School, and One Older Post
Today is July 18
I am the worst blogger ever, because as I knew would be the case, I feel compelled once I start to document everything. I have been working on these pieces of posts below for several days, and it is time-consuming--I am just going to end them quickly and send! Today was a 'study leave' for my usual students, who have their half-year exams next week, so Sarah and I were sent to work in levels 2 and 4, roughly the same ages as 2nd and 4th grade at home. I will try to get some photos of these 55 little girls crammed into their tiny classroom, but today I was just trying to stay alive. I discuss below how the school discipline in the higher grades, though impressive, does not run deep. In second grade this discipline has not become even superficially routine; add a visitor from the US to the mix and they go insane. We are studying 'ing' verb forms. When we know the answer for the US teacher we raise our hands, but we also must scream "Ma'am please! Ma'am please! repeatedly, as loudly and piercingly as a 6 year old girl can, which pretty much defines the words "loudly" and "piercingly". When this fails we must rush to the front to shake the US teacher's arm, because surely it is only the vast distance which has caused her inexplicable decision to call on someone else. The great thing is that most of the girls are so absorbed in and motivated about this schoolwork, so anxious to do well and please their teachers. At the same time, there are several little girls quarrelling at any given moment, mostly complaining to me that the 3 girls in the 2-foot long desk 2 inches in front of theirs are backing too close to them, which I'm sure is true, and another girl is stridently accused of having out her (Bengali word for 'fan'--good thing I could see what she was holding) even though "The AC is working", apparently a big crime. I had to copy the ineffectual threat used by the Vice Principal at the morning assembly yesterday, that if she did not get quiet attention, the stack of prize cakes would not be distributed. Uh huh. I finally won a small improvement in the second level by telling them that if they could not behave I would not come back, which is pretty funny because I don't think I
am scheduled to go back into second grade--let that be a lesson to them!
The level 4 girls were much more civilized, and all was well till the end of class. You will hear more about how we are constantly besieged by our Indian fans for our autographs. Some girls tried to have me sign books during class, but I said I would only do it afterward. Rookie mistake. You know that movie, is it in
Barbarella?--where someone goes, "Oh how cute, all the little dolls", and then all the teeth come out and the dolls attack? I signed one book, two books; suddenly there are 55 little girls crushed around me, crawling over each other, pushing their books into my face. I got very claustrophobic but even more worried about them actually injuring each other. I had to yell and shove to get out of there.
I don't have pictures of Primary yet, but this is one of the Nursery classes 3-4 years old. Pretty much the cutest thing ever. Their uniforms are grey with white polka dots, and for some activities they have little pinafores. I'm bringing them all home.
At any rate, the point I began trying to make was that we had a half-day today, and though several others in my group were heading for the Indian Museum, I planned to go to the Victoria Memorial where the British paintings, maps, and artefacts are disintegrating on display because I don't actually have much free time and I don't want to miss it. However, this was not my karma today. You mght have seen in an earlier installment that the god Jagganath went out of town on a vacation, and many Calcuttans helped to pull his wagon. Well, today he came back from vacation and his procession blocked the taxis, so the driver dumped me out. It was fine because I was near the famous Oxford Bookstore, which I had wanted to visit, so I did that. Later I went sari shopping with the other woman in the group. I do not want a sari but I may get one nicer salwaar kameez, because the ones I have cost about 15 dollars and might not be nice enough for this reception we have to go to, but I didn't find the right fabric, though there were some beautiful ones and I enjoyed looking at them. By the way, I did not receive anyone's measurements?
Tomorrow most of us are going to Delhi and agra to see the Taj Mahal and the fort, etc. We got free nights in the Agra Oberoi because we have so many nights in this one, so airfare, air-conditioned bus, all entries, driver, guide, and breakfast--$319. Poor rupee; happy dollar! Now I'm also going to post these older epic sagas:
When I first arrived
First I flew United to Washington DC. After a nice snooze on the airporter, I was shocked fully awake when they tried to kick me off the plane. I was in the last 20; they needed 20 volunteers to get off and could only find 18. They offered me $$ to go 4 hours later, but I was freaked out about missing the State Dept. procedures and not being allowed to go on the trip. Finally they upped the bribe from 200$ to 300$ and some guy went for it just before I had to start crying and telling them I was on my way to negotiations for my husband's kidnap release in the Mideast. So then I had just made it all happy to my nice aisle seat, when the young woman next to me asked me to switch with her friend who was across from us in the middle between two large sweaty salesmen. I looked at my feet and muttered something vague about that not really being a very good seat, they tried the Indian lady on the other side and she said only, "NO", firmly and incredulously, so then the girl in the middle just started crying, and I had to say so gracefully, "Oh for God's sake, just take it", and I had to move to the horrid seat while her friend moved to my seat without a word. The sobbing went on for some time but by and by she perked up. I tried to tell myself she was a bereaved person, but I'm not sure...AND, though I didn't plan to be and am not being a whiny traveller, I would like to just spread the word that at least domestically United is a particularly sucky airline--horrible check-in, smallest seat space EVER--so small that when the guy next to me made the incredibly self-centered decision to type on his laptop it was like sitting next to the Monty Python knudge knudge wink wink guy for 5 hours.
At Dulles I met up with some of the other teachers in the group and we shared a cab van to our hotel, the Quincy. We did some orientation stuff, went to dinner, and then we went on a bus and walking tour of the monuments by moonlight with a great, quirky little guide who looked just like The Golux in the illustrations for
The Thirteen Clocks. He knew all kinds of interesting and strange things about DC, all of which escape me now two weeks later in India. The next day we had more orientations all day, some very interesting ones about cultural norms and assumptions, which I'll tell you about when I see you if you are interested in this subject, and then we went to the airport. Security at Dulles is the same pattern as elsewhere but all expanded--after the security check-in you take a train to your gate. Then we flew on United to Dubai, and it was a whole different thing from the domestic flight. The plane was huge, with seats like this. xxx xxx xxx. It was not full, and many were military and govt. contract people mostly going on to Doha Military Base in Kuwait. They all looked like Special Forces people embarking on covert operations, although I think some of them were probably like the base McDonald's manager, but it certainly gave the ride a bit more intrigue. I tried to act like I was Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark 30, but I was immaturely distracted by unaccustomed airplane happiness. We had to wait on the runway 2 hours in the plane, so after we took off we all got free drinks. I had my own little TV full of all kinds of stuff I wanted to see, and NO ONE in the next seat, so it was basically The Best Plane Ride Ever, which was good because we were on the plane over 17 hours. Stuff I watched:
5 episodes of this season Parks and Rec
4 episodes 30 Rock
4 episodes of Chopped
2 episodes of Househunting
One movie: Side Effects--pretty good
I already wrote about our 12 hour layover in Dubai, after which we flew on Emirates 6 hours with the nice stewardesses in I Dream of Jeannie hats, and finally we arrived in Kolkata.
The Kolkata airport is small and looks pretty run-down, though we soon heard that it was new. Apparently the people who built it are being sued because it leaks, windows have popped out, etc. In general I think it's fair to say that there's not a lot of maintenance done in Kolkata on exteriors or public spaces--washes of bright chalky colour (as my girls insist I correct it) seem to be the main upkeep plan. It took a long time to get our luggage, but when we stepped out to look for our transport, it was unbelievable. I'll just say that, although I did have my own individual car and my own white-jacketed chauffeur, I was a little disappointed because ,my driver did not have a sign with my name, though everyone else's driver did. WTF?
I now know that this suburban ride was NOTHING compared to a Kolkata cab ride, and I also now recognize that these neighborhoods near the airport are semi-rural slums, but still, wow! Three lanes of traffic ith no lanes fixed, each way!Weaving people walking out among the speeding cars! Incessant honking!Rickshaws! Beggars reaching in the window!ACTUAL fruit carts ready to be upset during our chase scene, and yes, neighborhood cows grazing on the side of the busy road. Pretty much everything you might expect to see in India you will see within 5 minutes of the airport-- poverty: people sleeping on tables in front of little tarp-covered stalls, people bathing in buckets by public pumps, a whole community under an overpass, with little naked toddlers running around, but also: colors! Amazing architecture of all kinds, beautiful trees, plants, and flowers everywhere. A few photos from that ride:
The BSS School
In Indian education there are 3 kind of schools, government, public
schools, which are of minimal quality or below and still have fees;
private schools under the direction of 2 different boards which have
separate but very similar curriculum and examinations, which charge even higher fees, many of the most prestigious of which are still run by the Catholic Church, and 'International Schools', very expensive and only for the children of the most rich and powerful.
Ballygunge (the neighborhood) Shiksha (I think South) Sadan (Secondary. I think.) is the school Sarah (Science/Math) and I are assigned to in Kolkota. It is a prestigious and well-respected school, and very well-run. In some ways it is a bizarre new world of strangeness, but in other ways it is helpfully reminiscent of St. Thomas Apostle in my childhood or certainly of St. Francis. It's also helpful that I read so many books in childhood set in British schools (especially since Enid Blyton is still the
Hunger Games of Indian female adolescents). There are around 2500 girls in the school from Nursery to 12th, mostly children of what here would be the middle class, with a few very wealthy girls and some very poor scholarship girls thrown in. Each level is divided into 3 sections, A, B, and C, so a student can be "reading in' VI C, for example. The school is also divided into multi-grade houses, just like in Harry Potter.
Natural Disaster evacuation? No, a lull in the after-school pick-up time crush at the BSS School.
 |
| Part of a 6 or 7 Level class |
 |
| It's Girl Guide Day once a week. I can't fit the whole class in the photo from inside the room. |
Within 5 minutes of our arrival at the school
we were brought in front of the entire-school morning assembly,
introduced, and asked to give out the prizes from a recent academic
competition, which I now know to be one of an endless succession of
school, city or national competitions in anything from karate to Chinese
skit delivery. This prize-giving-out is something that local nobilities or visiting
dignitaries always have to do in stories. Both the introduction response
and the prize giving require gestures and brief speeches such as are
required of the Queen. Together with the fact that all students address
one as 'Ma'am', one is feeling very regal by the time the lahst sweet or
plaque has been bestowed.
 |
| Here I am giving out a more recent prize |
 |
| And that is Sarah behind Principal Ma'am also performing her regal duties of prize-giving and congratulations |
Here are some views of the interior courtyard during morning assembly:
Something which seems small but has many interesting effects, both good and bad, and is very challenging for an American high school teacher: students have a classroom, and for core subjects they stay there, while the teachers come and go. None of the teachers has a room or even a desk--they work, eat, and socialize in assigned seats at these tables in the Secondary Staff Room (and there is another for Primary). A teacher we have come to know well tells us that these table groups become like little families, supporting each other through life's difficulties. The BSS teachers as a group are very warm and expressive in the staff room.
 |
| Secondary Staff Room |
 |
| And here is where they keep all their stuff. |
 |
| Sarah at our assigned spot |
 |
| Every day they are collecting and grading all these copybooks, which are usually bundled with twine. |
See the big 7Up bottles? Those are some of the communal water bottles on
each table. All drink (well, not us, of course, but the people who are
not treated in the fashion of the Queen) from these bottles, which are
filled from these old metal water purifiers out in the hall, but they
drink without putting their mouths on the bottle at all, which I have
practiced in my bathroom but still can't do without drenching myself.
The students are insanely excited to have us here. Here is a list of questions I plan to ask my American students next year:
1. Why don't
you ever ask for my autograph?
2. Why don't you thank me in the afternoon for the wonderful class I gave you in the morning?
3. Why do you forget to jump to your feet whenever I enter a room?
4. How is it that you have forgotten to tell me how very pretty I look today?
5.Where are my daily gifts,--similar to offerings for the powerful and popular goddess Kali, who slaughters those who irritate her--of chocolates, cards, and small bunches of flowers?
6. Where is the note you should write me on Day 2 of our acquaintance telling me I am the most special to you of anybody and mean more to you than any teacher you have ever known?
7. Where is the general clamor that I shall sit by each of you and you alone whenever I watch a presentation from a desk?
These are all excellent questions in my opinion.
The students are fascinating and hilarious. If I had to characterize
them as a group, I would say extremely affectionate and open, dedicated but goofy, disciplined but
barely, young both physically and socially compared to girls back home,
though far more responsible and hard-working, overall. All the rituals
of older Catholic schools are found here and then on beyond that.
Students always stand to answer a question, or when a teacher enters the
room. They call all teachers "Ma'am, and always greet you, "Good
Morning Ma'am", "Good Afternoon Ma'am". I will have to reply to these
greetings about 150 times going up the stairs to class, and to
additional greetings from all the porter/guard/cleaner people. I notice
most of the Indian teachers just nod. If the girls are speaking to or of
a specific teacher, they say the first name plus Ma'am, so we are Janet
Ma'am and Sarah Ma'am, and some people they call by their position, ie
'Principal Ma'am'. At first when I looked out over morning assembly I
wondered why the older girls didn't come. After the Principal had
checked that I was competent and 'promoted' me to teach her 11th grade
grammar class I found out that they were out there; they just don't look like a US high school senior--I'll take some photos.
 |
| Two Muslim girls are allowed to put their heads down because it's Ramazaan and they are fasting. They didn't keep their heads down very long... |
 |
| There is also the more familiar toilet, but this is one of the toilet options in the Staff room and some other pubic places we've been. |
Office supplies in the staff room--they attach multiple page work with straight pins.
The BSS School, and I hear it's true of the schools the other teachers work in, is very
hierarchical. At the top is Principal Ma'm. She has a large office full of deities and does a lot of reporting to her board on all the oversight she is doing of the teachers and students. She only comes into the staff room for celebrations such as a birthday or departure. It was Sarah's b'day last week. There was a very pretty cake for her (Indian sweets--another topic for another day...), and a knife to cut the cake with ribbons on the handle, which I saw at another birthday celebration here, so I think it is common practice. The Principal came in for this and we all sang, and DURING the singing and candles the teachers standing near Sarah kept whispering, "Cut the cake! Cut the cake!", so here you have to start that before the singing ends, and then Principal Ma'am fed Sarah a chunk of cake, like a wedding cake thing but mercifully without the squashing. I asked my girls and they said all their families do that also. She is very polite to us, but not in our sphere, though she does teach at least a few of the highest classes. Below her is the Vice Principal. Mrs. Banarjee, a very friendly and energetic science teacher who also has her own, though smaller office but is more frequently seen around school. For example, she runs the morning assemblies. Then, working in the Staff room is the very calm, kind, and helpful Academic Coordinator, whose jobs seems to include overseeing and educating the teachers, especially the younger ones, of whom there are many at the moment; solving problems with the schedule which continually arise (They don't have substitutes but are continually sending out teachers to "take" as they say, a missing teacher's class), teaching some classes, and most often, listening to long impassioned speeches from teachers which
sound like, but perhaps are not always, complaints, though I'm pretty sure they often are. THEN there are Heads of Departments for each subject, and they, besides teaching, meet with the higher-up people to check on whether teachers are following the syllabus, keeping order, etc., and I don't really know what all; THEN there are the teachers, who don't seem to have much official say in what or when they teach, or how the school is run or teaching methods for their classes, though they do have great authority in their classrooms and prestige in the community. THEN there is an army of blue-shirted men who are guards and porters, and another army of blue salwaar ladies who also seem to be sort of cleaners/porters, except there is another bunch of ladies in saris of the working people kind who make the tea, fill the water bottles, and wash out everybody's tiffin box, which is what you call your lunch here.
There is a Syllabus which comes from the Board--a list of topics or works which must be taught at each level within each time period, and that Syllabus, a demanding and fast-paced list of knowledge to be acquired, rules all. All Indian high schools follow the same pattern: there is a huge national examination (a few different ones, depending on the type of school, but all demanding massive recall and written reproduction of massive amounts of information) after 10th grade, and students who don't pass it can't go on to 11th. They are done. There is another such exam after 12th--no pass, no university, assuming your family can afford it anyway. The common thing here is for all family members in existence--aunts, older cousins, all grandparents, etc. to chip in to pay for college for any eligible student. In return they and the society expect that student as a prosperous adult to take care of all these older people. Ladies here wear a LOT of jewelry. The Indian teachers never ask me why I don't wear certain clothes, but they DO ask about jewelry--"Do you ever wear any costume (for which I read "larger" jewelry?""Will you be buying Indian jewelry?" Ads for jewelry are everywhere, and many gifts of jewelry to the whole family are required during any courtship or wedding. Well, it turns out that like many Asians in the Bay Area, Indians use jewelry not just as adornment but as their bank, probably until recently for lack of better options, and when it's time to pay for college, in India or abroad, many of the jewels come out and get converted to tuition.
Anyway, as you can imagine, this examination system causes a lot of stress, though it certainly seems to motivate people. Apparently most students go right after school to 'tuitions', where they work with private tutors on their subjects to raise their grades or 'marks', and to increase those exam scores.
Everything has paperwork--log to sign in and out, log to list what you taught in each class, which the Prefect will hunt you down and make you sign if you forget, logs for everything, and, although they are from THIS YEAR, each one because of design and weather looks like something which would have been found dragging from Jacob Marley's chain. I must get a photo of these...
Education in India is extremely varied, depending on who runs a school and who attends, but there are a few generalizations to be made about it. It relies heavily on teacher lecture, student note-taking, rote learning of these notes, and high-stakes examinations where the information from these notes must be written pretty much verbatim by the students under the watchful eyes of the wonderfully named 'Invigilators'. A lot of traditional British school structure, which may be passing into history in the modern UK, is rigidly preserved in most Indian private schools, and hearing words like 'Invigilators' makes me realize that half the fantastical effect of books like Harry Potter is already found in the British education system. Here they have House Captains, Prefects, and head girls. As a generalization, Indian students have a very high skill level, advanced far beyond their American counterparts, but at the same time they have had few opportunities to apply these skills or use them independently in any kind of active inquiry. As a result, analyzing, synthesizing, recognizing connections--making analogous leaps from a known concept to a new one can be fresh challenges for them, although they are certainly excited to try!
There are many common, effective American classroom strategies that are extremely difficult to use here. For one basic thing, the teacher ( even a teacher more compact than myself) can't get down the aisles to interact with students or groups. In another example, I had partners working on 'talk-back poems', which mirror the rhyme scheme, theme, meter etc. of the poem being studied. We were writing humorous poems and the girls were into it, enjoying the assignment and working hard. In India, at least in Bengali, if you have absorbed some idea that sari'd Indian ladies speak in low and dulcet tones, forget it. It's common for we American teachers to assume a serious argument about to result in violence is occurring, when one of the Indian teachers in the conversation will turn and explain that the group is discussing how much they liked the film all saw on the weekend. Everybody screams and expresses themselves with intense energy. So, there are 55 girls communicating in that way in a room which is about 12' by14', best as I can tell. It's not possible to hear any questions and difficult to avoid disturbing the class next door, and definitely makes a teacher consider whether that activity should be repeated!
I am hoping to make it, perhaps tonight, to the legendary Oxford
bookstore several blocks from my hotel because I want to buy India: An
Uncertain Glory by Amartya Sen, a Nobel-winning economist who was born
and educated in Shantinikitan, the school and village we visited last
weekend. This work, and one with an opposing view by another economist,
is receiving a lot of attention in the press here (and by the way, the
newspapers here are awesome--varied, plentiful, dense, contentious, and
thriving) and probably there as well, so I thought it would be fun, and
probably much cheaper, assuming I don't go over my weight allotment for
the plane, to have an Indian-purchased copy. The book proposes that tdescibing an economic shift as growth when the
percentage of the miserably degraded and uneducated in a country not
only endures but increases is not a valid measurement of economic
progress. He shows the true costs for India of its current education
policies and makes the case for changing these, while his opposing
number in apparently a sort of economist World Wrestling Smackdown,
supports the "A Rising Tide Raises all Boats" position some might
remember from our Reagan years. Before I left I was aware of the
academic achievements of Indian secondary students, and impressed. I
hoped to learn more about how Indian schools prepare such a diverse
population at such a high level. I am learning great things every day
from my Indian school, but not really about this particular question,
because that's not exactly what goes on here.
Some quotes from some research I read:
"The following summarizes what the BL data for India in 2010 actually says:
- 327 out of every 1000 Indians above the age of 15 have never had any formal schooling
- Of the remaining 673, only 20 dropped out during primary school.
Once we got kids into primary school, we managed to make sure that they
completed it. (Primary goes to 5th grade)
- In secondary school, however, the situation is markedly different.
465 out of every 1000 Indians made it to secondary school but 394
dropped out without completing.
- Only 58 made it to college out of which a little more than half graduated with a degree."
So it's kind of similar on a grand scale to when we have to hear
about the achievements of some charter schools with no acknowledgement
that all charter schools have some sort of selection or screening
process, even if only that parents who put their kids in a charter have
to be together enough to go down there, fill out the forms, and agree to
support or participate. Yes, Indian secondary graduates are very strong
in some areas, but only the most affluent, educated, motivated and
determined families' kids make it through high school, and our kids from
such families are very successful also.
Next time I will also try to tell you about the visit I was able to make to a village school--bare bones, sponsored by the government, but now I have to sleep because it is 11:41 here and we leave at 5:15 for our trip to the TAJ MAHAL!
THE RAT!
BSS school is very well maintained, but it's older, open, and in the
heart of a very congested city, so the guards can't keep out all
unwanted visitors...
Suddenly as class began at the BSS School, when my Indian co-teacher Sumita was also in the room, girls began to scream, some running away from the window wall, and some toward it. Some girls had squealed about a tiny spider a few days before (Middle school girls--some traits are universal) so I wasn't concerned, but suddenly I heard "Rat!", and just then I saw its fat brown back bobbling along under the window. I think I made a distressed noise, becuase Sumita suggested I go out side with the girls who were worried, which was all but about 3, who stayed in and tried to catch the rat. SUmita went to get some help, one of the porter/guard guys and one of the cleaning lady/guards came back with a broom (Brooms in India I have seen are home-made of bundled twigs, or soft and feathery, I think made of some sort of cord, fiber, or hair. This was the feathery kind. They were in there for some time, so we had a little rat holiday out in the hall. Finally Sumita went in to check and gestured for us all to come in. I asked if they caught the rat. Sumita said, "It became imperceptible". Great.
When will I ever finish:
Last Weekend
Dance recital, Shantinikitan, etc.
MONSOON--where is it?
Food
And More?
