The Allegory of the broiler chicken

I visited a neighbour few months ago.They are gadget buffs and take great pride in showing people the projector which gives them ultimate satisfaction in watching the world cup, the 50 inch LCD monitor that occasionally gave the same pleasure at a lower level and the iphone and ipad ( I am technically challenged to 'wooow' at such stuff) that has become a status symbol of the privileged recently.

The day I visited them the lady of the house took pride in showing off how her daughter who was mastering these gadgets wrecking her little brain. My neighbour was bent on proving her 1 year old's intelligence as the kid deftly unlocked the secret code of iphone, played angry birds on ipad2, danced to Sheila ki Jawani on LCD and clapped when Sachin scored a sixer on the projector.

I felt amused initially but the researcher in me , the ardent Piagetian , found this boring soon.It took me micromilli seconds to understand that all this kid did was observational learning she mimicked what her parents did. She was not a hacker to have broken password ( henceforth not a profound genius) she just repeated something she saw and hence it was nothing worth for a world record. Amazing though this could seem to a parent who dotes and marvels at their child's first words and first antics as if this was the first time a child ever did it, this show off seemed quite comical to me.

A cut off, of power supply made me realise what this kid really was.She felt paralysed and baffled. She had nothing to show off and hence felt betrayed and the toys around her never sufficed the void the gadgets filled in. Her mother admitted she could not handle the kid without these gadgets and attend her work at home and she thought these gadgets were a blessing and not to forget she is already showing signs of her Einstenian future.

I paused and wondered if Einstein would be himself if exposed to all these gadgets. He was not dumb enough to look and be pleased at stimulation he would definitely have opened up these gadgets frightening his parents.Lord save poor Enistein whom we quote unneccasrily to show off our kid's intelligence,All I could see in this kid was an over weight, chubby baby who took no pleasure in physical activity, and to whom reading and writing was no pleasure either. And that's exactly what we do to our modern age gadget babies, dumb them, mesmerise them with gadgets.

Dewey believes true education is experience and true experience is any learning that draws our interest to learn further. And dulling senses is not an experience though it stimulates a part of our brain and keeps us engaged. I wonder if these are the modern theorists on parenthood who believe gadgets . I might be old school to stick to books and colouring books but I cant share pride in any child mimicking actions of opening an iphone code.

" She cant read alphabets and numbers but she can open codes her mother chided".

I can imagine the same mother fretting if her daughter does not read or write in a couple of years. The aversion and impatience to read and low levels of reading in the post google era is not a new phenomenon. But such luxurious dumbing down of the child by occupying them so that you could rest for a while seems sad to me.

I see kids from slums come to school daily. I see them invent their version of golf, play cricket with wooden planks. They are bigger decision makers than Ambani's. They need to decide where they would sleep tonight with their mother and her new husband or father and his new wife. They understand the pluralities of life they have fathers and mothers. They dont need to be kept occupied , they find occupations as cleaners, domestic help, pseudo parents to younger ones. They learn to read from newspaper wrappers they wrap the veggies they sell. They know what fidelity is, they dont know what boredom and depression is. They know a pencil broken means two can share. I wonder why they yet dont make it big with so much street smartness? But they definitely thrive. Survival is piece of cake to them.


Our gadget dependent kids are prisoners of modern jails who never long for fresh air and the feel of hot sand. I represent this situation with an allegory of the broiler chicken' plump and raised indoor. Dumb and dimwitted. We create them to land in KFC buckets and thats all they need to know to be plump and dumb.
Whereas you see the country side chicken running up trees and taking you for a ride, living a healthy life till it end in your pot. A broiler even if let out would stare at you and the new found freedom and would not run away while the country side chicken has tasted the soil and fresh air and his master.

Their worlds never meet the broiler and the country side, they live on two planets.

Next time you hit KFC you'll remember my allegory and your kids :)

My kiddo's at school

I have started my field work again with a new bunch of kids. Kids I meet these days amaze me in many ways. I wish we as adults had half their excitement, contentment and determination. It's very easy to explain stuff to kids, they understand when you put words in the right sense. I know my friends with kids would tell me to remember these lines for those later days when I have my own kids. But that's again a significant question as to why we lose patience with our own kids. No amount of field trips can perhaps prepare one for parenthood and as a parent your job does not end by 4pm at school. However should it make us irritated and impatient to understand these little adults? Recently a kiddo asked me why I had no babies if I was married. Before I could answer the other kiddo told the first one, that it happens to many married women- they don't have babies. And they both put up a sad face and told me I would be fine. I was amazed at how they did not require an answer from me. That's kids.

Recently I realised how much we could learn by observing and listening to kids which half of us never do in life. We really don't have the time for kids and elders and what we do to them has happened and happens to us- something I label as the boomerang effect.But closely observe the kids and you might benefit from insightful learnings.

We were discussing on love and relationships at 4th grade and suddenly a girl got up and emphatically told me she was against love. on further discussion she revealed people who ran away and married never got fridge, TV and bed and so she does not want to miss out on those comforts for love. Her parents dont have any of these till date because they had a love marriage. Suddenly the group went silent as if they were all ruminating on their friend's points . As I left school that evening I could not stop wondering if our conditioning as girls were contributing to dowry deaths in a way. We expect from parents and demand from our kids don't we? Behind hushed doors of educated families and open alleys on the uneducated aren't we all the same? And if school is a microcosm of the world out there wasn't the 4th graders views a reflection of ours?

I really don't know and I really don't believe these are fanciful passing thoughts.Hope some of you reflect and share your views on this.

Pen Fights and other games

These days I am reading a lot on how children think and I came across the Piaget Primer for beginners. Piaget's contribution to developmental psychology and cognitive psychology is tremendous but that is not what I want to discuss here. I won't bore anyone with theoretical inputs but for those interested in research concerning children or interested in children, this is 'The book'.

I have already discussed about play patterns of children in an older post "Lets' play". Children learn a lot by playing (though as adults we concoct plans to steal this pleasure from them). Play to child is as inevitable as gossip to adults. In the right sense both can be enriching. Beginning with imitative play where children derive pleasure from imitating our actions to make believe play where children pretend to live the outer world through games , children progress sequentially through developmental stages through games. It culminates to a stage where a child invents his/her own games and decides rules for them too. Big or small, logical or non sensical these games are dear and mean business to a child.We all have fond memories of such games we played in childhood or observed others play.

These are excerpts of some games, some heard some seen and some experienced.

Piaget described a game played by shepherd boys of Valais using 'Y' shaped sticks as pretended cows. The 'V' part of stick was taken as the horns of the cows and the lower part of 'Y' became the body of the cow. The game involved pushing and throwing of one cow by the end of the game.

I studied in the middle east and we had no pleasures of climbing trees , date palms were not ideal climbing material, or playing in the wild. Every game I played was within the concrete walls of my house or the pathways surrounding my building. I remember boys in my school playing pen fights. I never understood what the game was like but reading about the Valais reminded me of this game.

Students played this in teams of two. Each had a pen and the kind of pen added to the prestige. Some used ball point pens because if they fell they caused lesser harm than ink pens. Some used ink pens confidently, sure they would not drop them. The arena was the desk and the player like rodeos sat at two ends of the table. They pushed pens with their fingers and the whole game was more like the Valais cow fight. Pens flew off table, fell over a pen overthrowing it and boys cheered around as if in a Colosseum. I never saw girls playing this and never did a girl kiss a pen saying it was her lucky 'pen fight' pen but the boys obviously practiced these traditions with rigour. To me it was just waste of ink and pens. Now that I look back it explains to me the nurturing instincts in men towards games that involved power, authority and violence, maybe their pens represented themselves, their pride and even in silly games these emotions and ideals manifested.

The silliest game then was called 'gold spot'. There was basically a catcher and all the players huddled together with the 'den' and on the utterance of the word Gold spot all ran as far as they could and froze . Now the den in seven steps was supposed to capture one of the person and he became the new catcher or den. We even had people breaking their bones in attempt to jump high and capture their preys in less than 7 steps. I got no clue why the game was named Gold spot and who invented it. This was a mixed game with both boys and girls but you never found boys above the age of 10 playing it. I don't know why girls enjoy hopping and why boys hated it.

The craziest of all was 'crocodile, crocodile can we cross the golden river'. Too long a name for a game I would say. Here the game had a crocodile who would prevent people from going to the golden river unless they provided an object with a colour he/she asks for. The squealing and screaming as we neared to the crocodile frightened the life out of me though I knew it was a just a game. Girls went hysteric, more than boys, worrying over shades of colours while for guys silver and grey meant all the same. More than the crocodile the girls ended up fighting over whose shade was the perfect one. Maybe this was a forerunner for the shopping mania women were to enter in future.

I personally feel we carry over these games with us into our adult life and release them once in a while. Do you? Share your child hood games and how you relate to them today. It could be fun.

My angels and their creations

I am speechless to comment on this. A tribute to me from my Michaleangelo's, Da Vinci's and Picasso's

Love you dears this is all I can do to respect the honour.

Sometimes you don't need expensive gifts to feel Loved. Some cute devils do it to you very easily.They change your life forever ;)

Let’s Play

Have you ever been to a kindergarten? Or ever observed toddlers play? I bet you are missing a lot if you have not. I did a kindergarten observational study as an assignment in my graduation. My course on child psychology devoted an entire module to the concept of ‘play’. Now don’t you frown thinking, what’s the big deal with playing? Play is not as natural as breathing, as you may think. It requires a kid to pass through many developmental tasks to master this skill.

Now you would laugh if I said play therapists exist, but the truth is they did not fell from Mars. It’s so amazing that with no prior coaching on how to play (kids these days have a coaching for everything under the sun before joining a day care centre), the sort of behaviours children exhibit when left to their own reminds us how unique each individual is right from the beginning.

Observing play patterns are important because it gives you insight into the developmental milestones of children. If you still don’t believe me ask this to those parents who worry as to why their two year old son does not kick a football? Or why is one’s kid not holding a pencil? Why doesn’t my kid respond to colours or music? Why is my one year old destructive with toys and fights with other kids. Get into a crèche and be prepared for a mess. Tearing of papers, peeing into paints, fighting over things etc., to just name a few, are tantrums of varied nature that would definitely frighten you. But it is also cool to see them forget these behaviours in minutes and settle down into new activities that engage the minds of our little geniuses for the whole day.

Now play does not just mean throwing a ball, playing with dolls and making sand castles. Anything amusing to a child becomes a game. Now take this case of an eighteen month old who was trying to gain mastery over clicking a ballpoint pen and the whole activity turned into a game. She tried it on and on. When she failed she looked around. Seeing me she held the pen towards me, which meant “HELP”. I showed her how it should be clicked and soon enough this became our game. She would click and give it to me and I was expected to give it back to her and this went on for around forty five rounds until she got tired. This is what therapists would call ‘cooperative play’. When you see two or more kids sharing stuff and doing something like building a castle or making clay models, its cooperative play behavior. Mostly their discoveries are through trial and error method and it’s amazing how they learn through consultation and howexhaustive the whole process can be.

There are many solitary reapers as well. It might seem unnatural to some that kids prefer being loners. Recent research on solitary play states it to be beneficial for the cognitive development the sensory, perceptual and information processing abilities constitutes cognition). While girls engage mostly in solitary – constructive play like puzzles and colouring, boys engage in solitary- functional activities – building blocks, kicking a ball around etc. Solitary activities could also be imaginary games, like when kids sit in a corner and talk to imaginary play pals. These Calvins discuss game plans and strategies and even feed their Hobbes. There is a third subgroup in solitary players called reticent players. These are kids who are onlookers, do not engage in any play but observe others playing. Try giving them a lump of clay or a colouring book, they would not engage in these activities. It is said these kids are isolated or insulated to be so or have certain cognitive as well as physical deficits making them onlookers. They could also be observing to pick up language and behavioural skills they think they lack. I remember my brother who belonged to this category. Now that I think of it I understand why he could not get along with our girlish games of make believe- kitchen. Another interesting observation about solitary players is that they engage in imaginary games. Calvin and Hobbes is a typical example. A friend of mine who read this post during the editing said being the youngest at home with no one to play with, she lived in an imaginary world where she believed she had two homes and would sneak food from her real home to the imaginary one.

It’s amazing that initially kids don’t realize the difference between their fantasies and reality but later on when they distinguish the difference they still stick on it for some time.
Sometimes it’s interesting to observe kids sitting in groups or in a circle and using the same set of resources. But they do not actually play with each other. This is called Associative play. You can observe kids building rail roads and bridges avoiding the pathways of others. They are not entirely solitary players who would not share their resources. The barter system in associative learners is interesting to observe. When they have pieces that don’t get along with their plan they offer it to the person next to them. This level of decision making is quite significant at the developmental stage. Here they are playing together yet they are not together.


Now if you observe another group, you would find children sitting together in a group yet they play individually. One might be building bridge, the other moulding clay or maybe even doing the same activity but with no interaction with their neigbour. You could call them islands. They don’t socialise at all like which happens in associative play. Sometimes you see kids who grab all the toys from kids nearby and play all alone. Neither does s/he play with others nor do they share resources. Single borns who never have had to share with other kids mostly engage in this play pattern as they grow up. In an interview with a Montessori school teacher, one of the biggest problems she said, she saw in the present generation was this attitude. She mostly taught single borns and they do not know what it meant to share. She said it would amaze you but one of their agenda is to teach resourcefulness (definitely it would amaze anyone who never had to learn to share as part of the curriculum. I felt a generation leap hearing this.) If you ask them to share a seat in a bus, since they all come in cars occupying the entire back seat, they don’t realise it’s a bus and that they need to share. So even teaching a kid, to share a bus seat becomes a big lesson.

A child has a rationale for any game. S/he puts in more effort than any adult to make sense of the world around him/her through exploration. Their industrious and inquisitive mind could drain our energy and put us to shame.

One another very important thing I have learnt from kids was determination. They might get tired and leave the activity for a while but they aren’t quitters. I observed a boy trying to water a plant in the kindergarten using a mug which was broken. It took him lot of effort to run up and down with a leaking mug to water the plant. I wanted to see if he would give up and even more curious to understand if he did realise that the mug was leaking and his efforts were getting wasted. I finally saw him exasperatedly throwing away the mug. But after sometime he started running with handful of water. Later on, I saw a little army of kids, in line from the tap to the potted plant, passing handful of water. Now how much of it reached the plant, I am not sure but, I found the whole experience touching. Even conservation of nature is a game to them and conversely destruction a game to us adults. We have come a long way from being kids and all the while learned a lot of things by playing, but today when we stand at the crossroad of being an adult, we neither remember half of what we learned as kids nor are we ready to play again.

My First Art Class

Teaching anything arty is tough job. When I say art , I mean craft work and don’t pamper yourself with ideas on art education and aesthetic experiences. I got no where near those ideas with my experiences last week. It’s sad how arts are undermined as something that could distract kids and give respite to parents. Oh no! Let’s not get into necessity of Aesthetics in an Anesthetic society.

I thought kids naturally enjoyed arts. I always did as a kid. So with the same old ideas in my head (someone told me I got lot of ideas which was hard to manage) I entered my first ever class on clay moulding.

I love kids and here I was blessed with 17 of assorted ages (4-9 yrs). Some things cannot be planned. So, despite being warned by friends that this was gonna be fun and terrifying I found myself unprepared.

I started with the general instructions as to how this sort of clay hardened with exposure to air. They seemed uninterested in physics and chemistry.

I moved on to our general plan for the next three days. Some heard and some did not.

I divided them into three groups and decided I would take turns with each group.
It was amazing how randomness still brought people with similar tastes because I could see some groups working together perfectly and others working individually in a group or was it the dynamics of group formation?, I don’t know.

Some made beautiful stuff but would not help the others nearby. I thought the whole purpose of the workshop was making friends but here they were all islands. Was it how this generation worked?

Most of them I figured out were single children and to my disbelief they were too comfortable in solitary work. When one in a group finished they would call for me clamoring attention. When I asked why don’t you help your friends nearby they frowned which to me meant ‘how can you expect me to do that’?

One group had a girl motivating the others to mould shapes and they took pride in themselves as the best group. Now this was an interesting observation. When the ‘We feeling’ comes in, things worked in a different way. But to perceive oneself as a group there always was the requirement of the 'other group'. So now crept in competition. “We made more pieces, we painted them first” and then some ego boosting sessions. I did not have the time and energy to propound philosophies so I thought it was best to leave them alone.

The very attitude of how this programme came to me is interesting. The organisers wanted to have the children occupied with something new yet less messy and I was easily available. My friend recommended me and they thought I would agree.
I had different plans. I had once asked the same crèche permission to observe kids and they told me they need to hold a board meeting and get permission. Now here I was getting paid to observe children :P .

Ever since I could remember I was in love with colours. Don’t know if mom and dad did anything in specific to inculcate this love in me but they definitely did not hinder my interests. I am sure there is no other activity that could release the pent up energy and creativity and I believed everyone could get arty.

But this workshop proved me wrong. I had taught kids individually and in smaller groups before but they were kids who were genuinely interested, they were not forced to go for a summer camp. I salute my kindergarten teacher it must have been a pain to manage thirty plus kids who kept shouting, crying and messing around.

By the end of the class I felt dizzy. All I could hear was unending permissions to wash hands, use the toilet, complaints on someone stepping on others' models, clay getting hardened or someone not interested in a particular design.

I wanted to believe I am a progressive teacher (Hail John Dewey!!) and would want the child to do “the doing as well as thinking part”. But very soon I realized if I had to show their parents they did something I need to make it for them. The more I resisted the carrots looked like peanuts and peanuts like snowman.

The attention seeking part really turned me off. A 4 yr old boy kept telling me “Madam I like your dress, I like your bindi, can you tell me the shop you got this, Madam can I always sit next to you”? In spite of my efforts to put up with a polite smile I had to yell at him to shut up. First time I found it rude, slowly I found it natural.

Resolution of conflicts is not my area of interest but it’s inevitable when you teach kids. Here you had too many kids wailing rather mould clay. I had an interesting conflict resolution session. A boy cried after breaking a girl’s model. I scolded him for doing it too and he started crying. I thought it had to do with my scolding. But the case was interesting.He was frightened by the girl.She said she would get him arrested by the police for breaking her model.

This was my first male harassment case where I had to play a guy’s advocate. Now the 4 yr old(my admirer) got so terrified that he was on knees begging not to call the police. He was hysteric and all over the place. It distracted all and no work was done for the next 20 minutes. It took me some effort to understand his fears for police and to stop his crying. When he stopped he started again “Madam I like your dress……:)” . I wanted to remind him about the police but I had to curb my sadistic dispositions. (I must admit I was like that girl in school. I would not waste any opportunity to make boys cry)


Now when you decide to teach kids anything get prepared for the worst. Your art bag needs lot more than materials. Peace and conflict resolutions skills, some sense of humour, loads of patience and varied critical and creative thinking skills would be handy to begin with.

By the end of the day the smiles you bring on each other’s faces makes your day worth it.

Secular schools

Introspection into Invigilation

This was not the first invigilation duty I did as a TA but after each duty I was left to wonder what this whole monkey business was about. TA’s need to be assigned some work but cant it be something they could benefit from rather policing students who by default were antagonistic to our department because they could never fathom why we existed in their institute. Definitely Humanities department in a technical institute made no sense to them and all our courses were meant to relax them in between their technical courses which worked their brains ( ya they think so, as if Arthashastra and Upanishads are leisure time ). They expected our courses not to make them think hence if any teacher tried being innovative offering assignments that teacher’s T.A would have to waste lot of time googling to hunt the source from where these assignments might be copied. Exams too are expected to be objective in nature (Now imagine assessing professional ethics in objective question format!) .It’s funny to see an ethical dilemma with four options and these fellows playing inky pinky and ticking random. And what would the results reveal A is more ethical than B? If its maths or science it makes sense but ethics? How can an exam ensure he is ethical? All it would ensure is the student has mugged well, his memory is sharp or his luck played well when he was randomly ticking. But in case of any exam rote learning is what it tests; alternative methods of assessments have been a topic of discussion among academicians for ages.

I had an exam duty for English ‘O’ level it was funny, I admit maybe they are good at technology but my experience that day would reveal how poor their communication skills was. A girl smiled at me and asked “madam what does this word mean”? The question read “Describe the changes India has had in the automobile sector over past 50 years ” ? She was asking me the meaning of automobile! I was dumbstruck, I could tell her , it was not a big deal but I was curious and the past week’s reading on Summerhill School and innovative teaching made me ask her can you try guessing what it could mean? She looked at me puzzled, T.A’s either stare or yell or might look insultingly and here was me playing with her , maybe she thought I was mad. I told her again see some part of the word might click divide the word into two and then she said auto is a vehicle are they talking about transport? I smiled and she took the clue. If you think I am exaggerating and this girl is a fool I checked on her after a semester she is doing pretty well. So what’s my point? Am I saying not knowing the meaning of automobile makes a technologist dumb? Definitely not, it makes them look pathetic to me. They always like to think in terms of “hey we are technologists so we are experts in calculus and stuff and not language that’s for you social science people”.

No actually there are many scientists who write well, to cover up one’s weakness one can’t show others down. Forget the language issue sometimes comprehension is very poor, for instance after every exam there would be some who says “madam the paper says use tick mark I did cross will it be a problem” ? Madam I used pencil is that a problem? And I end up thinking would not kids in kindergarten be better. Sometimes multiple instructions frighten them to the extent how to fill a feedback form has to be explained individually in a hall of 60.

Sometimes it’s funny when students ask madam could it be possible we have more than one answer in the multiple choices? I feel all answers are right, some would sleep half the exam and stick to the paper when its time to collect. Throughout the exam you could see blank faces asking you “why the hell am I writing this” ? The most funniest part to me is the starting part of an exam especially when you have questions of different sets , people go sit at back rows in big galleries making it difficult to distribute papers, refuse coming forward and then the regular tug of war” you come forward or I wont start giving the papers” threats by the T.A and the students rebelling pretending deaf. If you think this is my version it’s no different in the physics , chem. Labs.

I often hear T.A’s saying students write on wrong side of the books and explains “I like it this way”, or demand, ‘explain to me separately I didn’t hear when you explained’. Or gets up and leaves saying I am in no mood to do this give me my attendance, or keeps saying I don’t get the readings making the T.A note all the readings.

And the teachers end up discussing how poor the performances are and how companies remark on the qualities after placements, I don’t know about the performance but by the end of the day a comment on an answer sheet like the one below makes me introspect into invigilation.


“ I am an engineer why should I be asked to write about syphilis and ethics is that not for medical students”-

“Sir please give me pass mark”

“ why do you pain us like this ?

As I toss the paper to one side wondering what made him write so, I prepare myself for the next performance …. Students enter the classes lazy, sleepy, unkempt, all set to crack exams and to fight us T.A’s like student protestors waiting to tear down policemen at protests.

I am just an observer of this antagonistic relationship wondering how I transformed from a student to T.A and why wasn’t I like this long time ago.

My visit to Pallikoodam

When I left for Pallikoodam, my head was filled with lot of biases and prejudices. Back home my relatives in Kottayam who heard I was visiting Pallikoodam had mixed responses. Some where in awe of the school and could not afford such education for their children hence saw it as an ideal school where their children ought to have been. Some others said "what’s the big deal children can study anywhere, if they got brains"."And if we had an option we would send our children to government schools but it’s this societal pressure and standards that make us send our child to an ICSE school". Some others said “Oh Pallikoodam, the school where the principal dresses in mini skirt and snobbish spoilt brats study”. "Now what good is a swimming pool and dramatics to our kids? You and I did not learn any of this are we anyway less educated?" So I began my journey with mixed feelings but praying they don’t interfere with my research work after all I had read pages on how Researcher’s bias could ruin the research ( How much deschooling I required !!!!! ).

Right from the Bus stand at Kottayam anyone I turned to for directions, seemed familiar with the school, Oh Mary Roy’s school said some, Corpus Christi referred many others. When the auto stopped in front of a bakery it just looked like any semi urban locality I had seen in Kerala. The rubber trees,pepper creepers and coffee plants in the compounds of houses was a typical Kottayam I had read and known. A stony path led me to a red brick structure, I expected a glossy building but this was just a red brick structure with lot of plants and trees. Had it not been for Heidi Baker’s Aesthetic strokes the school looked like an estate tepee. What struck me when I stepped inside the school was its interior design, it wasn’t just some fancy art depicted, and it was art which was showed the taste of the students. I could see a worli painting with peacock and butterflies embossed with some pieces of mirrors. Every cupboard, bathroom doors was designed using crayons. Classrooms had no segregation except for wooden screens decorated with paintings again. For colour lovers it was a wonderland. Classes were divided into blocks of primary, upper, primary, high school and higher secondary. The construction seems to be innovative and eco friendly which was done by Laurie baker on the agreement that his daughter Heidi be educated in this school.

I was greeted by Ms June Jose the administrator who gave me an interview and took me around the school. Pleasant faces greeted me with ‘Namaskaram’ a greeting I never used or had received earlier. Children in the lower classes were so engrossed in their work that they did not bother who was walking by. The teacher introduced me to a student of class 3 who won Camlin painting competition at national level. His father was a student at Pallikoodam who was a fashion designer. Since Onam was arriving, the students were involved in drama and dance practice. Senior classes had board exams and seemed busy with it. But the atmosphere was filled with an air of joy, enthusiasm and elation.

The most fascinating place in the school was the last corner of the campus with art room, cookery class, tailoring class and a small courtyard for dance class facing the swimming pool. Each pillar around the swimming pool was painted and decorated by the students, which took away the look of a trendy, conventional swimming pool.Each corner of the school was owned by the children and it showed. The art room had very few displays of the students but the teacher explained the kind of work done. Cooking and stitching was compulsory for students and for both genders, she said. “Our children experiment everything from biriyani to payasam and boys never show any inhibitions to learn cooking they realise it’s a skill required to sustain oneself and an art in itself”, spoke Ms June. “When we introduced stitching and tailoring we were not very sure how boys would take it. But we are happy we did it because if not for those classes we would not be able to bring up a fashion designer an alumnus of ours who went for fashion designing to France. Any free time he found he would be here creating patterns on fabric”, said the administrator. Students also seemed to have maintained compost pits to utilise the waste on campus constructively. I met some students who were asked to direct me to the main building. They started off a conversation asking me if I was Ms Rema’s daughter.

Ms Rema was their dance teacher and it was she who told them thiat I was her daughter and I was to be guided to the Administrative building. I told them I was Ms. Rema;s friend’s daughter. And then they asked me if I was a journalist who came to visit their school. The conversation trailed off to what made them feel I was a journalist and then one of them said she wanted to be a journalist and how she hated science. All of them seemed inquisitive to know about Chennai and the weather, culture and  food habits of people there. And I asked them about the school, how they felt it there. One student said, “We know things are not the same in other schools. Students can’t speak openly to teachers. Here we can speak anything we wish to our teachers and we don’t worry how they would judge us”. “When we go back home”, said another student, “we see how tensed our friends in the neighbourhood are with their homework, they don’t seem to love school. We love being here.” They did not seem to be children unaware about happenings outside the world as many often pinpoint while trying to find faults with alternative schooling.

What is your ambition I asked them, an age old question perhaps they attempted essay writing on from 1st STD. “Well can’t decide like that but don’t want to take up anything conventional”, said one girl. It felt nice to listen to her confident statements. “I would do something like environmental science, law or photography” said another. There was joy written all over their faces, quite a different picture from my own school days were school bag saddled with books and a water bottle hanging we walked like camels in desert.

It’s not that everything I heard from Pallikoodam were rosy stories. I had read about a controversial incident concerning a student of the school. While talking about recent incidents it came into the conversation. The teachers feel students who have studied all their years in Pallikoodam have picked up the culture and hence there has never been an unhappy incident. But mostly students who came for a year or two found it hard to adjust with the culture of the school.

"There was a student who joined in 11th STD. Right from the beginning he was addicted to pornography and was given warnings. His camera was confiscated and complaints from his own class mates whom he tried to lure to such activities made the principal take stern action. But the student’s parents being politically involved twisted the story and turned it to a harassment of the boy by school authorities and he wrote his exam requesting police protection making the news more sensational", said the administrator. But from what I heard from the teachers and parents I met, I felt the story was not true. Though the school did not issue a conduct certificate to this student he wrote his board exams.I was hearing just one side of the story and I wish I could learn the other side, but since my interactions were limited to the administrator I left with very little I could learn.

As I started to leave the campus I could hear drums and gongs , drama practice had begun and on the other wing small kids were practicing”kuttanadan punchayile” the boat race song , pretending to be boat men they enacted it with the fervour of boat racers at Nehru trophy. And that’s all about my unrecorded field trip to Pallikoodam.

Race.. Race – Yes Yes ---- Morning walks… No- No

Today I had a discussion with E. She works testing. She said jokingly is there a story by anyone on the angst of a researcher working on examinations. G directed her to me, saying Teena might have an answer, education expert here. I really did not have one, but then I asked “Why exams”? or rather why competition? I knew what lay ahead but being pounced at times gives you many insights when you try analysing and responding to what others say.
She began by saying we have lakhs of students and your alternative ideas sound good but it’s impractical in India.
So exams was to weed out the best , but it was not concerned with individual’s abilities but with the fact that how much you can reproduce at a given time.
How many times we forgot answers and recalled an hour later. So it’s not my knowledge but my skills to reproduce in a short time that’s valued. And for this great task I am gifted a certificate. I am labelled meritorious.
She asked me would I prefer being treated by a doctor who has flunked exam four times or by a doctor who is from a reputed institution? Something R asked me once when I was talking about Dewey and progressive education. Well in the first place does flunking mean incapable or incompetent? My mom was operated by a surgeon from London in fact all the three women who had hysterectomy on the same day had peritonitis and required a re-surgery. And believe me this doctor never flunked or so his reputation says. But if by exams and grading and categorising, we mean one person is superior to other, I find it hard to digest.
We all aspire to send our children to the best schools, and that means a school where our kids pass with flying colours, clear entrances and get the best jobs. We aren’t bothered to see them march like victims with heavy loads, early morning in starched uniform s, we are least bothered if they kneel down in front of classrooms with a hammer in outstretched arms, of course discipline helps or how will they learn to obey their lords later in life.
Scoring below 90’s is unbearable though we know everyone wont be No.1 we believe our kid has to be no matter what he does to push the other one down.
Does it mean we can’t visualise a system where our teachers can avoid exams, avoid competitions and assess students using different strategies and only bring in exams in 10th and 12th. Does writing exams require constant practice for competing and inculcating the fear factor? I understand I am talking of implementing it in government schools with 50-60 students in a class, where teachers are ill equipped with resources, competence, ideas and the students come from different backgrounds.
What I am trying to understand is why did we need exams? Definitely to select some people for a particular task, thereby we labelled the others as useless (maybe they are used less). My college in Kerala ran a kindergarten where there were 50 seats and 250 applicants on average a year. These 3 year olds had interviews and written exam, I have seen kids dozing waiting in queue for interview. Poor child if he misses an answer being drowsy and misses the seat he/she will be stamped unlucky from the beginning of his educational life. I have seen parents breaking down when their child was not admitted doubting if their child is unintelligent.
The sense of being a misfit, a loser and the association of prestige to marks is so pathetic that the word exam is a phobia to many. To ease the phobia we talk of different way of improving exams measuring their application or content rather memory. But it’s like old wine in new bottle. The need for assessing a larger mass within a limited period has left examinations the last resort, but does it have to be terrorising, high stakes and life threatening.
A documentary by an organisation named SIDH (society for integrated development of the Himalayas) beautifully quotes a villager on the occasion of paddy pounding festival “ Remind your teachers to apply right pressure on the children to remove their negativities and not to crush their souls” and that’s how paddy pounding is similar to education to her. Because if the right pressure is not applied grains break like the soul of our children.
An article on high stakes was titled “High stakes are for tomatoes”, definitely you need stakes to hold tomato plants but not to pressurise human souls.
Do we really need Aamir Khan Productions to bring out TZP kind of movies to realise the angst of comparisons, competitions and pain of tormented souls?????
Today somewhere there will be a sitting, a conference a PTA meeting on improvising examinations system how to train our children to be efficient labourers for future industries, How to camouflage exams and give it to the kids sugar coated and may their eyes glue to books and classes .And lakhs will be spend on transferring old wine to new bottle.
The motto is-
“ Duniya ka nara Jame raho”

My take on education

Dear teachers,
I am the survivor of a concentration camp.
My eyes saw what no man should witness—
gas chambers built by learned engineers,
children poisoned by educated physicians
, infants killed by trained nurses,
women and babies shot and burned by high school and college students.
So I am suspicious of education.
My request is: help your students become humane.
Your efforts must never produce learned monsters,
skilled psychopaths,
educated Eichmanns.
Reading, writing, arithmetic are important
only if they serve to make our children more humane.

What are we pacing for a paper called degree which gets us tonnes of paper and metal called money
Can we atleast for a second think of money in those terms. You would think i got loads of it so i feel so.
No i got enough to survive , obviously i never thought of posessing a house , a car, latest mobile, laptop or any other ammenity.
When we say quality of life isnt these the objects that pop out of our brains . And life is equated to posessing these . There is never good in life it always a quest for better and best and beleive me...

" life becomes a bottomless pit and education a conspiracy to help you reach there"
“An obsession with failures stems from the compulsion for success”
We fear failures to the extent we are obsessed by it. because we are in for a a race and not a morning walk as a popular movie quoted.
When i once told a guy there is no concept called home , because we keep floating , he looked at me as if i betrayed him . I smiled , because my rudder lost direction some time ago.

As the survivor of nazi camp says if this is the so called glorious professions minting at the cost of inhumane activities, we call careers i am skeptical about our education and at the rosy enterprise called "LIFE"

The poem above is by a survivor from Nazi cocnentration camp.

Memoirs of Student days

Though I am quite confident I keep my word to friends when I am asked to help , when it comes to cleaning my room I enjoy being scolded by my mother. Her Herculean task of lecture begins from her days in nursing college on how they were taught to fold sheets and make bed. To my friends I am obsessed with cleaning and taking care of my stuff but at home this same ME is viewed as an extra terrestrial or my family is obsessed with the Cleaning mania.

Well while receiving an ultimatum to clear my study tables a work I dread because it has things from my pre degree days, I wrinkled my nose and began, well first my hand went to a dissection box, I am the first and last person to use this as I was the only one who took biology in my family, I remembered how we feared dissecting cockroaches, and once we had no water in college after dissection and we had to walk upto our friends house and by the time the hand had dried and we could not eat food, as we felt the smell wouuld remain forever. Yet, I remember the vanity with which I hunted cockroaches in my house to frighten my siblings demonstrating dissection.
My hand went to a protractor, poor thing was lying lost I put it in the right box and wondered why we used these things in school, how much I dreaded maths , I told my teacher I would go for ARTS stream so from 8th STD they should give option for Maths.

Now my hand went to a paper I had the bad habit of saving my answer papers now this one had my beautiful handwriting it started with a definiton about some Gisella Konopka …ok ….so this is group work, Face of Sr Lizzy smiling came to my mind,
19 ¾ out of 30 god knows why she could not give a 20. I smiled and dared not read the paper out of fear I would be ashamed if I never recognized the content as well as my handwriting.

Well now what do I have in here , ? atleast 7 boxes of spectacles ok all colours different shops maybe saved up here to sue them for guarantee issues , mom has funny ways to things .

Now at the end was a paper pack I opened it to see some pedigree dog food maybe hidden from the dog when she sat with me in the study , it almost powdered and eaten by ants , Thank god mom never came to clear or would shoot me.
And last but not least as I wound up I found a slip with some diagrams . I used to make chits and study during BA Psychology now this had some coded some Abbreviations I could decipher like OCD, BDD some I could not it seemed like I was explaining it to someone because I had drawn upteen lines from the abbreviation to another.

Then came out a paper boat. I opened it , it was a letter from Sony, might have been passed in between classes. It read

Dear teena,

Since this world we live is a myth

lets imagine that the fact i borrowed

Rs 500 from you is a myth.

Because the money is neither yours not mine

it comes and goes.

regards

S

I smiled, though i dont remember how i responded to this then.

Its so strange that some times even cleaning up can seem a ritual bringing out nostalgic moments we cherish, maybe that’s why the dissection box, geometry box and some answer papers lie here and there to remind me what I was and how I reached here.