yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Villages in our schools Published in The Hindu’s EDGE on 22 nd July. Thanks are due to the team at The Hindu. To Upma and her colleagues I am indebted for the opportunity. I was asked if I would share some of my experiences of village life with students. This discussion, with students, would precede their trip to an organization working in a rural set-up. I figured that this would be challenging given that most students came from affluent families.   In other words, they would possibly have limited exposure like I once had. I began on a lighter note with snippets of my ignorance during my initial days in Central India - how it had taken me more than a month’s stay to figure out the significance of 3 tea-stalls in the village, abutting each other and each boasting of strictly loyal clientele - my first lesson in caste. Unlike the illustrations I had come across in text-books, neither was panchayat a meeting with 5 people under a tree, nor was sarpanch the

Mirrored in words This piece finds place in Teacher Plus ’ July issue. Thanks are due to the team there. “ Why is the number of children in a school called strength ?” This question from the article, ‘ Of skills, learning, intelligences and … the marketplace ’ struck me. Why is it not the abilities of teachers or students, or values the school adhered to, or even the school’s infrastructure, I wondered, which are a school’s strength? The question also had me recall terms used in similar vein. Besides having me bemused, intrigued, and on occasions even uncomfortable, these terms have often left me with unanswered questions. Do these terms, their usage, mirror our changing worlds? During a recent conference, a speaker had mentioned how previously the ministry governing education in our country was referred to as ‘Education Ministry’. Today, schools and colleges come under the ambit of the ‘Ministry of Human Resource Development’. This change in title, he stressed, i

All effort, no yield This piece finds place in The Hindu EDGE on 1 st July . Thanks are due to the team there. Few weeks ago, friends, who work to get children to fall in love with books and stories, visited our school. I love reading and enjoyed being a part of the conversation as it moved from what we could do with books at our school to why books are crucial for children. As someone who, today, puts in more time with books than with friends, I found little to disagree. However, the line – ‘ world without books is poorer and dangerous ’, brought out the dilemma I had been encountering of late. I shared it with the small group: “ Do these actions tantamount to pushing our ‘agendas’ on schools and children, in this fashion? Do we do this more with children, for they do not have the space to vocally disagree? How fair is this? ” Last week, at a school in a village in Himachal Pradesh, I was reminded of the discussion. I had accompanied a friend and noticed story-bo