January, 2003. Background and Overview ----------------------- Viveka Asha Yojane is a project under which we have adopted 72 schools in Chamarajanagar district in Southern Karnataka. In addition to the site visit, I tried to understand the problems in the quality of teaching in government schools, and I have incorporated that in this report. So this is more than a site visit report, and presents some of my understanding of the situation w.r.t to teaching in govt. schools. Overall, I felt the Viveka Asha Yojane project was doing well. It had adopted 52 govt. schools, and just last month adopted 20 more schools bringing the total to a whooping 72! And Mr. Jayadev does not require more money for the additional schools - he might require more money for strengthening the cluster resource centers (CRCs), which are resource centers for the schools. The biggest success in my opinion is the fact that Mr. Jayadev has been invited to be on the committee for the Chamarajanagar district Sarva Siksha Abhiyan program, the latest govt. program aimed at achieving UPE by 2010. In Chamarajanagar district, they are going to be releasing Rs. 62 crores in the following years upto 2010. (Rs. 500 crores for all of Karnataka). To quote Mr. Jayadev, "they have no clue how to use the money". Mr. Jayadev will be on the committee suggesting how the money can be used. I cannot think of a better return for the Rs. 3.26 Lakhs Madison and Boston have invested so far (till June 2003 - he felt an extension till Dec. would be good, by then he would have figured out the Sarva Sikshana committee workings and wants to incorporate the work being done now as part of the govt. schemes). They have basically focused on (1) Science training with an emphasis on activity based learning for teachers - aimed at upper primary (5,6,7th standards) (2) Strengthening the SDMC committees (consist of parents and teachers - they have conducted workshops for parents to teach them of their rights and responsibilities and how they can work to improve the school. Many parents who are part of these committees are illiterate. These committees initially had panchayat leaders as members, but after Mr. Vishwanath became education minister, he changed that to ensure the members are parents. I really do think the Karnakata govt. esp. the education minister are doing good things. Now is the time to reform govt. schools in Karnataka), (3) identifying infrastructure necessary for the schools - toilets, drinking water, compound walls, in some cases have gotten the village via the SDMC committee to whitewash the schools themselves), (4) provided other support in terms of providing waste baskets, encouraging gardening in the school yard etc. They have developed an excellent rapport with the teachers and the community. This also I consider a success. Everyone knows of this Yojane, and we were really given a royal welcome at every school we visited. People (teachers, headmasters) personally came up to me and said thanks. At one school they practically forced us to have a second lunch at 3.00pm, though we had already eaten). It was very clear that they were very thankful to the Yojane, and this translated into the warm welcome we got everywhere. Details (can skip if short of time ...): ---------------------------------------- Anita (Asha-Madison, Seattle, Bangalore) and I arrived at Chamarajanagar at around 3.00pm. (late by a couple of hours). A program which had been organized with the DDPI (deputy director of public instruction) , a govt. official in charge of education in that district) and teachers had to be postponed becuase we were late. The teachers were waiting (we had not realized it was such a big function). We had a quick lunch and got started on the program/function. The DDPI was called and joined us in a bit. It was a formal function where books where distributed to teachers of the adopted schools. All of us gave short speeches (I was quite proud of myself for accomplishing this in Kannada) and then the teachers came up on stage and talked about their feelings about the program. They all seemed to really like it, repeatedly said they were very grateful for it. At the end of the program Anita and I were a bit dazed - if all the teachers were this motivated, we could solve India's education problems in no time! After the function ended, several teachers stayed back to thank us again, and talk to us. One of them, the headmaster of Aralipura was very insistent that we have lunch at their school the next day (the teachers knew we were planning on visiting several schools the next day). This is a border district so the headmaster (a young man) spoke Tamil also and he was very earnestly inviting us in Tamil to the school. During the function I was sitting next to the DDPI and he was asking questions about the US - what villages were like, what schools were like, where I lived, how large Boston was etc. Anita had to leave the next morning for Bangalore. Soon after she left the rest of us (Mr. Jayadev, the social workers, myself) got ready to leave for a day planned for visiting schools. 52 schools had been adopted initially, and an additional 20 had been added at the request of the schools and govt. officials themselves for a total of 72 schools. There were 5 social workers, one of them was the coordinator (and is paid Rs. 250 more), and there is a 6th person who is sings very well and is experienced in incorporating singing and dancing as part of the learning process. The 6 social workers, myself, Mr. Jayadev set off in two cars. (we had planned that to be able to visit several schools, as public transportation between the villages was very limited). We started at around 9.00am. In all schools, without exception (well, except the one where there was no teacher), we were welcomed very warmly. Everyone had coffee or biscuits ready, and one I talked about above had lunch ready, prepared at a villager's home. (we went to this school after lunch but had to have a second lunch). Several had "welcome" rangolis on the floor. There was a feeling of gratitude that "this person from the US was helping us and we are so happy about that". I am not saying that they should be grateful, but I found it very encouraging that the teachers were so happy with the project. There was so much eagerness that their students should do well. I almost felt as though they thought that by having "U.S." intervention the children in their schools will do as well as city school children and become doctors, engineers etc. Then why the problem? Why are the schools performing poorly? I try to answer these questions based on my experiences at the end of this writeup. One factor I noticed was that the teachers, especially in the smaller village schools were from villages themselves. They might have been the relatively well off ones (or maybe they became well off after they got the govt. job) but they came from villages. Maybe not the particular village where they were teaching, but from a village in the area. It appeared as though the stereotype of urban teachers coming to rural schools (such as what I described in http://www.ashanet.org/library/articles/sulekha.200202.html) was not uniformly true in this district atleast. However, the teachers who could commute from Chamarajanagar did so (they might have grown up in a village but now lthey lived in Ch. nagar). But I find the fact that the teachers grew up in villages very encouraging. Either the govt. was doing a good job recruiting teachers, or there were other external factors (maybe globalization had created jobs for the urban folks who were not now seeking govt. teaching jobs as much as they used to, giving rural folks a chance). Another factor I noticed was that except for a couple of schools, they were all freshly painted (often with the tricolor), and had many colorful drawings on the outside walls. Inside walls had alphabets, numbers and so on. The school buildings were not as dingy as one would expect. All had the current govt. slogans on the walls ('maraliba maguve, shaalege' come-back-to-school campaign, 'nali-kali' joyful learning, etc.) However other infrastructure was poor. No chairs and benches for the most part, in some cases only benches (students had to keep their books on their laps and write ... I would imagine sitting on the floor was much better). Typically 3, sometimes 4 classrooms for 7 classes (class I - VII). And in each classrooms children were packed in. There was hardly room on the benches to sit, let alone balance a book on one's lap and write. But all in all, I thought the infrastructure at these schools were significantly better than the infrastructure in TN govt. schools I have visited (where many primary schools were in one room only - see TEA trust report). Yet another factor I noticed is that almost all children were very timid and would not open their mouths. I have also not yet mastered the art of making children in a classroom comfortable .. I think I was also quite awkward. I think the children in general are not encouraged to say much in classrooms, but in addition they were initimidated by the large number of adults trooping in (the next time I visit, I will do this differently). In many classes when asked what the favorite subject was, they would say 'Maths'. I doubt this many students all like Maths. I think they said mostly what they thought the teachers wanted them to say, and in some classes Math class was going on and the Maths teacher was right there. By the time we reached Aralipura (where we were obliged to have a second lunch) I was feeling a bit more at ease and I suggested a question/answer session with the kids, where the kids could ask me anything, perhaps about the U.S. It took quite some coaxing and prodding from teachers to get the questions out of them ... And I had to struggle to find the Kannada word for "snow". :-) Some of the areas we visited were beautiful. The villages were nestled in the valleys surrounded by hills (foothills of the eastern ghats)..... but the villages are the same as any other village in India (mud huts for the most part, not much sign of economic progress). This was part of Veerappan territory and during the course of the morning a couple of villages were pointed out to me as places where he had stayed .... and these people were later arrested and were still languishing in jail while Veerappan roamed free. (this was the time Sandeep was protesting the conviction of ....(I can't remember the name, he was convicted in the parliament bombing case) and it struck me that there were so many people, not so famous, languishing in jails with noone to help them ...). The first stop was at Punajuru primary school , a residential ashram for lambani (a tribe) children. It was aa very small place with one longish room as a classroom. Children sat on the floor. It was a primary school and all classes were together in that room. On the road was a muncipal water pump where the children bathed, etc. The roof of the school building was thatched. It was quite a dingy building, and the worst of all the schools I visited. It was dark and dingy, and most unappealing as a place to stay and study for a child. (I asked Mr. Jayadev later why we cannot spend some money to atleast whitewash the building and put a shed outside for another classroom. He explained that infrastructure should come from the govt., maybe labor from the community and we should not interfere there (I did not think to ask then why he had not gotten the community whitewash the school as has happened in other villages; I will ask him that). The children were very timid, about 50-60 total (10-11 in each class). The teacher was very hospitable an welcoming and had coffee and biscuits waiting for us .....There is one teacher for the school and he said the dropout rate was high. I was not surprised, given the dingy state of the building. Mr. Jayadev acknowledged that this school was not doing well, and they wanted to show me a school which was not doing well. We need to figure out what we can do next here. The second stop was Punajuru upper primary school. This one had 2 rooms for the 3 classes, and the children were sitting on benches, but there were no tables!! Children had their books on their laps and were writing on them. You can imagine how difficult that would be. Sitting on the floor was much better I thought. But govt. had sanctioned benches and not (yet) tables, so there it was. The children knew Radha, the singer, who had visited them before and very happily they all began to sing with her. We gave the teachers books, and then they asked me to distribute chocolates to the children for New years day (it was Jan. 1). The third stop was at Kodipalya. This was a bigger village (the main road passed through it), and consequently the school had better infrastructure. I talked to the teachers a bit here, and one of them "complained" (explained, actually) about the difficulties in teaching Lambani (a tribe) children because they didn't speak kannada when they came to class I, and they had to speak to them through children who knew both languages. I can imagine the intimidation of a Lambani child in such a situation, and the lack of self-worth the child might feel for not knowing Kannada .... I brought this up later with Mr. Jayadev and the social workers, and they were telling me about the practical difficulties in having teaching happen in Lambani because the curriculum doesn't allow it. (one has to finish the syllabus in one year and so on). The fourth stop was at the govt. middle school in Chamarajanagar town. This was a big school. Here I felt the teachers were a bit like the stereotype of urban teachers who don't like their current posting. I seemed to sense a little less of a desire that the children in their school do well when compared to the smaller village schools. The students staged a drama about why dropping out of school was bad (I was quite impressed that this was the theme chosen for the drama - some of the slogans and schemes have really penetrated into people's minds). The 'function' was also formal in the sense that we all gave speeches. After lunch we went to Kodimale, a middle school (means up to class 7). There were not enough classrooms, so one class was outside. See (1) in the next section for an interesting (!) use of a classroom with blackboards on all walls. We next went to Aralipura, where we had to have our second lunch. I talked to the headmaster at some length, and asked him whether he felt the Viveka Asha Yojane program had helped the school. He said, yes, it had, a little bit, and he was hopeful that it would continue to be improve. This is also the school where I had some kind of a discussion session with the students. In one of the schools, Etthaegowdanagundi, which was a one teacher school, there was no teacher. see point (9) below. In Baevinatalapura a radio program was going on - 'Keli Kali' (hear and learn, a govt. program). It was quite interactive and quite interesting, and the teacher seemed to be making decent use of it. But the same teacher did not seem to be making good use of the letters and pictures on the walls. He said they are useful for 'copying down in notebooks when he has to handle more than one class at a time and has to keep one class quiet'. Not what DPEP intended the colorful walls for I am sure ... Mukundpalli was the best school. The teacher was immensely creative. He had used the DPEP material, and other material provided by the Viveka Asha Yojane to come up with excellent activities for the children. He had set up a shop in the one room school, to teach the children basic economics. He used stones and sticks the children collected from outside to teach Arithmetic. It drove home the point to me that instead of specific teaching kits or specific training programs, what was needed is to encourage the teachers to be creative - there is so much they can do with what is available at their door step. More than actual kits or material, what seemed to be important is the realization of what learning is all about. With that realization teachers can come up with their own methodologies, and improvise existing methodologies. Thoughts and Discussion: (discusses govt. schemes on improving teaching quality in general) In all visited around 10 schools. Some were primary schools (class I to V) and some where upper primary schools (classes I to VII). Again I was amazed at the reach of the govt. These villages are at the foothills of the eastern ghats (they are picturesque like the ones you see in movies) and some villages are entirely tribal - Lambanis and Soligas. DPEP, Chaitanya, Kali-Nali and other govt. programs had reached even the most remote schools. You can see physical evidence of the reach - the walls are brightly painted with maps, letters and all kinds of pictures (different from the dilapidated gloomy picture of govt. schools), so many schools had the 'aksharada chappara' ('roof of letters' - part of trying to create an environment of letters) etc. etc. All the good things we talk about, such as teaching aids with local materials, blackboards on walls so that the child can explore its creativity, a comparitively brighter school atmosphere, and all the other things which we like NGOs to do, is being done today by govt. programs. It is all part of DPEP. So, has teaching improved? I am not sure. Here are some examples why. (1) In one school, (Kodipalya) I asked whether the blackboard on the walls (you might have heard of the usefulness of this idea from Balaji Sampath) was used by children. Apparently the I std. class was painted with blackboards, as that is when the learning is most unstructured. But then the school decided that the class I should not be at the end of the corridor and moved the class, and moved class 7 there. Class 7 occasionally uses the boards for rough work, but class I lost it. (2) Charts were hung high up on walls away from children's reach. I asked why, and the answer was 'children will spoil them'. Mr. Jayadev had asked them before to move them down, and they had, for a few days, then up went the charts again. (3) I asked whether the letters on the walls was useful. The teacher answered "yes, when I am handling two classes, when I am teaching one class, the other can copy the letters from the wall. It is easy for them to copy from." (4) I saw teachers brandishing sticks in two schools (though I saw noone beat anyone, or come close to it). It was used mainly as a tool to help control children (in my - perhaps westernized - opinion, to intimidate children). In the Chamarajanagar town school the Asst. HM was using a whistle to get the children to assemble. The whistle was blow shrilly whenever the children were slow in getting to their positions. Mr. Jayadev and the social workers were more sympathetic to these techniques than me, as a way of maintaining discipline. (5) DPEP comes out with a beautiful monthly magazine with all kinds of articles and suggestions for teachers (a la the teachers magazine Balaji Sampath has talked about as being done by TNSF). I leafed through one lying on the asst. HM's desk. It had a nice colorful pullout poster with all kinds of activities. We asked him why he had not pulled it out and stuck it on a classroom wall. The answer was that the children will spoil it, and instead they write the poster on the board. (6) This HM also kept apologizing for a cultural program the school had put together for us (a skit on dropouts, and the reason behind them, choreographed by a social worker) and I think he used the word 'low caste' - he was apologizing that the program might not of high enough quality for us, and he meant that the students were mostly low caste and they are unaware of 'good cultural shows'. I was shocked. On further thinking I thought he might have meant 'low cost'. I guess I should give him the benefit of doubt. Maybe I was just being over-sensitive. (7) Hindi is introduced at class V acc. to the curriculum. One teacher said she starts Hindi alphabet at class I along with the Kannada alphabet, so that the children do not struggle at class V. (I am not an educationist, and I guess it is OK, but my point here is a teacher taking decisions which to me was not clear whether it had a sound educational base. There is a reason why one initially focusses on the mother tongue). (8) In some schools (this includes some private schools we happened to visit) we saw the teacher write down botht he question and answer on the board. (as opposed to the question and having the answer come from the children). (9) In one one teacher school, the teacher was not there, because they were inaugarating a new building for the school, and he had gone to rent more chairs for the function the next day. I was surprised to see the childen sitting quietly in school ( they told us the attendance was about half). One social worker hypothesized that the children might have been playing outside and ran in when they saw adults come up to the school. Or they were intimidated by threats of punishment if they did not stay inside (my hypothesis). One could say that here was a negligient teacher. But I wonder whether he has no choice - in the stratified system that we have today, when a senior official comes, he is obliged to do whatever needs to be done. Maybe I am being too biased towards the teachers. But this is the sense I got after the visit. I don't say all teachers are idealists, but they do have a desire to see their school do well, and are in some ways trapped by the system. (10) Infrastructure issues: primary schools (with 5 classes typically had 2-3 rooms, with 2-3 teachers (some had one room with one teacher). Upper primary schools typically had 3-4 rooms with 3-4 teachers. Naturally doubling up is essential. Each class can end up being 70-80 children. Difficult to implement joyful learning techniques which demand a ratio of 1:20 or 25, as has been pointed out in other reports. Most primary school children sit on the floor. Some higher primary schools have benches only. No desks - must be awfully difficult to balance your book on your knee and write on it. I would imagine the floor is better. The govt. policy is to provide benches and desks for only high school and above. (As discussed above, Mr. Jayadev is particular about not providing infrastrucure from the Yojane ashe feels it is the responsiblitiy of the govt. and the community, and they plan to encourage the SDMC to either provide it or pressurize the govt. into providing it). I will stop my examples here (I have only highlighted the bad ones to illustrate my point. There were plenty of good things to be seen). My basic point: There is no lack of teaching aids, and training programs to have these teaching aids reach children. But I am hypothesising that the teachers have not yet caught the point of why it is relevant. Of why it is important to put a chart up where a child can touch it. Of the whole point of putting alphabets on walls. Of the point of a more equal relationship between a teacher and a child where the child has full freedom to ask questions and not be shut up by the brandishing of a stick. Of why it was important for class I kids to have a place to scribble. I think this is the basic reason behind the failure of govt. programs. They basically dump stuff - information, equipment, whatever, without followup on how it can be used, and should be used. It is all one way, with no participation from the other end. At the DPEP office a training was going on for Urdu medium teachers (the govt. runs Kannada medium, Urdu medium (there is a sizeable muslim population) and Tamil medium (it is a border district) schools - a laudable thing) was going on. There was a TV and sound system blaring something - no interaction possible by teachers in the form of questions, doubts etc. How can they be expected to treat their students differently? The teachers are a product of the system. They have come through this system where one way talking is the norm, and disciplime through sticks is the norm, and the teacher's superiority over the students is not questioned. It is not easy to change, to say that this new way is better. This I feel is the crux of the problem. Interestingly, there was a recent article in the NY times which touched upon a similar problem here. A quote: "Key to the success of any educational overhaul, is convincing educators (teachers) of its value - an intangible hurdle that trainers refer to as "buying in" ". I have uploaded that article at: http://www.ashanet.org/projects-new/documents/296/us-training.txt The good thing about the Viveka Asha Yojane is that they can go that extra step which govt. training programs fail to do. Their training is more interactive (teachers said so), they work with the teachers on making the teaching aids using local materials (DPEP programs tell the teachers to do so, but don't follow up and see whether the teachers actually do it), they follow up on any questions the teachers might have. Motivation of teachers is not black and white. There are shades. In this case, many are from the Nagara area itself (unlike in H.D. Kote where I also visited). They are from nearby villages, studied in Mysore or some such place, and have have now got a job in the area where they are from. The teachers do want their school to do well, get first rank, get prizes etc. With great pride students who got prizes in the local Science and Sports competitions organized by the Yojane were pointed out to me. They are not perhaps as motivated as private school teachers where the management holds the sword, but it is not that bad either (in this district - not the case in H.D.Kote). But I think TCH and BEd programs are so bad, especially the former, the teachers are completely ill-equipped. There are some exceptional teachers - one one teacher school was doing a great job using teaching aids - but not all can be exceptional. The average teacher I really feel has not gotten the point about joyful learning from the govt. training programs. Conclusion: There is no denying the fact that the teachers were very happy with the Viveka Asha Yojane. One reason I felt is that in some ways the training programs help the teacher themselves learn better. Teachers are products of the same bad system themselves. Their understanding of subjects is quite poor in many cases. How can they conduct science experiments when they themselves don't understand the scientific principles behind an experiment? How can they answer student's questions? They don't knowt he answers so they don't encourage questions. I also did not know the principles behind several of the experiments that were used in the training programs. In teaching English especially, teachers are poor. Their knowledge of English is very poor, and they are truly grateful that they are able to learn English (English classes for teachers were conducted by Winnie, a young woman the from Netherlands who spent a few months at Deenabandhu). So I would say the program has achieved the following: (1) it has improved the levels of the teachers' knowledge (2) it has provided infrastructure improvements (by motivating the community) and books and (3) it has put the program in th govts' eyes - they include Mr. Jayadev in their meetings, including Sarva Siksha Abhiyan meetings (4) It apparently has been successful in getting the SDMC (parents' committees) working very well - unfortunately I could not attend a SDMC meeting and will do so next time. What it should continue to work on: (1) The concept of 'learning how to learn' has to be brought about more strongly - so that kids can learn on their own (2) Some tribal sensitivity training from the sister group of Swami Viveka Youth Movement (SVYM) would be good, (3) We have to expand from Science and Maths (seen as important) to Geography, History, Civics (this has started) (4) Local information has to be incorporated in the curriculum. Currently there is no attempt to modify the curriculum. Again we can learn from SVYM to think in terms of local botany, local geography and history. Mahendra, the social worker who is the coordinator, attended the learning network initiative conf. at Bangalore and presented some of the material they had developed. I think we should continue to work on the issues discussed above ... and we should plan to be in this for the long haul. I don't think it will work that we fund for a short time and things improve. We are just now beginning to understand the issues .... we have to be in it for the long haul to bring about real change in these 72 schools.