Designing a city
Anand Krishnaswamy
The Indus Valley civilization could very well be the biggest hoax in Indian education – everyone has studied about it but practically no student (at least not a single Indian I have met) has seen it. Imagine one day waking up to an ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) article confessing that they had, in a tipsy moment, decided to play this prank on NCERT not knowing that it would be published.
I was teaching history (amongst other things) at a school in Auroville. It was what is called, an outreach school – one that caters predominantly to the local village communities. I loved the bright enthusiasm of the students there. This particular story has four parts –
- How to craft an experience which helps students realize that they needn’t be helplessly dependent on books.
- How to use design thinking to construct learning.
- How to use local resources in creating extensive and extensible learning and finally,
- The impact of learning that is completely owned is remarkable to witness.
For the sake of this article, I will focus on the third part after laying the foundation using the second part.
The students had chosen a particular chapter from their text to study – The Earliest Cities. How they chose it makes an interesting tale which we will not get into. All of them lived in nearby villages but had visited the cities of Pondicherry and Chennai. Using their experience, I extracted a set of differences that they would notice between a village and a city. Using that checklist, I proceeded to apply this to a thought experiment.
“All of you are on a boat out in the sea. This world has no countries, no cities, no factories and no one else. It is only you. Each one of you is skilled in whatever you wish to be skilled in. All of you carry your definition of what makes a city. Where will you go and establish your city?” After a round of discussions, they decided to settle near a river.
While they were discussing amongst themselves about what they would want in their city, I quickly drew a river snaking diametrically across a board.
“To make your life easy, I have cleared this area around a river for you. This could be the site of your city. Fill it with illustrations of what you would have in your city.”
They attacked the board with gusto. They were completely unrestrained in their creative ideation of how that city would be.
When they were done, this is what their city looked like:
All these activities were timed. I’d typically give them 3-5 minutes to discuss amongst themselves and 5 minutes to work on the board. This gave them a sense of rush and excitement.
I loved what they created and hugged them.
“You have a car there! That is so neatly drawn!”
“I drew it, Anna.”
“What does it run on?”
“Petrol, Anna!”
“Where will you get petrol?”
The class fell to a pin-drop silence! They realized that they had thrown in elements which were impractical or plain impossible. I wiped out what they had drawn (strangely, none of them felt bad about losing their illustration) while they discussed priorities and then, they went at it again.
What you see above are iterations of their design; each passed through some rigorous rounds of quizzing and defence before they came up with an urban layout that they were able to defend completely. Urban town planning was not even in their syllabus, nor usually considered possible by 5th graders, but they completed a fair semblance of it.
Hands-on experience
But what does all of this have to do with the chapter they were to study, you might ask. This was the foundation being laid. Nearby, in Auroville, there was an excavation underway. I arranged for a visit. The kids cycled over and were excited to be allowed in the cordoned area. It was filled with ghost stories until then. Now they were standing in a cairn circle amidst burial urns (a word they were happy to learn and use regularly). With rapt attention they heard stories of the pagans of 2500 years ago. They also learnt about the technique of dating artifacts (either by carbon dating or pattern matching).
They were thrilled to weave their own stories based on what they heard. They were even more thrilled to see the photos of artifacts unearthed – pots, jewellery, beads, arrowheads, swords, tridents and much more. They were fascinated to know that all this came from under the earth they stood on (well, not all of it, but that is how they summarized it all). They watched the workers slowly scraping away in the grids trying to extract another artifact. They were thrilled beyond measure to know that they would be handling the scalpels and brushes and actually tickling the dead! Initially, they worked very gingerly till the workers had to assure them that a little force was ok.
They loved it more so when they actually extracted a pot. They simply would not stop talking about it back in school!
Wrapping it all up
After having identified the signs of a city, designing their own city and participating in an excavation, we had just one thing left to do – bury that city!
On the last day of the week, I announced that their city was now buried in 5000 years of mud and trees. This class was now a group of expert archaeologists (a word they always uttered slowly and carefully) who were going to dig this up because someone reportedly found some artifacts while fishing in that river.
“Amongst yourselves, discuss and identify what your dug up city will look like. What will you now see? What are the things you will find?”
They soon realized that their farm was gone but that there were two farms that would still remain. While the plants and trees they drew were gone, the seeds might still remain indicating the kind of food they ate. Their boats would remain. The bullock bones might remain. The cart, too. Perhaps clothes. Their water pipelines will. They drew up what they were likely to unearth and the various interpretations that one could draw.
“So will they know that a sweet boy called V liked to wear silk?”
“No”
“But would they know that silk was worn?”
“Yes.”
“How will they know that K worked the most in the fields?”
“They won’t!”
“What if A, here, wrote texts and in them wrote that she toiled hardest in the fields?”
“They’ll think that A is the one who worked most because the texts say so!”
“So, Anna, how will we ever know the truth?”
“Sweetie, history can only indicate. Factual truth is rarely something that can be established.”
After a long discussion, they settled on the uneasy reality of the unreliability of historical records and how they best suited the objective of creating a plausible narrative.
“So, now, let’s open to the chapter. A, will you read it for us?”
As he kept reading about the Indus Valley civilization, each one kept exclaiming:
“They were at a river too!”
“They had drainage systems too.”
“Bullock carts!”
“We never thought of coins. Yes, we would need money to transact.”
“We had better jewellery! And much better clothes!”
The chapter was extremely easy to absorb as they could relate to the minds of nearly 5000 years ago. They were stunned at the similarities of the roads, drains and walls and how closely these matched the pictures in their heads and on the board. Certainly, we could have spent more time and created much more clarity around the simulation but this was sufficient for them to connect to the topic.
On the following Monday, I walked up to these kids and told them that in 15 minutes they needed to present the lesson to the school. These kids who hated surprise tests and always demand time for preparation, barely blinked an eye and agreed to do so. In a few minutes, they were huddled around a table discussing how to chunk up the presentation and the narrative which would be most coherent. They made a confident presentation about cities and their peculiarities, archaeology, Cairn circles, the different ages (copper, bronze, iron) and finally fielded questions with expertise. They even acted like “teachers” and cross-questioned the audience on their understanding. I was most pleased when the teachers and headmistress acknowledged the amazing confidence and command that the “slow” students demonstrated (without calling them that).
“So, do you agree that you knew the chapter contents before studying it?”
It was time for another round of hugs!
The author was reborn as a teacher after spending nearly 15 years as a computer scientist and engineer. He now spends his time in the hills near Dehradun getting children excited about learning deep and wide. As the Dean of Academics at Purkal Youth Development Society, he is working towards growing a richer learning ecosystem. He can be reached at anand@purkal.org.
