Christian Schools in India

I want to tell you today about teaching in India and rote memorization. I have always felt uneasy when people in North America speak disparagingly about rote learning…memorizing something even when you don’t completely understand it. As children we all have had to do some of it and as a teacher I used rote memorization for multiplication tables, for Bible passages, and for poetry. Of course we try to make certain students understand the concepts they are memorizing but some of them don’t reach the moment of “Aha! Now I get it!” until some time afterward.

During the past two weeks I have visited many Christian schools in India. They are always schools that serve children from extremely poor families. The schools are the best schools available to these children and the teachers are loving people who teach for little money. But you would be as sad as I was to see what the classrooms are like. In some schools whether the children are pre-kindergarten or grade 10, they sit very tightly together on old metal benches, often with no desktop or table in front of them. If they have any lunch with them it is a little pot of plain white rice. Worldwide Christian Schools has a lunch program in which North American children save their change in a special bank and the money is used to provide lunch for Indian children who have little to eat at home.

Teaching and learning go like this in some of these schools. The teacher says a sentence. All the children shout the sentence after her. (Most teachers in these schools are women.) Or the teacher asks a question and all the children shout the answer. I asked a principal how they might know whether or not a child had difficulty learning and she said that none of them do. “After they have heard the answer over and over, they will have memorized it and then they will have learned,” she said.

The singing sounds exactly like the shouting. No clear melody is discernable unless one knows the song well. Then you can sort of hear the tune.

I was told over and over that the grade ten students must do well on their examinations. And they told me in every school how well their grade ten students always did on exams. I asked what the exams are like. Every question and answer comes directly from the textbook and so the entire grade ten year is a matter of memorizing those questions and answers. Outside examiners come and give the tests. Often the question is omitted and the students must supply the answer from memory. Often there is a blank with no surrounding words and the students must fill in the blank. In one school I said to a teacher who has become a friend, “The test makes no sense at all. It is not a test of learning.” She said, “You are exactly right. It makes no sense.”

Of course there are much better schools than these in India. But the students who live in slums like Beggars’ Valley in Mumbai (Bombay) cannot afford to go to the good schools. The public schools available to these children have lazy teachers who often don’t show up at all. The great blessing in the Christian schools is that the teachers are loving, caring people.

When there is a chalkboard there are beautiful flowers on it drawn by children. They are talented in drawing and dancing. I keep thinking how talented they would be in many other areas if they just had a chance.

We provide a conference for the teachers once each year. They have asked for new methods for teaching. However, having seen 50 or 60 children crowded onto benches, most of the methods we use wouldn’t work in such small spaces. Still, story mapping and story grammar, along with other things like that, would surely be helpful to them in learning to think.

Of course I have also seen very good Christian schools for poor children. Education in India is very, very good for some students. The U.S. outsources typing from dictation to graduates of these schools. And at Calvin College I have known many Indian students who have had excellent elementary and secondary education. Those are young people who have gone to good secondary schools and have succeeded there.

The way I understand the life of Jesus Christ, it seems to me that he gave special loving care to the poorest people. Hindus do not allow lepers into their temples but Jesus touched them and healed them. When I watch these very poor children the phrase, “Made in the Image of God,” is always on my mind. Most of the children in these schools are from Hindu families. Many of them come to believe in the saving grace of Jesus Christ and some even have led their families to believe.

I just wanted you to know about this very different way of teaching.