article from India

From time to time friends involved in teaching in India send me information that is helpful. The following is from one such article:

Larger Socio-cultural ethos:

* We live in a society where people are born unequal. Women have the lowest status – lower than animals. Your status starts to change once your children get married (old age is revered). Equality of all is in our constitution, but not seen in practice – because it’s not part of our cultural belief.
* Children with learning difficulties/ special needs – seen as the result of karma, seen as a burden on society. (Although a lot of times also people may simply not know how to help children with special needs – negative attitude may develop as a result of helplessness/ as a defense mechanism)
* Priority given to gifted students, older students (vs. pre-primary), richer students
* Low status of children in Indian society,
* the low status of women and consequently teachers who are predominantly female.
* Teaching is not seen as a calling; the teaching profession is usually considered a last resort – few youngsters choose teaching as a profession of choice.
* According to Prof. Krishna Kumar, one of the greatest problems plaguing Indian education is the fact that Indians do not see children as their collective responsibility: “a lot of people perceive education as a private concern, in the sense that they worry about their own children but don’t feel hurt or pained when they see others’ children exploited or treated badly. In such a social ethos, any government will have difficulty in pushing radical educational reforms.”1
* People do not feel angry about the injustice of our society and our education system, and thus little real attention is given to improving education for the poor. sees poverty as ordained by karma and does not feel personal responsibility for transforming injustice.
* The dominant Hindu worldview sees worldly reality as maya and sees glaring economic and social inequalities as merely part of the fleeting worldly reality which must be accepted rather than fought against.
* The hierarchical worldview prevailing in our society leads far too many people to believe that only the so-called bright or smart children matter and deserve education of the best quality.
* Hierarchical social relations: If all my life I have been told what to do – then I can never exhibit independent thinking or learning. I will always wait for my boss, my teacher, my parent or some one to give me instructions on what to do.
* Promoting a culture of independent thinking requires a deep faith in and commitment to the freedom and equality of individuals, egalitarian patterns of relations, democratic ways of solving problems, willingness to share power with those that are 'lower'; the human capability to reason, the precious value and innate capabilities of every child,. Many of these things may be different from the mindset teachers and parents imbibe from society.
* Some ethnographic and sociological analyses of Indian classrooms have identified several worldview elements that strongly influence educational practice in India (eg. Gupta, 2006; Sarangapani, 2003; Clarke, 2003; Clarke; 2001; Kakar, 1978). Some of these are:
o a collectivist notion of self,
o a duty-based code of living with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for members,
o the hierarchical organization of social structures, (à hierarchical relationship between teacher and student, ) and
o holism as a shared worldview that encourages openness to regulation (Clarke 2001). For example, these contribute to the
o students’ openness to direct regulation by teachers,
o teachers’ acceptance of regulation in their practice both by the prescribed syllabus and by school authorities.
o cultural assumptions such as collective decision-making, the hierarchical view of society, the assumption that the teacher has all authority and command over “valid” knowledge, prevented the teachers from fully appropriating the concept of going down to the child’s level,
* For example, the organization Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh found that in order to train teachers to adopt a more learner-centred interactive approach to social science teaching, it was necessary to first engage with teachers’ own assumptions, beliefs and attitudes on social issues such as gender, caste, social hierarchies, development, religion, tribal culture and national identities (Batra 2008). Teachers were found to be steeped in the conditioned notions on these questions, such as the view that social hierarchies are divinely ordained or that social inequality results from karma, which would hinder them from promoting critical discussions on these issues in their own social science classrooms.
* Similarly, in Science teaching, teachers’ own astrological or religious beliefs about natural phenomena may affect the extent to which they promote a questioning stance among students towards scientific phenomena.

Back from India

I haven't written for a while because Gypsy, Lynell, and I were traveling to schools in India, along with the WCS/India coordinator, Deepak Pissurlenker. We have been to India often and have warm relationships with many Christian teachers.

The following is from and Indian friend and educator:

Although the noble ideal of 'education for all' is safeguarded by the Constitution and more Indians than ever before now have access to educational resources, the educational inequity that young people in India face today is at its harshest.

· Out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.
· For a country like India, where almost 40% of the population is under 15 years of age, these trends are troubling, and can prove disastrous over the long-term if they are left unchecked.

· Imagine the impact that we can make in the region, and the world, if every educated Indian would give a couple of years of their lives towards a national cause….says Rakesh Mani is a 2009 Teach for India fellow, working with low-income schools in Mumbai.

· Modelled on the successful Teach for America program, TFI places the country's most outstanding college graduates and young professionals as teachers in India's low-income schools for two years in order to expand the educational opportunities available to thousands of underprivileged children.

It is an unfortunate fact that despite India’s rapid economic ascent and her emergence on the global stage, millions of Indian citizens are still left out of the sun.


Without assured access to quality educational instruction, millions of children from low-income urban communities are often left illiterate, unable to break the cycle of poverty, find employment and participate in the opportunities that are shaping India’s tomorrow. Thanks to the twists of the Ovarian Lottery, India’s economically backward classes drop out of the race before they can even start.

Education in India has a history stretching back to the ancient urban centres of learning at Taxila and Nalanda. With the establishment of the British Raj, western education became ingrained into Indian society. Now in the modern Republic of India, education falls under the control of both the central government and the states, with various articles of the Indian constitution providing for education as a fundamental right of every citizen.

Yet although the noble ideal of 'education for all' is safeguarded by the Constitution and more Indians than ever before now have access to educational resources, the educational inequity that young people in India face today is at its harshest.



Sixty years on, groups of disadvantaged children --orphans, child-labourers, street children and victims of riots and natural disasters -- still do not have immediate access to schools. And when they do manage to attend school, they are channelled into the country’s bottom rung low-income private or municipal schools. This inequity is apparent in the numbers, and calls for grave reflection:



The average literacy rate hovers around 60% in India (for women, the number is much lower)

World Bank statistics show that fewer than 40% of adolescents in India attend secondary school.



According to a recent study, 15 out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.

More from George Couperus

Praveen, a likeable young Indian man, told Grace he was going to marry soon after his return home from sea. We asked the usual questions.

What does she look like, have you any pictures? The answer a long drawn out "noo!".

Have you seen her? Yes, once.

He would spend a long time on the phone. We teased him about it. We asked whom he was speaking with for so long. His answer, my future mother-in-law.

We asked, if he had ever spoken to his future wife. The answer again, a long drawn out, "noo!". Not allowed.

He went on to tell us that his parents wanted the best for him, and that he trusted their judgment. Such a contrast with our free thinking society. How many of us would entrust such a monumental decision to our parents? The thinking of the majority here is that intimacy preceeds committment. Is our way better? Not if you look at the statistics. Here up to fifty percent of marriages are estimated to fail. In India the divorce rate is estimated to be two percent. This makes one think of all the horror stories of forced and unhappy marriages we hear about in the media. It's true, there are some, but given the media's penchant for drama, it is no worse then it is here.
George and Grace Couperus.

Can children in rural India read?

The 2007 ASER reportss that while many children in rural India can now attend school, the reading level of the children remains low. This likely is because teaching is so poor in these schools.

The report indicates that:

Forty percent of the children in Standard (grade) one cannot recognize letters of the alphabet.

Fifty percent of the children in Standard (grade) three cannot read at a grade one level.

Sixty percent of the children in Standard (grade) five cannot read at a grade two level.

By Sierra Shae Gibbs

Huge cows lumber across the road
Halting the cacophonous traffic
As if they don’t even hear the mindless honking

Dogs roam every alley-way
I unleash my camera at the whizzing streets
And soon I have thirty different photos of stray dogs

Monkeys haunt the outskirts of the hotel
A man dozes in his chair near a half-eaten meal
The primates feast on mango salad, chicken, and rice

Brown coils dot the seldom driven road
The millipedes lounge, lying in dead-looking circles
They absorb the tar’s warmth before nightfall

By Sierra Shae Gibbs copyright 2009

by Sierra

A kid sits in a pile of hay
He’s tied round the neck with twine
His tiny horns hid beneath his fur

Nailed to the side of the mud-brick wall
Is a goat skin hanging to dry
Sunlight peeps through the canopy to heat the hide

In the kitchen, a pot boils over
The meat sizzles in the stew
The aroma of dung and meat drifts out the window

The goat kid tugs and the twine
And tries to reach a nibble of grass
His bony neck stretches out, longing for milk

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

India II by Sierra Shae Gibbs

India II

Deep in the swarm of people
I stand, hand in hand, with my mother
My backpack is full of knick-knacks

A little boy taps my shoulder
On his back rests a legless brother
They look at me with pleading lips

I tug on my mother’s sleeve
And ask if she has any money
I had spent all of mine on knick-knacks

She gives me a few rupee bills and coins
And I hand them to the kid with no legs
Both boys smile, and then their stomachs growl


By Sierra Shae Gibbs copyright 2009