids struggling with both material and motivation, working in part to please me as teacher.  It makes Mitra’s School in the Cloud seem a distant second choice.  I certainly sensed they preferred having me there over a computer screen, but maybe I flatter myself. I will be going back a few more nights before I leave. 

School in the Cloud

Sugata Mitra spoke today at a large, fancy local private school and I was excited to get a chance to see him speaking here.  Having seen his TedTalks about the "Hole in the wall school" and the "School in the Cloud" I was curious to hear how he might talk to a hometown crowd.  When I got there, I realized it was also largely a student audience.  As Fulbright teachers (and as guests of Akshar's head and principal) we had the fancy front row seats with the white chair covers and the red ribbons.  It's treatment that I've come to expect here, and going home will be a return to, well, reality.

Mitra's premise is that students can learn on their own with technology, and the latest iteration is that students in groups with online support and guiding questions can learn on their own. Rousseau's Emilie comes quickly to mind, and Montessori isn't far behind.  I'm struck, however, by the movement here away from the radical, nearly Romantic conception of learning back toward the center in his new version.  Now, students get guidance from adults and with questions.  Moreover, they meet together in public communities to do the work.  He still largely dismisses the role of teachers, although he doesn't want to quite come out and say it.

I also discovered that he's working with schools in Calcutta including Akshar creating SOLE periods- basically small groups working online in small groups to answer questions.  According to the teacher who's doing it, the purpose is to teach students internet research skills.  That's certainly a more modest goal that suggested by his original talk which implied students could come to understand genetics and DNA. 

Of monuments and men

Putting one more photo of the Taj Mahel on the interwebs is very much a coals-to-Newcastle sort of thing.  And not being a photographer, really, I was surprised to see the luminous quality to even my photos after this grey, hazy morning.  But like the thousands of others who walk these grounds daily, I came and admired the most beautiful tomb in the world.  

The story is as epic as the building. Akbar, the greatest Mughal emperor, is grief stricken when his third wife dies bearing his 14th child.  He spends 20 years and untold lives constructing this memorial.  According to our guide, he planned to build an identical second building in black marble but was deposed and imprisoned by his son in a nearby fort where he had a window looking out on the tomb of his beloved.  Supposedly, this son also killed all his siblings. 

 But places like this immediately beg the question- all this beauty at what cost? Even this weekend a handful of thin men redug the lawn on a hot morning. What are the conditions of of absolute power and feudal wealth that breed structures like this, Versailles, the pyramids, and so on? It makes me appreciate the Gates Foundation more, although I hear his house on the lake in Seattle is monolithic, too. 

And while I may not be a 'high net worth individual' like Bill Gates, this sign made my own privilege clear enough.  

What stands out most about this place now, however, perhaps more than beauty and power, is some deep need to take a posed photo in front of it and no doubt post it to facebook.  In France I often felt that the Oxbridge students didn't so much visit Montpellier as much as use it for facebook backdrop (and resume builder, of course). Baudrillard comes to mind-Do we have experiences anymore, or just stage images/simulacra that stand for these experiences?  In addition to being one of the seven wonders of the modern world, it also feels like the photobomb capital of the world.  Everyone maneuvers for their spot, many pose with their finger touching the topmost point, and some, well, some do need to be seen to be appreciated. I'm sure this photo is already on fb making her small, anonymous contribution to the monumental, virtual Taj

Photo Hash

Last night I walked around a new neighborhood and felt that travelers euphoria that comes from constant amazement.  Wonder is a powerful force, and I get the sense India has always been a primary source. On my walk, I came across the motorcycle repair part of town.  First there were the parts stores.  Then I came across an outdoor custom seat repair shop. You choose the vinyl seat pattern and they sew it onto your pad while you wait.  Finally, and in the dark, I came across the mechanics who worked in the street without benefit of light or lights.  None had even the lean to shed of this shop from the village I visited last weekend.

In public  transport, India also exceeds expectation.  Dozens of people ride on the tops of buses in the countryside, while they merely stuff them full in the city.  On the trains, especially in the air conditioned cars, its the vendors who create wonder.  The snackwala whose custom metal carrying container had a large central storage area for puffed rice which he then seasoned from a set of about ten different seasonings.  He mixed it all in another container and served it in a rolled newspaper cone.  

Although I didn't get a picture of him in action (it really required video) this was the musician who mostly made me wonder when he was going to stop.   He's playing a two string number that starts with an open drum held under his arm and ends with a handle in his hand.  The strings are held tight along his forearm between drum and hand and played with a large wooden pick.  

This is one of many Hindu street shrines.  They range from room size places of workshop to small objects perched on decorated platforms.  This one was secured behind a metal grid.  Some sit in the open.  In the evening you generally see someone making an offering at one.  

Chawalas  (cha is tea here) or coffeewalas are among the most common vendors, of course.  Like everything else on the street, they cook with open charcoal fires burned down to coals.  Often these sit on the bustling sidewalks.  While there was a letter to the editor about the hazards of this, like most hazards here, it's long established practice. Servings are very small, and most are offered in ceramic cups.  What's remarkable is that these hand made cups are single serving.  I'm still somewhat shocked that hand made, nonstackable cups are preferred to small plastic ones.  When you're done you just drop them on the ground.  Being very low fire terra cotta (perhaps just sun fired) they are ground underfoot and return to dust.  Here's a picture of evening pile in front of the cha stand in Santinitiken.

Santinitiken

Despite the heat, these saffron clad students gathered in small groups under trees working on drawings, reading English texts, studying Sanskrit look idyllic. The place invites that sort of view.   As envisioned by Indian poet and renaissance man Rabindranath Tagore, almost all classes meet outdoors as they have for over 100 years. One teacher said, “Students get so distracted when they’re stuck in a room all day.”  And we all tried to imagine our students here on the ground every day. The kids in the English class we observed read their passages, laughed at some inside joke, and seemed unaffected by the heat or our group of 13 observers.

Patha Bhavana educates 1100 students in grades K-12 with several hundred more in the associated university. The campus spreads across several acres with a second campus six kilometers down the road.  The colorful, colonial buildings are set in a simple grid pattern around parks, a large, green playing field, and a national historic site. Against the infernal honking and normal chaos of even the small village nearby, the school seems an oasis.  

Unlike most private school classes here that have 40 or more students in small, stuffy rooms, these groups of less than 20 felt intimate. The fact that half of the students live on campus in dormitories guarantees it.  I struggled to imagine a dormitory of 2nd gradesr, but was assured there was one. This is a slightly older group going to lunch.  They all had short hair which seemed a necessary concession to group living.  

Our guides were English BA students one of whom had been there since 2nd grade. They were passionate advocates for the humanistic approach.  Most Indian parents want their children to be doctors or engineers.  The man on the train home told me how his son had switched from engineering to art, but he didn't seem too disappointed.  Here, students can succeed in areas outside math and science and be recognized.  Yet apparently students here prefer cliffs notes to reading just like students anywhere, and in the recent English exam for the BA students, 20 of 40 failed.  Once admitted to the university, fees are very low and retesting later is a given.  The motivation to work and graduate from the bucolic world can be a bit low. 

Santinetiken was founded in 1901, Dewey’s Chicago Lab school in 1896, Montessori’s Casa dei Bambini in 1907, and Steiner’s Waldorf schools in 1919.  Like Waldorf in particular, Patha Bhavana struggles to distinguish founding elements from important elements.  Are three years of Sanskrit instruction really an essential part of the model?  Should technology be included?  And my own personal question- is it really necessary to learn the entire 2000 song canon of Rabindranath Tagore's canon?  Like some of these progressive era notions, the school is seen as an isolated exception rather than a general model for the larger education system.  At the current moment, High Tech High, Expeditionary Learning, Project Based Learning, and a host of other networks and organizations work to push similar open education ideas into the mainstream in the US.  This historical educational island in India seems a good spot to view the larger educational tides.  

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It's an experience

The line,“You will always have the poor among you” comes to mind often in India, They live under tarps and on road medians and sleep in carts or on the ground. I’m already more accustomed to the sights than I was a week ago when a girl of no more than six carrying a still infant of about six months conjured images of Slumdog Millionaire. And yes, it feels wrong comparing real people to movie characters, but that seems like the closest frame of reference for this kind of poverty. Although feeling wrong is the issue here.

At dinner with a local newspaperman this weekend, he said many of homeless are refugees crossing the porous border with Bangladesh. While no doubt true, this somehow masks the discomfort placing it within a larger geopolitical context.  In Dakar the ‘Talibe’ are generally child beggars from Mali, seen in a similar context of otherness.  But a new book out here challenges these views claiming that ‘what is remarkably obvious is a serious lack of interest in the lives of the Indian poor, judging from the balance of news selection and political analyses in the Indian media.” Conversely, Slumdog Millionaire and books like Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers sometimes get tagged with the label ‘poverty porn’ for exhibiting the lives of India’s poor.  

Last night after a nearly drug-like nap, I entered the fray of Calcutta’s streets in search of dinner. Not knowing the area yet, this is always a bit of an adventure. But as uncertain wandering attracts aggressive shopkeepers, I tend to walk with a sense of direction I don’t possess. A block away from the hotel, a man fell into step alongside me, but rather than the typical ‘where are you from’ opener, he said, “You’re staying at the Oberoi. I work there.”  And so I turned to look at him to see if I recognized his face.  He looked a bit older than most of the beautiful 20 somethings who staff all the desks. I assume they’re like stewardesses in the 50’s hired for aesthetic purposes and moved along at a certain age. This man didn’t fit that description, but he quickly said that he swept the floor in the main hall.  I said I didn’t recognize him.  He asked if I had been napping, surprising me with his accuracy which I acknowledged. He asked if I was from MIT noting that there were people from there staying in the hotel. I mentioned the Fulbright program, and soon we were talking about restaurants in the area, and he offered to show me good ones.  He pointed out a Chinese one and said a good fish place was down the road a bit. So we walked and he noted that the roads would be more crowded tomorrow as Ramadan was starting.  I recalled the shopping frenzy for the post sunset feast wondering how many Muslims live in Calcutta.  “I’m going to teach a class,” he said, “It’s a taekwando class for kids.  It’s just an hour a week, something the hotel likes us to do for the community.”  I was immediately impressed and even guilty for my unfulfilled intention to visit Mother Theresa’s mission nearby.  Or, I wondered, should I try to help out at the trafficked women organization I had heard about the day before.  I was all intention, while he was going to teach the kids.  

We soon arrived at the fish place, and he pointed it out and also recommended a Bengali place next door.  Always alert to underlying motive, I half expected he would introduce me to a cousin who ran the restaurant, but a simple recommendation felt like gesture of welcome for a stranger.  I asked his name and shook his hand thanking him and saying goodbye.  As I turned, he said, “Sir, would you have some money to help buy biscuits for the students?”  Stuttering instead of speaking, I reached into my pocket for a 10 or 20 rupee bill.  A couple hundres came out first, and then I found a 20 and gave it to him.  He smiled and said, “Could I have 220? There are many students.” Still speechless, I hand over a 100 rupee bill and manage to say, ”Here’s 100.”  “120, that’s what I meant,” he said.  We shook hands again and then parted. And then the questions finally formed-  What just happened?  Why would he ask for money?  Why did I feel suspicious?  Would he really buy food for students?  Were there really students?  Suddenly with a simple request at parting, some traveler’s radar flipped back on, and I retraced the conversation moment by moment looking for gaps.  He had said he worked eight hours at the Oberoi.  Was that possible?  I knew the hostess at the restaurant works six days a week from 7 AM to 10:30 PM with only a short break between. Was it possible cleaning staff worked shorter hours?  He had said he worked six days a week. That fit. I sat in the fish place and looked over the menu.  The prices were good, but I realized I had gone out in search of pizza. I didn’t want fish.  I apologized as I left in search of something else leaving the question behind as well.  I had only given up120 rupees. Two dollars at the new exchange rate.

That night, I awoke in the dark suddenly certain he had made up the entire story. He didn’t work at the hotel. I was an obvious mark, and he knew enough to weave a convincing tale. I thought he was interested in me as a person not as a wealthy western target.  My radar had failed completely.  It wasn’t the money, of course, it was pride.  I wasn’t they guy who got fooled, and now I had been. Having traveled plenty, I recognized the touts and the scammers and steered clear of them.  Now I suddenly recognized that I could be taken, fooled, duped like the little old ladies who gave over their life savings to gardeners or maids on convoluted pretext. How had he done it?  Was it that he seemed to recognize me from the hotel?  Was it my guilt over not recognizing him?  Was it the MIT detail that made me wonder what MIT was doing in Calcutta?  Was it my admiration of his service to the poor? 

Now, I have to admit I don’t know the truth. Did I misinterpret his question? Why shouldn’t he ask for help feeding the students?  Did he weave a tale that I bought completely?  What is certain is that I paid for a lesson, a class on class. I’m reminded of the professor character in Paul Bowles “A Distant Episode” who seeks familiarity with the Tuareg and is punished brutally for the attempt, or more of Guare’s “Six Degrees of Separation” in which the transgressor knows that gifts of  jam ease passage into upper class homes. What I do know is that our driver yesterday earns 300 rupees a day, about five dollars, and while he is grateful for it, I can’t help but feel there’s something wrong. 

Clever Hans

Kolkata’s St. John's School for Girls holds 3900 girls ages K-12 on a small campus of colonial era buildings.  We visited an 11th math class where 45 girls in close rows took notes from a popular teacher named Mr. Francis.  He lectured on graphing parabolas, a lesson I somewhat recalled and somewhat understood. The method was strictly chalk and talk. There were no questions and few opportunities to offer any answers.  Sitting in the back of the stuffy room drifting off to the lull of four ceiling fans, I suddenly came to a new appreciation for Kahn Academy’s video lessons.  At least you could stop and review a lesson and do so at your own pace.  

Students here work toward two sets of board exams, one after 10th grade and another after 12th. The second one, as well as an optional additional exam, determine their college choice options.  With a burgeoning student population, admission to the most competitive universities requires scores over 95%.  In addition to the private schools that most aspiring students attend, they also go to ‘tuitions’ for up to four hours in the evenings.  Here they study the material again, in theory. The teacher we spoke with said this isn’t really tutoring in the proper sense, rather many of them simply do more worksheets on the material. One girl noted that many Indian students suffer from depression from the work load, and then she asked about her American peers.  

St. Johns, like all the schools working with the Fulbright exchange program, is a private school.  A NYT article notes that 90% of Indian students attend public schools which have larger class sizes and very poor instruction and accountability. So the kids in this class are the elite, cramming to do well on exams. The teachers feel the same pressure and largely teach to the tests which focus on content not understanding.  In the Telegraph newspaper today  the director of Modern High School for Girls, Devi Kar, compared Indian students to Clever Hans a horse who had apparently learned to add, but was ultimately proven to respond to subtle cues in his owner’s face. The Fulbright teachers here agree that students study advanced material at early ages but don’t really understand it.  

Of course test driven learning has a long if not noble tradition.  I've seen French boys cry in their mother's arms after receiving poor Baccalaureate scores.  My Senegalese students were entirely test driven as well.  They said few students read the books as their instruction was often poor and the exam requires little more than rote memorization of plot and character. And my SPA students increasingly (and often unwillingly) take SAT prep classes for a few extra points as well.  Despite huge differences in educational systems and resources, stressed, alienated children seem far too common.

Rabindranath Tagor, the most famous Bengali/Indian author and philosopher challenged this approach to education a century ago in ways similar to Dewey and Montessori. His conclusions here still feel too true both here and at home.  

“We have come to this world to accept it, not merely to know it. We may become powerful by knowledge, but we attain fullness by sympathy. The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed. From our very childhood habits are formed and knowledge is imparted in such a manner that our life is weaned away from nature and our mind and the world are set in opposition from the beginning of our days. Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead. We rob the child of his earth to teach him geography, of language to teach him grammar. His hunger is for the Epic, but he is supplied with chronicles of facts and dates…Child-nature protests against such calamity with all its power of suffering, subdued at last into silence by punishment. (Rabindranath Tagore, Personality,1917: 116-17)” 

Akshar Art Show

During my first week at Akshar school, I’d noticed the well done flyer for the Friday evening art opening.  I appreciated, too, that they ended school early Friday to let people prepare for the event. Using a theme of ‘‘beauty from waste’ students at all grade levels had contributed something to the show and they had been working on it since the spring.  Having it at the art gallery across the street from the US Consulate which is owned by one of the founders seemed auspicious as well.  Yet I was still amazed at what they accomplished.

This picture from a balcony shows a part of the gallery.  The art teacher had been working with kids all week setting things up.  They created three rooms- one main gallery, another of science themed projects, and a third which modeled a sustainable house. The night started with the students lined up in rows to welcome guests, and they dispersed afterwards. 

Students staffed each exhibit area reciting their nearly memorized information.  In what seems somewhat typical fashion, they seemed more comfortable with recitation than discussion.  My students would have been quite the opposite. Differences disappeared however in the way they approached the food table afterward.

 Akshar's art teacher has been with the school since the founding, and he seems to get remarkable results across different ages and media.  The photography both on the wall and mounted on this flowing room length paper was excellent.  

And I particularly adored this sea cow.

  

The Akshar School

Kolkata-  July 5, 2013

I celebrated the fourth of July by learning cricket, a precursor of our great American pass time.  Not sure if that qualifies as patriotic.  The pictures show clearly different skill sets as I got schooled on the makeshift rooftop pitch where the students play during every break.  I’ll offer an ultimate frisbee lesson soon.  

Having left a week ago, I’m finally settled enough to know how to get around and what I’m teaching. I’m also through the initial travel euphoria and into the adjustment phase.  Does everyone need to honk constantly?  Is there a salad somewhere I could eat safely?  What does it mean that my hotel is guarded by a sandbanked sentry and requires passing through a metal detector?  Some of these questions are softened by the cappucino and cookies delivered to my door each morning.  Others are only made more pointed.

The Akshar School sits near what passes for the river Hooghly wedged between a working marble factory and an empty British one.  The remarkable 70 year old founder began the school 15 years ago in this former warehouse donated by a family who wanted a better education for their disabled son.  The school’s mission is to educate students of all abilities in an inclusive, empathetic community. Their approaches include smaller classes, differentiated assessments and timelines, and some extracurricular courses that offer occupational skills.

The kids are open and adorable, and it does feel like a much more tolerant environment. Downs, autistic and physically disabled students participate as they can in classes and activities.  On the first day the 6th graders peppered me with questions and gushed in response to my pictures.  I wasn’t sure if they responding to me or something I represent.They wanted to know what sports and music I like, what hobbies I enjoy, and what kind of cell phone I use.  The last question revealing a level of privilege not present on the streets.