A Western Take on Education

The principal of the school here, Principal P, has decades of experience running schools. Big ones too, equal to the size of the Corbett School which is where we're teaching. He's Sagar the headmaster's relative, somehow. Anyway, I really like him. He's very committed to shaking up how things are normally done in Indian schools. He wants to break the standard mold of students just memorizing information and teach them to think creatively, independently and as problem solvers. Basically he wants to bring in a bunch of Western teaching methods. To start the ball rolling he asked Grace and I to prepare a presentation about Western Teaching methods, especially with respect to young children. We were told that Western theories of education were taught to education majors at University, but they primarily focused on older kids.

Well, my degrees are not in Education and neither are Grace's. But, they thought we would be a good place to start, having at least gone to Western schools. We decided that we would just consult the people we knew (friends, my brother, relatives, etc.) who were involved in education and we got several great responses which we sorted through and stuck in a powerpoint presentation.

The general thrust of our presentation was to break up the lecture format and use a lot more activities where the students worked with each other or independently. We were sick for a week which delayed our presentation, but eventually one of the orphanage assistants hooked the laptop up to a TV monitor and the Principal called the whole teaching staff in. They filled the whole classroom and we hadn't met most of them yet.

Grace and I gave our presentation, alternating between slides. I think it went well, except people in the back couldn't read the smaller type. We're printing out a copy so they can have the notes.

The principal wants to shake things up but it will be very difficult to implement any changes. There are a lot of obstacles:

1) Lack of Experience - All of these teachers went through Indian schools and they have been taught in a way very different from what we presented about. It's very difficult to jump into these uncharted waters. They're comfortable with the way they teach now and the students are reasonably comfortable with it too, since they've had it all their lives. Grace and I definitely realize that our English classes are pretty popular because they're so novel, so unique. They break up the kids day. And when I teach physics the kids giggle half the time, I think because what I'm doing seems ridiculous (I brought a pendulm demonstration to class - a shoelace tied around a piece of wood - and the kids thought that was ridiculous. They all kept asking to see it). But once we leave there will be no one here who has an experience of Western Education. The school doesn't have an obvious model to look to for guidance.

2) Lack of Resources - The school is blessed with TVs and Computers for every classroom. At least, they will be. The new school building is only half completed so many of the classes are still being held in temporary spaces where there aren't computers or TVs. But, even if everyone had a TV and a computer it wouldn't be that helpful. There's a major dearth of research materials: no school encyclepedias, non-fiction libraries, magazines or internet (it's available for the administrators so far, but they haven't been able to hook up the whole school yet). Already that imposes a major challenge - how can kids do research reports when there's nothing they can turn to for information but their school textbook? How can they do book reports when their only reading text is the a collection of short stories and speeches in their English textbooks?
Some donors in the US read our blog and donated money to buy books and now the school has 200 brand new books - a mix of non-fiction, simplified classics and picture books mostly. So the kids can definitely do book reports now and maybe some research, as long as they stick to subjects covered well in the 70 or so non-fiction books available. But we have to make sure the teachers make use of the equipment. We're scheduled to give a presentation about the books on Tuesday.
Another pressing issue is other materials. No lab equipment, no toys for the nursery kids, none of those little boxes of stuff you used in primary school to practice counting or something. The kids read about the kind of experiments we would actually do in the West. In my physics classes I draw a Vernier Calipers and talk about how to use it. At my high school we were each given a pair and spent the class period measuring things.
The school has plans for labs and a large library in the future. But from here it looks like a few years at least until those plans might come to fruition.

3) Time - The teachers have so much on their hands now it will be difficult for them to find the time and energy to develop brand new, never tried lesson plans. The teachers must write tests, grade tests, write notes to give the class and, of course, teach classes. And this school is brand new so there are all sorts of short term challenges based around starting something. These start up challenges might fizzle out in a year or two, but by then a certain status quo will have been established that will be difficult to shake out of.

4) Language - This is a huge barrier. Many of the teachers do not have good English. Some of the kids are good but many are really, really bad. Yesterday I was talking to a teacher from Mizoram (a north eastern state in India with good education). I had trouble understanding him - he spoke English but we both had to repeat ourselves a lot and it was a halting conversation. But he had gone to a much stricter English medium school than the one where we are. At the Corbett school teachers teach in English only but the administrative staff doesn't and the kids talk in Telagu to each other. At his school if you were caught speaking a language other than English on school grounds you were punished - it was an English only environment. And it produced someone who still wasn't fluent, even after many years there! And now the kids are learning english from speakers who aren't fluent themselves, hardly the best role models!
This is just another barrier to everything in the school. It's like sand in the motor of a car - it just gums up everything. If the teacher gives instructions the kids don't understand. If the kids work together in groups they don't understand each other. If the kids have to do independent research they have trouble reading the books. When the kids have to write their reports they have trouble expressing themselves. When the teacher grades their reports they have a harder time understanding it and correcting mistakes. It's like a fog that covers the whole school, obscuring everything. The current method of teaching - lecture to the class, students write down everything the teacher writes on the board word for word, read the textbook for homework, take a test every month - minimizes the language problems I think. But obviously that comes with a big price.

5) Skepticism - No one has talked about this but I'm sure it's there. The principal is a big advocate of this kind of teaching but I bet some of the teachers are less optimistic. And I know some of the parents are skeptical. With this kind of teaching it's a little harder to see what's being learned. When kids come home without a days worth of blackboard notes the parents get worried that they haven't learned anything and then they complain. When you let the kids find things out for themselves with activities and independent research and small group work, there's a trade-off. The kids don't learn facts as quickly, but they learn how to think. But it's harder to see that, especially if you're used to a completely different sort of "learning."

But Principal P is not letting the status quo rest, at least not yet. His own education is in biology and zoology so he's started with that section of the school. He gave a demonstration class to the biology teachers about how he wants things taught. He's starting with doing away with the word for word copying off the board and advocating that the kids be forced to do homework where they write their own answers without copying from anything. I've seen some of the kids notes and it's clear some of them don't know what the words mean - they don't include spaces between the words, theyjustlumpthemalltogether.

Anyway, baby steps.