Caught between two worlds
Pawan Singh
From home to school and back, classroom to sports ground and back, and then finally to the examination hall, a child travels various distances to be finally considered “educated”.
Pawan Singh
From home to school and back, classroom to sports ground and back, and then finally to the examination hall, a child travels various distances to be finally considered “educated”.
Chintan Girish Modi In most conceptions of school and places of organized learning, a library is central. In India, where many schools lack even a blackboard (or a teacher!), a library of any description is perhaps considered a luxury. Even in schools where libraries exist, they take many forms and are bound by rules and regulations that constrain use. This issue of Teacher Plus looks at just some of the many kinds of libraries that children, teachers, and communities have access to, in schools and out, fi xed and mobile, formal and informal, and considers ways in which we can extend the idea of the library and its many uses. My dream is to start a library for children. The shelves are over-flowing with books, and each time I pick up a new set, there is a struggle to make space for new friends that come from bookshops and discount sales, from pavements and publishing houses. I wish to create a space where children can fall in love with the magic of stories, wander off into exciting worlds, and begin their journey to learn about themselves and others. The urge to make this happen becomes more intense each time I hear about unimaginative attempts at encouraging reading. There is enough reason to believe that those who take it upon themselves to ‘instill the reading habit’ often end up doing much harm to the children whose cause they claim to espouse. Anmol Kapur is a Class 5 student of Delhi Public School in Hyderabad. He represents the classic case of a book lover who cannot read what he wants to because of adult notions about what is appropriate and what isn’t. He says, “In the school library, there are so many rules. They don’t allow you to read what you like. They tell you that you can’t read Hardy Boys before Class 5 because you won’t be able to understand it.” Grusha Prasad, a Class 8 student from Rosary Convent High School in Hyderabad, has a similar complaint. “The people in our school library are very protective about the books they give out. All the students get books based on the class they belong to. Sometimes, they limit it to Enid Blyton. It is just one room, and all the books are in a cupboard that we cannot touch without permission.” It is worth investigating why school libraries are the way they are, particularly the issue of not allowing kids free access. Shravya, a student of
Nandini Nayar Sometime in June, when most schools reopen for the new academic year, you will spot at least a couple of photographs in the newspaper of small children bowed down under the weight of their enormous school bags. Accompanied by a thought provoking caption, these photographs hold our attention for some time and then we go back to packing our child’s school bag. Occasionally a politician or activist says something about the number of books children need to carry. Shock and outrage is expressed in indignant “Letters to the Editor”. The indignation is picked up by enthusiastic reporters and results in a couple of eye-opening articles on what the school-going child has to suffer in the name of education. But soon all this passes, and little attention is spared for the literal burden the child is forced to carry to school everyday. There is a collective amnesia on the part of parents and educators. A few months into the academic year, even the practical aspects and worries of going to school with heavy bags are submerged under more immediate concerns about exams, handwriting and fears that the child may require tuitions. Earnest meetings with school teachers and note-sharing sessions with other parents invariably concentrate on issues of this sort. The problem of the school bag pales in significance. Bent under the weight of these items, each absolutely “essential” for surviving a day at school, the child wends his way to class. The mind boggles at an education system that demands this kind of slave labour in the name of acquiring knowledge. What’s sad is that invariably it is the younger children who end up carrying huge loads to school. Try reasoning with a child of the primary class, explaining that he doesn’t need all the books at school everyday and that they can be safely left at home. All the books, this tiny child will announce firmly, are needed everyday at school. If you actually remove those that you think are not necessary, you can be sure that these will be sneaked back into the bag. Suggest that some of the books or notebooks be left at home till they are actually needed at school, and the teacher reacts with horror. And woe betides any child who actually leaves a notebook at home. Disgrace and almost certain punishment await him. This brings one to the question – is the acquisition of knowledge linked to the number of books carried to school everyday or even
Pavitra Rao
“In the summer time…,” a song blasts from the radio, while you start your day leisurely, sitting down with a hot cup of coffee in your hand, reading the newspaper to catch up on your daily dose of the news.
Zeba Raziunnisa
For years we have been grappling with issues of poor performers, bullied kids, distressed students and teen suicides, but the recent spate of school violence has catapulted a pressing concern into the limelight – Where are we heading?
Thomas Armstrong
I don’t remember how I learned to tell time. So, when I was asked by a Wisconsin school district to develop a multiple intelligences way of teaching time to a group of first graders, I was initially stymied.
Nandini Nayar
What is the role of punishment in inculcating discipline in children today?
Manju Gupta
Many of us bemoan the fact that education has become too fiercely competitive, that the process of learning receives less attention than the product that we are contributing to a cut-throat culture where achievement means everything and understanding almost nothing.
Twenty years later… what can one say about a struggling magazine in search of a readership except thank you, to those who believed in us at the start, to those who continue to believe in us, and to those who, I am sure, will soon pick up a copy of Teacher Plus and stay with it. We certainly have come a long way since the tabloid bi-monthly was launched in July 1989 by a publishing house then called Orient Longman. Though it never once broke even in terms of its budget, it was kept alive by a small but dedicated subscriber base and a very motivated editorial group consisting of a handful of regular staffers and a large network of contributors. Right from the start, the attempt was to stay relevant to the classroom, to avoid theorising at the expense of hands-on approaches. Many of the contributors were practicing teachers or teacher trainers, with the occasional piece by a subject expert with a deep interest in school education. And right from the start, the emphasis was on providing workable ideas that would be acceptable to a teacher hemmed in by all the constraints of the Indian education system. Those early days were certainly a struggle. Bringing out every issue was a challenge, and often deadlines were missed and the issue considerably delayed. But our readers and subscribers stuck with us, many (both individuals and institutions) who remain subscribers even today. In 2002, the Teacher Plus banner across page one went from a single colour on white to a four-colour title and logo. We made a change in the type of paper used, to make the entire publication look a bit more sleek and contemporary. The content, however, remained the same, changing only in response to what we saw as the changing needs of classrooms and of teachers as individuals. In January 2007, Spark-India, a small publisher with a specific interest in teaching-learning materials took over the ownership of Teacher Plus, with the support of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools, and that was the beginning of a new phase for the magazine. Over the next six months, we planned to scale up the magazine in terms of look and content, and by June 2007, relaunched Teacher Plus as a monthly, in a glossy folio format. Delhi based designer Vinay Jain gave us a new look and feel, and our ever-faithful network of contributors stepped up to the demands of generating content to tighter deadlines. Our editorial
It’s summer again, with everything it brings – the heat, the dust, the mangoes, sugarcane juice… and best of all, holidays! But it is also a time of preparation, of cleaning out the old cupboards and readying them for new ideas, new books, and possibly, a fresh approach to the new academic year. We hope Teacher Plus plays a small role in this spring cleaning of ideas, helping you re-stock your armamentarium of classroom activities and teaching tools. This double issue of Teacher Plus looks at a subject that excites a whole range of emotions among children as well as adults, emotions like hate and confusion to extreme joy and involvement. Children either dislike math, feeling inadequate and unable to handle it, or instantly take to it despite the unimaginative ways in which it is generally presented. The link between basic mathematical concepts and life skills such as estimation, spatial analysis, sorting and grouping of elements, is rarely made, thus making math out to be even more of an enigma than it needs to be. The articles in this issue take apart mathematics teaching and explore ways in which it can help build conceptual understanding, using tools and techniques that integrate mathematical learning to learning about life. Even before leading up to mathematical operations that can confuse and confound, teachers need to make the mathematics classroom a friendly space, where number phobias are not allowed to build up and ruin any future chances of learning the subject. Whether a child decides to take on mathematics as a central area of study later in life, it is important that he/she learns to appreciate the essential role it plays in nearly everything we do. As Former President Dr. Abdul Kalam says, in the last word column of this issue, a teacher who can demonstrate this link can make all the difference. And as always, we at Teacher Plus welcome your feedback and suggestions – on this issue and others we have discussed. In another month, Teacher Plus turns twenty… and as we approach the beginning of our third decade, we’d like to know from you all how far, and how much, the ideas we talk about relate to your individual classrooms!
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