Talimi Haq School

Some things never change ...

2011-11-07T11:31:00.003+05:30

Concerned New Yorkers protest against slums at
the city's May Day Parade in 1936.

See more pictures from New York city in the 1940s here.

Do schools kill creativity?

2011-02-10T15:35:00.000+05:30

Our Teachers

2010-11-12T12:04:00.003+05:30

Talimi Haq School (established in 1998) is a grassroots experiment, towards building youth leadership for all-round community development, in Priya Manna Basti, a century-old jute workers' settlement in Shibpur, Howrah (India).

Among the thinkers, teachers, writers, scholars, activists and initiatives we have been inspired by are:

Leo Tolstoy

Rabindranath Tagore

MK Gandhi

Paulo Friere

Shinichi Suzuki

J Krishnamurti

Sylvia Ashton-Warner

John Holt

Jonathan Kozol

Howard Gardner

Abecedarian Project

HighScope Perry Preschool Program

Essential viewing

2010-11-10T15:31:00.007+05:30

Everyone concerned about children and their raising and education must watch this three-part doumentary on the human brain.

Accessible here.

Born Genius

Make me a Genius

Accidental Genius

Changing Education Paradigms

2010-10-30T16:56:00.000+05:30

Learning landscapes

2010-09-22T14:16:00.003+05:30

by Anil Bhattarai
from The Kathmandu Post

It is slowly sinking in among a small but growing number of people that the current education system is highly dysfunctional and is not adequate to address the social and ecological challenges of our time. However, very little thought has gone into exploring the reorganisation of educational process and how physical landscapes of schools could be actively incorporated in teaching-learning process.

Last week I suggested that a creative parent could engage a kid in the learning process both at home as well as outside -- such as while taking her to school, working in the kitchen garden, exploring neighbourhoods, or even while watching television. Often all it requires is asking them questions or telling them stories. Many in fact do that without realising it.

One of the pervasive myths of modern times has been that learning takes place mostly in classrooms. This myth is most prominently played out in the way the teachers near-exclusively focus on textbooks in classrooms. Exams are conducted to test the ability of students to memorise textbooks, and exam marks are taken as exclusive indicator of educational progress.

Perhaps this is the reason why both teachers and parents do not see spaces outside the classroom as sites of learning. Most schools get away with largely barren, monocultured, landscapes precisely because of this. The school grounds are either empty or littered with waste papers and plastics. Classrooms are hot in summer and cold in winter. In cities, classrooms lack natural light. The ventilation is bad. In private schools, the imperative to make quick-bucks often leads to cutting down on necessary investment for learning-friendly classrooms. In state-managed schools, the classrooms are built with minimal regard for the need of those who spend long hours in them - the students. Contractors need to make quick bucks, and the politicians and bureaucrats need some cuts.

This is also the result of lack of creativity on the part of teachers. Schools - private, community-managed, and state-managed - could create classrooms and the larger school landscapes as meaningful sites of learning.

Once as a teaching assistant for a course on globalisation at the University of Toronto, I asked students to, first, make a list of items in the classroom - the overhead projector, the desks, benches, their own laptops, their school bags, pens, among others. And then, I asked them to read their “made in’’ labels. Well, expectedly, most items were made in China.

This was followed by speculative discussions on the process through which some of those items were assembled and transported. The raw materials that made up some parts of their laptops perhaps came from African countries, container-shipped to China. Large fleets of oil tankers and vast networks of pipes transported petroleum that fuelled the factories and transportation system in China. These materials were worked on by Chinese workers from the Chinese hinterlands. Once manufactured, the stuffs were then shipped around the world. Thus, just by examining the flow of materials involved in the making of a laptop, we were able to map out the globalisation process.

With an innovative teacher, this could be done right from day care centres for infants and toddlers onwards. Let me be clear here: I am not suggesting teaching globalisation to an infant, or toddler or even to a six-year old. What I am suggesting is the landscape - both inside the classroom as well as within the school boundary - could be meaningful sites for the learning process.

Infants and toddlers learn through sensory experiences - through seeing, touching, feeling, moving and remaking of objects. In the name of learning, most of our schools deprive small kids from these experiences as they are made to sit still and listen to their teachers. Classrooms of toddlers and infants are often cluttered with desks and benches that hinder their mobility. They have very little to explore.

For higher-age kids, schools can create landscapes that impart both functional skills such as maths, reading and writing as well as make them explorers of the world around them. As an aspiring ecological designer, I have always been fascinated by patterns in nature - in the shapes and sizes of trees, the leaves, the way water flows, or the patterns on land. For one, teaching numbers could be easily done outside the classrooms. Teachers could ask their kids to collect dry leaves from trees and ask them to do basic counting. They can ask them to make a pile of stones and count them. They can teach addition and subtraction by making different piles and either adding to or taking out some stones. Or ask why certain grass has certain number of petals in their flowers. The empty school grounds could be lined up with new tree saplings. The students could count the number of saplings. They can group them into different varieties - such as fruits, vegetables or herbs. They can measure their growth periodically.

When it comes to organising landscapes for learning, mind often is the limit. One can teach about science by exploring those landscapes. One can teach about society through them. Why do people plant fruits? Who has land large enough to plant them? What do people make out of those fruits or vegetables? Who gets to eat? How is food prepared? Who prepares them at home?
Or we can teach the science of gravity by walking students in the ground and throwing a stone up. Or we can teach them biology by exploring how plants grow, fruits ripe or rot, or by showing them how diverse the natural world is. Well there are many more questions that students can explore while learning from landscapes. By near-exclusively focusing on textbook rote learning, most of our schools have not been able to see making and remaking of landscapes as important parts of teaching and learning process. Let’s also not forget: teachers will be surprised how much they themselves could learn in this process.

Image: Courtesy SCEPTrE Fellows

The long road to the Right to Education

2010-07-03T10:46:00.001+05:30

On Pedagogy

2010-03-24T10:56:00.004+05:30

V Ramaswamy

Ayodhya, 6th December 1992, was a turning point in my life. The enforced curfews forced me to think and feel. The Muslim question in India, and the associated question of my own existential relation to my Muslim fellow-citizens, in flesh and blood, in my own city, and through my life and work – all these questions entered my being, and determined the course of my life in the subsequent years. This was not simply an intellectual matter, though, of course, the objective social, cultural, economic and political aspects also began to get fore-grounded in my thinking and observations. But it was fundamentally a personal, ethical and subjective matter, and one of attention to my own thought process, my conditioned subjectivity, and attention to the attitudes, expressions, views and actions of the different communities I was part of. It was also an innate yearning for union and partnership.

From 1996, I happened to engage with the question of Muslim bastis in Howrah, and in metropolitan Kolkata at large. For here, the nexus of poverty and environmental degradation appeared to have a significant impact, through gastro-intestinal and water-borne diseases, on infant and maternal mortality and morbidity. Thus began an action-research endeavour, which also had the support of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, towards understanding this, and trying to do something positive in that context. This was initiated through a state govt project, and then subsequently continued independently by me and my colleagues, through Howrah Pilot Project, a grassroots action organization, which we established in 1997.

The Right to Housing and Pedagogy

But there was another dimension to this whole process, as far as I was concerned. And that is the housing question, of Calcutta’s labouring poor. The question of the city’s squatters and slum-dwellers. My journey, of intellectual, civic and activist engagement with the labouring poor of metropolitan Kolkata began in 1984, when I began working with squatters facing imminent evictions, and joined the Chhinnamul Sramajibi Adhikar Samiti. I had wanted to work on pedagogy. As it turned out, through the journey and the quest for action to transform the cityscape, I arrived only at pedagogy. But that was in the cause of transformative action grassroots action.

The only solution, as I saw it, was community-led redevelopment of bastis, with enabling policy, legal and institutional efforts from the state. That required, most of all, community organizations in bastis, possessing the required awareness, capabilities, motivation, commitment, integrity, sustenance and ownership. Ownership of the vision, strategy and programme, of community action. The value of the land on which the basti-dwellers live is the only resource available in the system for redressing the immense social and human development gap between the basti-dwellers and the city mainstream. Based on this vision, a proposal was made for the city of Calcutta, for comprehensive renewal of blighted inner city neighbourhoods, in the canal-side area of Beliaghata-Manicktala.

But something like this required the action, across the spectrum of stakeholders, and with a bottom-up thrust and vision, through which a real transformation could be achieved, in the social and physical landscape of my city.

That is what I have been seeking. That is what I wanted to be engaged in. Something affecting the city I lived in, affecting my life, and the lives of people around me.

I arrived in Priya Manna Basti, in Howrah, in 1996 and shortly after that decided to personally work towards physical redevelopment, beginning with 1 basti plot. That was indeed foolhardy on my part. But since then I have been educated in the nitty-grittys of poverty and environmental degradation, thika tenancy, illegal building construction, illegal electricity, crime, party functioning and party affiliation, and on daily life in general in basti neighbourhoods.

I deduced that at the very heart of empowered community organizations must be empowered individuals. Achieving this empowerment, at the level of even 1 person – who then has a small nucleus around her - is exactly the process that has to be achieved at a mass scale, with its catalytic and critical mass effects. This is not a mechanical process, it is essentially a human, pedagogical process.

I mean “pedagogy” as in the title of Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Of course, pedagogy is also closely related to the question of education. Dr Siddiqui’s work in this field, about educating a backward minority, and the educational scenario of Kolkata’s Urdu-speaking minority – anyone concerned about this city, and anyone committed to transforming this city towards greater equity and social and economic justice, cannot ignore this work. Sohel Firdos has also undertaken a survey of poor houselholds in PM Basti in Howrah in 2005. That gives us a clear and insightful report on the nature of poverty in our city. Sohel has also undertaken an analysis of the politics of provision of civic amenities in Kolkata. Zakir Hussain too has written about education and slumdwellers in Kolkata.

What we need today is a programme to rescue the tattered fabric and poisoned ethos of this city, on a war-footing.

The road to city renewal

Dr Siddiqui is a genial and gentle person. But looking at the facts, even he is compelled to conclude that what we see is strategic deprivation of a community at large. And reading his analysis of Urdu-medium school system in Kolkata, one cannot but see what’s happening here as a form of ethnic cleansing, in this case ethnic crippling, through depriving a community of education. How it cripples and poisons, I have seen, in PM Basti.

Building leadership, capabilities and ownership among slum youth, through pedagogy, must lie at the core of any action plan. The focus of slum community youth action must be elementary education, and early intervention with poor children. These schools run by slum youth, for poor children, would be centres of pedagogy, the nucleus of slum transformation. They would be involved in pre-primary and primary education, adolescent girl intervention, back-to-school drives with school drop-outs, and literacy for child workers, illiterate youth and women. Not as funded NGOs, but as efforts emerging from the slum community.

If I were given the mandate and the power to define public policy and investment in the interests of Kolkata’s bastis and the city’s labouring poor – I would desist. For I do not, in all honesty, see anything coming out of that. It is like asking for the laws og gravity to be reversed. Substantive improvement in this specific local context, cannot but be from the bottom upwards. The existing conditions, and the long decades of neglect and toxification, the institutional vacuum and lack of capabilities, all make the notion of public policy a delusion. Bottom-up is slow. But its results are certain and enduring and strong. This can mean that with a 15-25 year perspective, one can really transform current reality. Which is the kind of time a phased physical renewal programme would anyway require. But no physical renewal programme has to contend with the Kolkata basti context. I don’t think something like that has been attempted in human history. And looking at the infrastructure side, and thinking at a city-wide and metropolitan scale, basti redevelopment can enable a radical physical transformation of the city.

The top-down would come, it would come subsequently. But public policy must first be preceded by public action, action in the public domain. By the public, by the people. Who see politics as engagement, together with basti-dwellers, in action in favour of the city’s labouring poor. For their rights, as equal citizens. And thus build the civil society of the city.

This city is waiting, for the vision of the empowerment of its marginalized citizens, to be owned in a meaningful sense, by its citizens.

See the city from here

The renowned Scottish town planner, Sir Patrick Geddes, had conceptualized something called an Outlook Tower, which he advocated for every city, so as to enable it to plan the city and its region. Howrah Pilot Project is also a kind of outlook tower, not looking out, out there, but looking in, from “there”, to the grassroots. Howrah Pilot Project is a live laboratory, of community action in the context of chronic poverty.

Image: from Joan Wink's Critical pedagogy: Notes from the real world.

Commencement address

2010-02-27T15:46:00.003+05:30

A commencement address by Wendell Berry to graduates of the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbour, Maine, June 1989.

IT IS CONVENTIONAL AT GRADUATION EXERCISES to congratulate the graduates. Though I am honored beyond expression by your invitation to speak to you today, and though my good wishes for your future could not be more fervent, I think I will refrain from congratulations. This, after all, is your commencement, and a beginning is the wrong time for congratulations. Also I know enough by now of the performance of my own generation that I look at your generation with some skepticism and some anxiety. I hope that if fifty years, having looked back at the lives that you are now commencing, your children and grandchildren will congratulate you.

What I want to attempt today is to say something useful about the problems and the opportunities that lie ahead of your generation and mine. I know how desirable it is that I should briefly, and I intend to do so.

To ward the end of As You Like It, Orlando says: "I can live no longer by thinking." He is ready to marry Rosalind. It is time for incarnation. Having though too much, he is at one of the limits of human experience, or human sanity.

If his does put on flesh, we know, he must sooner or later arrive at the opposite limit, at which he will say, "I can live no longer without thinking."

Thought - even consciousness - seems to live between these limits: the abstract and the particular, the word and the flesh.

All public movements of thought quickly produce a language that works as a code, useless to the extent that it is abstract. It is readily evident, for example, that you can't conduct a relationship with another person in terms of the rhetoric of the civil rights movement or the women's movement - as useful as those rhetorics may initially have been to personal relationships.

The same is true of the environment movement. The favorite adjective of this movement now seems to be "planetary". This word is used, properly enough, to refer to the interdependence of places, and to the recognition, which is desirable and growing, that no place on the earth can be completely healthy until all places are.

But the word "planetary" also refers to an abstract anxiety or an abstract passion that is desperate and useless exactly to the extent that it is abstract. How, after all, can anybody - and particular body - do anything to heal a planet."

Nobody can do anything to heal a planet. The suggestion that anybody could do so is preposterous. The heroes of abstraction keep galloping in on their white horses to save the planet - and they keep falling off in front of the grandstand.

What we need, obviously, is a more intelligent - which is to stay, a more accurate - description of the problem. The description of a problem as "planetary" arouses a motivation for which, of necessity, there is no employment. The adjective "planetary" describes a problem in such a way that it cannot be solved.

In fact, though we now have serious problems nearly everywhere on the planet, we have no problem that can accurately be described as "planetary". And , short of the total annihilation of the human race, there is planetary solution.

There are also no national, state, or county problems, and no national, state or county solutions.

That will-o-the-wisp of the large-scale solution to the large-scale problem, so dear to government and universities and corporations, serves mostly to distract people from the small, private problems that they may in fact have the power to solve.

The problems, if we describe them accurately, are all private and small. Or they are so initially.

The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporation shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy should be cheap and plentiful.

Our economies of community and household are wrong. The answer to the human problems of ecology are to be found in economy. The answer to the problems of economy are to be found in culture and in character.

To fail to see this is to go on dividing the world falsely between guilty producers and innocent consumers.

The "planetary" versions - the heroic versions - of our problems have attracted great intelligence. But these problems, as they are caused and suffered in our lives, our households and our communities, have attracted very little intelligence.

There are some notable exceptions. A few people have learned to do a few things better. But it is discouraging to reflect that, though we have been talking about most of our problems for decades, we are still mainly talking about them. We have failed to produce the necessary examples of better ways. The civil rights movement has not given us better communities. The women's movement has not given us better marriages or better households. The environment movement has not changed our parasitic relationship to nature.

The reason, apparently, is that a change of principles or of talk or of thought is impotent, on its own, to change life.

For the most part, the subcultures, the countercultures, the dissenters, and the opponents continue mindlessly - or perhaps just helplessly - to follow the pattern of the dominant society in its extravagance its wastefulness, its dependences, and its addictions.

The old problem remains: How do you get intelligence our of an institution or an organization?

My small community in Kentucky has lived and dwindled for a century at least under the influence of four kinds of organization; governments, corporations, schools, and churches - all of which are distant (either actually or in interest), centralized, and consequently abstract in their concerns.

Governments and corporations (except for employees) have no presence in our community at all, which is perhaps fortunate for us, but we nevertheless feel the indifference or the contempt of governments and corporations for such communities as ours.

We have had no school of our own for nearly thirty years. The school systems takes our young people, prepares them for "the world on tomorrow," which it does not expect to take place in any area, and gives back expert (that is, extremely generalized) ideas.

The church is present in the town. We have two churches. But both have been used by their denominations, for half a century at least, to provide training and income for student ministers, who do not stay long enough even to become disillusioned.

For a long time, then, the minds that have most influenced our town have not been of the town, and so have not tried even to perceive, much less to honor, the good possibilities that are there. They have not wondered on what terms a good and conserving life might be lived there.

In this, my community is not unique, but is like almost every other neighborhood in our country and in the "developed" world.

The question that must be addressed, therefore, is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet's millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious and exciting way different from all the others.

Our understandable wish to preserve the planet must somehow be reduced to the scale of our competence - that is, to the wish to preserve all of its humble households and neighborhoods.

What can accomplish this reduction?

I will say again, without overweening hope, but with certainly nonetheless, that only love can do it. Only love can bring intelligence out of the institutions and organizations, where it aggrandizes itself, into the presence of the work that must be done.

Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe or the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, " the least of these my brethren."

Love is not, by its own desire, heroic only when compelled to be. it exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble, and unrewarded.

The older love becomes, the more clearly it understands its involvement in partiality, imperfection, suffering, and mortality. Even so, it longs for incarnation. It can live no longer by thinking.

And yet, to put on flesh and do the flesh's work, it must think.

In his essay on Kipling, George Orwell wrote: "All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us how are |enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our |enlightenment', demands that the robbery shall continue."

This statement of Orwell is clearly applicable to our situation now, all we need to do is change a few nouns: The religion and the environmentalism of the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. . . .We all live by robbing nature. . . . but our standard of living. . . demands that the robbery shall continue.

We must achieve the character and acquire the skills to live much poorer than we do. It is either that or continue merely to think and talk about changes that we are inviting catastrophe to make.

The treat obstacle is simply this: the conviction that we cannot change because we are dependent upon what is wrong.

But that is the addict's excuse, and we know that it will not do.

How dependent, in fact, are we? How dependent are our neighborhoods and communities? How may our dependencies be reduced? To answer these questions will require better thoughts and better deeds to than we have been capable of so far.

I am not trying to mislead you, or myself, about the gravity of our station. I think that we have hardly begun to grasp the seriousness of the mess we are in.

Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of finite resources. We persist in land use methods that reduce the potentially infinite power of soil fertility to a finite quantity - which we then proceed to waste as if it were an infinite quantity. We have an economy that depends, not upon the quality and quantity of necessary goods and services, but on the moods of a few stockbrokers. We believe that democratic freedom can be preserved by people ignorant of the history of democracy, and indifferent to the responsibilities of freedom.

Our leaders have been for many years as oblivious of the realities and dangers of their time as were George III and Lord North. They believe that the difference between war and peace is still the overriding political - when, in fact. the difference is diminished to the point of insignificance. How would you describe the difference between modern war ands modern industry - between, say, strip mining and bombing, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of human is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off"

Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war of peace? They were, in fact, peacetime, acts of aggression, international to the extent that the risks were known and ignored.

We are involved everywhere in a war against the world, against our freedom, and indeed against our existence.

Our industrial accidents, so-called, should be looked upon as revenges of Nature. We forget that Nature is necessarily party to all our enterprises, and that she imposes conditions of her own.

Now she is plainly saying to us: "If you put the fates of whole communities or cities or regions or ecosystems at risk in single ships or factories or power plants, then I will furnish the drunk or the fool or the imbecile who will make the necessary small mistake."

And so, graduates, my advise to you is simply my hoped for us all:

Beware the justice of Nature.

Understand that there can be no successful human economy apart from Nature. or in defiance of Nature.

Understand that no amount of education can overcome the innate limits of human intelligence and responsibility. We are not smart enough or conscious enough or alert enough to work responsibility on a gigantric scale.

Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.

Put the interest of the community first.

Love you neighbors - not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.

Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is gift to us.

So far as you are able, make your lives independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.

Find work, if you can, that does not no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well.

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer.

Amina's articles

2009-12-18T12:29:00.003+05:30

Here are Amina Khatoon's articles on the theme "See the City from Here" about life in Priya Manna Basti, in Howrah.

"See the City from Here"

Amina takes a close look at the educational scenario in Priya Manna Basti, and especially the state of primary education. This can be read together with the report of the Pratichi Trust recently released by Prof Amartya Sen. The report is accessible (in 2 parts) here:

Part 1

Part 2

Melodious sub-continent

2009-04-08T16:58:00.002+05:30

Painting by Jean Kigel

Everyone knows the national anthem of their own country. Some people know something about their anthem, like who wrote and composed it, when it was adopted, what it means and so on.

Very few people know the national anthems of other countries, or care to. But that's to their own loss! For everyone, their own national anthem is something very special. So by knowing another's anthem, one connects with an essential part of them. Its like a people's deep signature. Besides some of the anthems of the world are simply glorious to hear.

We people of the sub-continent of South Asia should hear and learn and know one another's anthems. If nothing else, they are all so melodious, and can be sung with so much feeling. Knowing something of the shared languages of this land, I cannot but be moved to tears by the anthems of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. I like to think all the national anthems of the sub-continent are siblings, which indeed they are, in a very profound sense. And the newest entrant to this melodic family is the anthem of Nepal.

I am reminded of the anecdote in the autobiography of musician Yehudi Menuhin (whose siblings were also accomplished musicians), about someone telling his mother, "Madam, you have a very musical womb!"

So here are the anthems of the sub-continent, in alphabetical order.

Amar Shonar Bangla is the national anthem of Bangladesh. It was adopted in 1972. The song was written and composed by Rabindranath Tagore in 1906. It is in Bengali.

Amar shonar Bangla,
Ami tomae bhalobashi.

Chirodin tomar akash,
Tomar batash,
Amar prane bajae bãshi.

O ma,
Phagune tor amer bone
Ghrane pagol kôre,
Mori hae, hae re,
O ma,
Ôghrane tor bhôra khete
Ami ki dekhechhi modhur hashi.

Ki shobha, ki chhaea go,
Ki sneho, ki maea go,
Ki ãchol bichhaeechho
Bôţer mule,
Nodir kule kule!

Ma, tor mukher bani
Amar kane lage,
Shudhar môto,
Mori hae, hae re,
Ma, tor bôdonkhani molin hole,
Ami nôeon jôle bhashi.

My beloved Bengal
My Bengal of Gold,
I love you.

Forever your skies,
Your air set my heart in tune
As if it were a flute.

In spring, O mother mine,
The fragrance from your mango groves
Makes me wild with joy,
Ah, what a thrill!
In autumn, O mother mine,
In the full blossomed paddy fields
I have seen spread all over sweet smiles.

Ah, what a beauty, what shades,
What an affection, and what a tenderness!
What a quilt have you spread
At the feet of banyan trees
And along the banks of rivers!

O mother mine, words from your lips
Are like nectar to my ears.
Ah, what a thrill!
If sadness, O mother mine,
Casts a gloom on your face,
My eyes are filled with tears!

Jana Gana Mana is the national anthem of India. Composed and scored by Rabindranath Tagore, it was first sung in 1911. It was adopted as the Indian national anthem in 1950. The music for the current version is said to be derived from a composition for the song by Ram Singh Thakur. It is in Sanskrit.

Jana gana mana adhinayaka jaya he
Bharata bhagya Vidhata
Panjaba Sindhu Gujarata Maratha
Dravida Utkala Banga
Vindhya Himachala Yamuna Ganga
Ucchala jaladhi taranga
Tava subha name jage
Tava subha asisha mage
Gahe tava jaya gatha
Jana gana mangala daayaka jaya he
Bharata bhagya Vidhata
Jaya he jaya he jaya he
Jaya jaya jaya jaya he!

O! Dispenser of India's destiny, thou art the ruler of the minds of all people
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, the Maratha country,
in the Dravida country, Utkala and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
it mingles in the rhapsodies of the pure waters of Yamuna and Ganga
They chant only thy name.
They seek only thy auspicious blessings.
They sing only the glory of thy victory.
The salvation of all people waits in thy hands,
O! Dispenser of India's destiny, thou art the ruler of the minds of all people
Victory to thee, Victory to thee, Victory to thee,
Victory, Victory, Victory, Victory to thee!

Sayaun Thunga Phool Ka Hami is the national anthem of Nepal. Adopted in 2007, the lyrics were written by poet Pradeep Kumar Rai, alias Byakul Maila. The music has been composed by Ambar Gurung.

Sayaű thűgā phūlkā hāmī, euṭai mālā nepālī
Sārwabhaum bhai phailiekā, Mechi-Mahākālī
Prakritikā kotī-kotī sampadāko ā̃chal,
Vīrharūkā ragata le, swatantra ra aṭal
Gyānabhūmi, śhāntibhūmi Tarāī, pahād, himāl
Akhaṇḍa yo pyāro hāmro mātṛibhūmi Nepāl
Bahul jāti, bhāṣhā, dharma, sãnskṛti chan biśhāl
Agragāmī rāṣhṭra hāmro, jaya jaya Nepāl
Byakul Maila

We are hundreds of flowers, the one garland - Nepali
Sovereign, spread out from Mechi to Mahakali.
Amassing nature's millions of resources
By the blood of heroes, independent and immovable.
Land of knowledge, land of peace, Terai, hills, mountains
Indivisible this beloved, our motherland Nepal.
The diverse races, languages, faiths, and cultures are so extensive
Our progressive nation, long live Nepal.

The Qaumī Tarāna or Pāk sarzamīn shād bād is the national anthem of Pakistan. Adopted in 1954, the lyrics were written by Hafeez Jullundhri, and the music of the anthem was composed by Ahmed Ghulamali Chagl. It is in Urdu.

Pāk sarzamīn shād bād
Kishwar-e-hasīn shād bād
Tū nishān-e-`azm-e-`alīshān
Arz-e-Pākistān!
Markaz-e-yaqīn shād bād

Pāk sarzamīn kā nizām
Qūwat-e-ukhūwat-e-`awām
Qaum, mulk, sultanat
Pā-inda tābinda bād!
Shād bād manzil-e-murād

Parcham-e-sitāra-o-hilāl
Rahbar-e-tarraqqī-o-kamāl
Tarjumān-e-māzī, shān-e-hāl
Jān-e-istiqbāl!
Sāyah-e-Khudā-e-Zū-l-Jalāl

Blessed be the sacred land
Happy be the bounteous realm
Symbol of high resolve
Land of Pakistan!
Blessed be thou, citadel of faith

The order of this sacred land
Is the might of the brotherhood of the people
May the nation, the country, and the state
Shine in glory everlasting!
Blessed be the goal of our ambition

This flag of the crescent and star
Leads the way to progress and perfection
Interpreter of our past, glory of our present
Knowledge of the future!
Symbol of the Almighty's protection

Sri Lanka Matha is the national anthem of Sri Lanka. Adopted in 1951, the words and music were written by Ananda Samarakoon in 1940. It is in Sinhala.

Sri Lanka Matha, apa Sri Lanka,
Namo Namo Namo Namo Matha.
Sundara siri barini,
Surendi athi Sobamana Lanka
Dhanya dhanaya neka mal pala thuru piri, Jaya bhoomiya ramya.
Apa hata sapa siri setha sadana, jeewanaye Matha!
Piliganu mena apa bhakthi pooja,
Namo Namo Matha.
Apa Sri Lanka,
Namo Namo Namo Namo Matha
Obawe apa widya, Obamaya apa sathya
Obawe apa shakti, Apa hada thula bhakthi
Oba apa aloke, Aapage anuprane
oba apa jeewana we, Apa muktiya obawe
Nawa jeewana demine
Nnithina apa Pubudu karan matha
Gnana weerya wadawamina ragena yanu
mena jaya bhoomi kara
Eka mawekuge daru kala bawina
yamu yamu wee nopama
Prema wada sama bheda durara da
Namo Namo Matha
Apa Sri Lanka,
Namo Namo Namo Namo Matha.

Mother Lanka we salute Thee!
Plenteous in prosperity, Thou,
Beauteous in grace and love,
Laden with grain and luscious fruit,
And fragrant flowers of radiant hue,
Giver of life and all good things,
Our land of joy and victory,
Receive our gratefull praise sublime,
Lanka! we worship Thee.
Thou gavest us Knowledge and Truth,
Thou art our strength and inward faith,
Our light divine and sentient being,
Breath of life and liberation.
Grant us, bondage free, inspiration.
Inspire us for ever.
In wisdom and strength renewed,
Ill-will, hatred, strife all ended,
In love enfolded, a mighty nation
Marching onward, all as one,
Lead us, Mother, to fullest freedom.

Let me in!

2009-04-08T16:47:00.001+05:30

A message here, on equal opportunity!

See more of Simon's Cat here and here.

Commodifying kids: The Forgotten Crisis

2009-04-08T16:24:00.005+05:30

"The advertising and marketing industry
spends over $17 billion a year on shaping
children's identities and desires."
(Photo: notsogoodphotography)

by Henry A. Giroux
truthout

As the United States and the rest of the world enter into an economic free fall, the current crisis offers an opportunity not only to question the politics of free-market fundamentalism, the dominance of economics over politics, and the subordination of justice to the laws of finance and the accumulation of capital, but also the ways in which children's culture has been corrupted by rampant commercialization, commodification and consumption. There is more at stake in this crisis than stabilizing the banks, shoring up employment and solving the housing problem. There is also the issue of what kind of public spaces and values we want to make available, outside of those provided by the market, for children to learn the knowledge, skills and experiences they need to confront the myriad problems facing the twenty-first century. The road to recovery cannot be simply about returning to modified free-market capitalism and a re-established, utterly bankrupt consumer society. Given all the pain and suffering that the vast majority of Americans have endured, we should ask ourselves if there is not a teachable moment here. What kind of society and future do we want for our children given how obviously unsustainable and exploitative the now failed market-driven system has proven to be?

In a society that measures its success and failure solely through the economic lens of the Gross National Product (GNP), it becomes difficult to define youth outside of market principles determined largely by criteria such as the rate of market growth and the accumulation of capital. The value and worth of young people in this discourse are largely determined through the bottom-line cost-benefit categories of income, expenses, assets and liabilities. The GNP does not measure justice, integrity, courage, compassion, wisdom and learning, among other values vital to the interests and health of a democratic society. Nor does it address the importance of civic participation, public goods, dissent and the fostering of democratic institutions. In a society driven entirely by market mentalities, moralities, values and ideals, consuming, selling and branding become the primary mode through which to define agency and social relations - intimate and public - and to shape the sensibiliti es and inner lives of adults as well as how society defines and treats its children.

While the "empire of consumption" has been around for a long time,(1) American society in the last thirty years has undergone a sea change in the daily lives of children - one marked by a major transition from a culture of innocence and social protection, however imperfect, to a culture of commodification. This is culture that does more than undermine the ideals of a secure and happy childhood; it also exhibits the bad faith of a society in which, for children, "there can be only one kind of value, market value; one kind of success, profit; one kind of existence, commodities; and one kind of social relationship, markets."(2) Children now inhabit a cultural landscape in which they can only recognize themselves in terms preferred by the market.

Subject to an advertising and marketing industry that spends over $17 billion a year on shaping children's identities and desires,(3) American youth are commercially carpet-bombed through a never-ending proliferation of market strategies that colonize their consciousness and daily lives. Multibillion-dollar corporations, with the commanding role of commodity markets as well as the support of the highest reaches of government, now become the primary educational and cultural force in shaping, if not hijacking, how young people define their interests, values and relations to others. Juliet Schor, one of the most insightful and critical theorists of the commodification of children, argues that, "These corporations not only have enormous economic power, but their political influence has never been greater. They have funneled unprecedented sums of money to political parties and officials.... The power wielded by these corporations is evident in many ways, from their ability to eliminate competitors to their ability to mobilize state power in their interest."(4)

As the sovereignty of the market displaces state sovereignty, children are no longer viewed as an important social investment or as a central marker for the moral life of the nation. Instead, childhood ideals linked to the protection and well-being of youth are transformed - decoupled from the "call to conscience [and] civic engagement"(5) and redefined through what amounts to a culture of cruelty, abandonment and disposability. Childhood ideals increasingly give way to a market-driven politics in which young people are prepared for a life of objectification while simultaneously drained of any viable sense of moral and political agency. Moreover, as the economy implodes, the financial sector is racked by corruption and usury, the housing and mortgage market is in free fall, and millions of people lose their jobs, the targeting of children for profits takes on even more insistent and ominous tones. This is especially true in a consumer society in which children more than ever mediate their identities and relations to others through the consumption of goods and images. No longer imagined within language of responsibility and justice, childhood begins with what might be called the scandalous philosophy of money - that is, a logic in which everything, including the worth of young people, is measured through the potentially barbaric calculations of finance, exchange value and profitability. And this is part of the economic crisis that is barely mentioned in the mainstream media.

What is distinctive about this period in history is that the United States has become the most "consumer-oriented society in the world." Kids and teens, because of their value as consumers and their ability to influence spending, are not only at "the epicenter of American consumer culture," but are also the major targets of those powerful marketing and financial forces that service big corporations and the corporate state.(6) In a world in which products far outnumber shoppers, youth have been unearthed not simply as another expansive and profitable market, but as the primary source of redemption for the future of capitalism - even as it implodes. Erased as future citizens of a democracy, kids are now constructed as consuming and saleable objects. Gilded Age corporations, however devalued, and their army of marketers, psychologists and advertising executives now engage in what Susan Linn calls a "hostile takeover of childhood,"(7) poised to take advantage of the economic power wielded by kids and teens. With spending power increasing to match that of adults, the children's market has greatly expanded in the last few decades, in terms of both direct spending by kids and their influence on parental acquisitions. While figures on direct spending by kids differ, Benjamin Barber claims that "in 2000, there were 31 million American kids between twelve and nineteen already controlling 155 billion consumer dollars. Just four years later, there were 33.5 million kids controlling $169 billion, or roughly $91 per week per kid."(8) Schor argues that "children age four to twelve made ... $30.0 billion" in purchases in 2002, while kids aged twelve to nineteen "accounted for $170 billion of personal spending."(9) Molnar and Boninger cite figures indicating that pre-teens and teenagers command "$200 billion in spending power."(10) Young people are attractive to corporations because they are big spenders, but that is not the only reason. They also exert a powerful influence on parental spending, offering up a market in which, according to Anap Shah, "Children (under 12) and teens influence parental purchases totaling over ... $670 billion a year."(11)

One measure of the corporate assault on kids can be seen in the reach, acceleration and effectiveness of a marketing and advertising juggernaut that attempts to turn kids into consumers and childhood into a saleable commodity. Every child, regardless of how young, is now a potential consumer ripe for being commodified and immersed in a commercial culture defined by brands. According to Lawrence Grossberg, children are introduced to the world of logos, advertising and the "mattering maps" of consumerism long before they can speak: "Capitalism targets kids as soon as they are old enough to watch commercials, even though they may not be old enough to distinguish programming from commercials or to recognize the effects of branding and product placement."(12) In fact, American children from birth to adulthood are exposed to a consumer blitz of advertising, marketing, educating and entertaining that has no historical precedent. There is even a market for videos for toddlers as young as four months old. One such baby video called Baby Gourmet alleges to "provide a multi-sensory experience for children designed to introduce little ones to beautiful fruits and vegetables ... in a gentle and amusing way that stimulates both the left and right hemispheres."(13) This would be humorous if Madison Avenue were not dead serious in its attempts to sell this type of hype - along with other baby videos such as Baby Einstein, Brainy Baby, Sesame Street Baby, and Disney's Winnie the Pooh Baby - to parents eager to provide their children with every conceivable advantage over the rest. Not surprisingly, this is part of a growing $4.8 billion market aimed at the youngest children.(14) Schor captures perfectly the omnipotence of this machinery of consumerism as it envelops the lives of very young children:

At age one, she's watching Teletubbies and eating the food of its "promo partners" Burger King and McDonald's. Kids can recognize logos by eighteen months, and before reaching their second birthday, they're asking for products by brand name. By three or three and a half, experts say, children start to believe that brands communicate their personal qualities, for example, that they're cool, or strong, or smart. Even before starting school, the likelihood of having a television in their bedroom is 25 percent, and their viewing time is just over two hours a day. Upon arrival at the schoolhouse steps, the typical first grader can evoke 200 brands. And he or she has already accumulated an unprecedented number of possessions, beginning with an average of seventy new toys a year.(15)

Complicit, wittingly or unwittingly, with a politics defined by market power, the American public offers little resistance to children's culture being expropriated and colonized by Madison Avenue advertisers. Eager to enthral kids with invented fears and lacks, these advertisers also entice them with equally unimagined new desires, to prod them into spending money or to influence their parents to spend it in order to fill corporate coffers. Every child is vulnerable to the many advertisers who diversify markets through various niches, one of which is based on age. For example, the DVD industry sees toddlers as a lucrative market. Toy manufacturers now target children from birth to ten years of age. Children aged eight to twelve constitute a tween market and teens an additional one. Children visit stores and malls long before they enter elementary school, and children as young as eight years old make visits to malls without adults. Disney, Nickelodeon and other mega companies now provide web sites such as "Pirates of the Caribbean" for children under ten years of age, luring them into a virtual world of potential consumers that reached 8.2 million in 2007, while it is predicted that this electronic mall will include 20 million children by 2011.(16 ) Moreover, as Brook Barnes points out in The New York Times, these electronic malls are hardly being used either as innocent entertainment or for educational purposes. On the contrary, she states, "Media conglomerates in particular think these sites - part online role-playing game and part social scene - can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers." (17) But there is more at stake here than making money and promoting brand loyalty among young children: there is also the construction of particular modes of subjectivity, identification and agency.

Some of these identities are on full display in advertising aimed at young girls. Market strategists are increasingly using sexually charged images to sell commodities, often representing the fantasies of an adult version of sexuality. For instance, Abercrombie & Fitch, a clothing franchise for young people, has earned a reputation for its risque catalogues filled with promotional ads of scantily clad kids and its over-the-top sexual advice columns for teens and preteens; one catalogue featured an ad for thongs for ten-year-olds with the words "eye candy" and "wink wink" written on them.(18) Another clothing store sold underwear geared toward teens with "Who needs Credit Cards ...?" written across the crotch.(19)Children as young as six years old are being sold lacy underwear, push-up bras and "date night accessories" for their various doll collections. In 2006, the Tesco department store chain sold a pole dancing kit designed for young girls to unleash the sex kitten inside . Encouraging five- to ten-year-old children to model themselves after sex workers suggests the degree to which matters of ethics and propriety have been decoupled from the world of marketing and advertising, even when the target audience is young children. The representational politics at work in these marketing and advertising strategies connect children's bodies to a reductive notion of sexuality, pleasure and commodification, while depicting children's sexuality and bodies as nothing more than objects for voyeuristic adult consumption and crude financial profit.

For the last few decades, critics such as Thomas Frank, Kevin Phillips, David Harvey and many others have warned us, and rightly so, that right-wing conservatives and free-market fundamentalists have been dismantling government by selling it off to the highest or "friendliest" bidder. But what they have not recognized adequately is that what has also been sold off are both our children and our collective future, and that the consequences of this catastrophe can only be understood within the larger framework of a politics and market philosophy that view children as commodities and democracy as the enemy. In a democracy, education in any sphere, whether it be the public schools or the larger media, is, or should be, utterly adverse to treating young people as individual units of economic potential and as walking commodities. And it is crucial not to "forget" that democracy should not be confused with a hypercapitalism.

Inevitably, humans must consume to survive. The real enemy is not consumption per se, but a market-driven consumer society fueled by the endless cycle of acquisition, waste and disposability, which is at the heart of an unchecked and deregulated global capitalism. Under such circumstances, there are few remaining spaces in which to imagine a mode of consumption that rejects the logic of commodification and embraces the principles of sustainability while expanding the reach and possibilities of a substantive democracy. Juliet Schor touches on this issue by rightly arguing that the real issue is "what kind of consumers do we want to be?"(20) Or, to put it more broadly, what kind of society and world do we want to live in? As politics embraces all aspects of children’s lives, it is crucial to make clear that the rising tide of free markets has less to do with ensuring democracy and freedom than with spreading a rein of terror around the globe, affecting the most vulnerable populations in the cruellest of ways. The politics of commodification and its underlying logic of waste and disposability do irreparable harm to children, but the resulting material, psychological and spiritual injury they incur must be understood not merely as a political and economic issue but also as a pedagogical concern.

At the same time, simply criticizing the market, the privatization of public goods and the commercialization of children, while helpful, is not enough. Stirring denunciations of what a market society does to kids do not go far enough. What is equally necessary is developing public spaces and social movements that help young people develop healthy notions of self, identities and visions of their future no longer defined - more accurately, defiled - by market values and mentalities. Obama's road to recovery must align itself with a vision of a democracy that is on the side of children, particularly young children in need. It must enable the conditions for youth to learn, to "grow," as John Dewey once insisted, as engaged social actors more alive to their responsibilities to future generations than contemporary adult society has proven capable. Such a project requires constructing a politics that refuses to be animated by populist rage so easily misdirected, or by a disdain for the social state, for mutuality, reciprocity and compassion, among other democratic values. In short, it must reject a society whose essence is currently refracted in the faces of children compelled to confront a future that as yet offers very little hope of happiness, or even survival.

.......

Endnotes

(1) Lizabeth Cohen, "A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America" (New York: Vintage, 2003).
(2) Lawrence Grossberg, "Caught In the Crossfire: Kids, Politics, and America's Future" (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2005), p. 264.
(3) See Josh Golin, "Nation's Strongest School Commercialism Bill Advances Out of Committee," Common Dreams Progressive Newswire (August 1, 2007). Online:http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/newsprint.cgi?file=/news2007/0801-06.htm. Juliet Schor argues that total advertising and marketing expenditures directed at children in 2004 reached $15 billion. See Juliet B. Schor, "Born to Buy" (New York: Scribner, 2005), p. 21.
(4) Juliet Schor, "When Childhood Gets Commercialized Can Childhood Be Protected," in Regulation, Awareness, Empowerment: Young People and Harmful Media Content in the Digital Age, ed. Ulla Carlsson (Sweden: Nordicom, 2006), pp. 114ñ115.
(5) Kiku Adatto, "Selling Out Childhood," Hedgehog Review 5: 2 (Summer 2003), p. 40.
(6) Schor, "Born to Buy," p. 20.
(7) Susan Linn, "Consuming Kids" (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), p. 8.
(8) Benjamin R. Barber, "Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole" (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), pp. 7ñ8.
(9) Schor, "Born to Buy," p. 23.
(10) Alex Molnar and Faith Boninger, "Adrift: Schools in a Total Marketing Environment," Tenth Annual Report on Schoolhouse Commercialism Trends: 2006-2007 (Tempe: Arizona State University, 2007), pp. 6-7.
(11) Anup Shah, "Children as Consumers," Global Issues (January 8, 2008). Online:http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Consumption/Children.asp.
(12) Grossberg, "Caught in the Crossfire," p. 88.
(13) Linn, "Consuming Kids," p. 54.
(14) Molnar and Boninger, "Adrift," p. 9.
(15) Schor, "Born to Buy," pp. 19-20.
(16) Cited in Brooks Barnes, "Web Playgrounds of the Very Young," New York Times, (December 31, 2007). Online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/business/31virtual.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.
(17) Barnes, "Web Playgrounds of the Very Young."
(18) Editorial, "Clothier Pushes Porn, Group Sex to Youths," WorldNetDaily.com(November 15, 2003). Online: http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35604. See also Editorial, "Tell Nationwide Children's Hospital: No Naming Rights for Abercrombie & Fitch," Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (June 2006). Online: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/621/t/5401/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=23662.
(19) Tana Ganeva, "Sexpot Virgins: The Media's Sexualization of Young Girls," AlterNet (May 24, 2008). Online: http://www.alternet.org/story/85977/.
(20) Juliet Schor, "Tackling Turbo Consumption: An Interview With Juliet Schor," Soundings 34 (November 2006), p. 51.

Henry A. Giroux holds the Global TV Network chair in English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University in Canada. His most recent books include Take Back Higher Education (co-authored with Susan Searls Giroux, 2006), The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex (2007) and Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (2008). His newest book, Youth in a Suspect Society: Beyond the Politics of Disposability, will be published by Palgrave Mcmillan in 2009.

Learning, the arts and citizenship

2009-03-14T18:41:00.002+05:30

by Martha Nussbaum

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor in the Law School at the University of Chicago. The following is an address made by her to teachers at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, on 4 November 2005.

The arts offer children opportunities for learning through their own creative activity, something that Dewey particularly emphasized. To put on a play about the civil rights movement is to learn about it in a way that is likely to seem more meaningful to a child than the reading of a textbook account. Learning about hardship and discrimination enters the personality at a deeper level. The arts are also crucial sources of both freedom and community.

When people put on a play together, they have to learn to go beyond tradition and authority, if they are going to express themselves well. And the sort of community created by the arts is non-hierarchical, a valuable model of the responsiveness and interactivity that a good democracy will also foster in its political processes.

The arts are great sources of joy, and this joy carries over into the rest of a child’s education. Amita Sen’s book about Tagore as choreographer, aptly entitled Joy in All Work, shows how all the “regular” education in Tagore’s Santiniketan school, which enabled these students to perform very well in standard examinations, was infused with delight because of the way in which it was combined with dance and song. Children do not like to sit still all day, but they also do not know automatically how to express emotion with their bodies in dance. Tagore’s expressive but also disciplined dance regime was an essential source of creativity, thought, and freedom for all pupils, but particularly for women, whose bodies had been taught to be shame-ridden and inexpressive.

There is a further point to be made about what the arts do for the reader or spectator. As Tagore knew, and as radical artists have often emphasized, the arts, by generating pleasure in connection with acts of subversion and cultural criticism, produce an endurable and even attractive dialogue with the prejudices of the past, rather than one fraught with fear and defensiveness.

The great African American artist Ralph Ellison, for example, called his novel Invisible Man “a raft of perception, hope, and entertainment” that could help the American democracy “negotiate the snags and whirlpools” that stand between it and “the democratic idea.” Entertainment is crucial to the ability of the arts to offer perception and hope. At the heart of all three of the Tagorean (and Deweyan) capacities is the idea of freedom: the freedom of the child’s mind to engage critically with tradition; the freedom to imagine citizenship in both national and world terms, and to negotiate multiple allegiances with knowledge and confidence; the freedom to reach out in the imagination, allowing another person’s experience into oneself.

Science and technology are important, and nations are surely right to focus on the prosperity that they promise to bring. It would be disastrous, however, if the other parts of a liberal education were short-circuited in the process, producing nations of smart engineers who have little capacity for empathetic imagining and for critical thinking. Such impoverishment of mind would nourish the politics of obtuseness and hatred, all over the world. In the U.S., it would nourish both political detachment and complacency and a tendency to polarization, as people mistrust the ability of reasoned debate to bridge differences.

Progressive education, emphasizing critical thinking and imaginative learning, exacts high financial and humancosts. It requires very individualistic focusing on each child’s experience, and it requires constantly attentive and imaginative pedagogy. But the importance of progressive education for the health of democracy is out of all proportion to these costs.

Moreover, my experience in NGO’s around the world shows me that the imagination is a hardy plant. When it is not killed, it can thrive in many places, without a lot of fancy equipment, as it thrives in so many utterly impoverished NGO programs I’ve observed. If NGO’s that have no equipment and no money, only heart and mind and a few slates,can accomplish so much, there is no excuse for the public and private schools of this wealthy nation to lag behind.

Honour

2008-12-17T16:22:00.006+05:30

We were delighted and honoured to welcome in our midst yesterday Ms Mireille Fanon Mendes France, daughter of the celebrated writer and revolutionary activist Frantz Fanon. Mireille is an eminent human rights activist in Paris, France. Talimi Haq School's teacher-in-charge, Amina Khatoon, narrated to Mireille our work with children, young people and women. After that Mireille went for a short tour of Priya Manna Basti and spent some time visiting the homes of some of the people, meeting the families.

It was a most moving experience. On the way back to her hotel, Mireille asked, "If all the poor people of the world stand up, the world will be turned upside down. Do you think I will see that in my life time?" I replied, "Yes, we WILL see it in our life time, for we are now living in a time of transformations!"

That also reminded me of the women's song from Rajasthan:

Ek do ke chetba se kuch nahi hoyo
Do chaar ke chetba se kuch jhankar hoyo
Gaon ki saari behena cheti
To dharti palti khayo
Behena chet sakey to chet
Zamana aayo chetan ro

In translation:

If one or two become aware, nothing happens
If two or four become aware, there's some clinking.
If all the sisters in the village became aware,
The world's turned upside down!
Sisters, become aware if you can
The age of awakening has arrived!

Story

2008-12-17T16:00:00.005+05:30

An international conference on "Migration, Diaspora and the City: Mobility and Dwelling in Calcutta" was held in Calcutta on 12-13 December 2008. The conference was jointly organised by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, the Diaspora Cities research team and The City Centre, Queen Mary, University of London, and supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

V Ramaswamy, Honorary Chairman of Howrah Pilot Project, presented a paper at the conference, titled "Priya Manna Basti, Howrah: The story of a community".

Here's the abstract of the paper.

Priya Manna Basti, Howrah, a century old jute workers’ slum, is currently home to about 20,000 people, mainly from labouring, Urdu-speaking, Muslim households. The people living here belong to Bihar and eastern U.P.

Labouring rural people, historically disenfranchised and unlettered, arrived in search of livelihood and settled in Howrah. They lived for decades in a degraded environment. Notwithstanding the disruption of communal riots and partition, during the 1950’s this community witnessed a profound new beginning in self-help efforts towards formal education. They generated community leaders who saw education as a key means to social advancement. They set up local schools which generated large numbers of educated men, several of whom went on to acquire respectable and remunerative jobs. Self-help efforts flourished notwithstanding the discrimination against Muslims in north India in post-independence India.

This story was reversed, first by the de-industrialisation in West Bengal beginning in the mid-60s, and then by the criminalised political culture consolidated over the last two decades. Community initiative has been uprooted, the community reduced to dependence on the crumbs that the party may throw their way, and criminalised in the process. This transformation is what the CPI(M) has presided over in its three decades of power.

Climate change and children

2008-11-17T16:08:00.004+05:30

A conversation with Arvind Gupta, a toy-maker and thinker.

How are the emerging concerns of global warming and climatic change important for young children?

Children will have to face the consequences of global warming. They should become conscious of their ecological footprints. They should be made aware that the present consumerist / materialist life style is not sustainable any longer. Every little act, every little step, every person and action count.

As citizens of planet earth, what happens to earth affects its young citizens too. To that extent global warming and climatic changes are important to children. They did not create this mess. Earlier generations / development paradigms were responsible for them.

But as Earth's Citizens the young children have to imbibe eco-sensibilities, which can be summed up in a single, sentence LIVE SIMPLY THAT OTHERS MAY SIMPLY LIVE

How can we sensitize the children about environmental crisis?

Our daily lived experience of traffic jams, sky-rocketing prices of fuel, high noise levels, load shedding, water closures, adulterated food etc can be the starting point to engage the children with discussions. These then should be followed by actions an individual can take to reduce the crisis. The next step would be to involve the immediate group (family, peer, school buddies) and finally the community.

BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO BE, may sound a little cynical in this consumerist era but unless we are honest in what we do ourselves, we will cut little ice with children.

Children are too smart and see through blatant adult political lies.

Before sensitizing the children, the adults need to imbibe these sensitivities themselves.

They could make a beginning by living it themselves - by consuming less, using public transport, buying locally, car pooling, adapting solar water heaters etc. Doing more with less should be the credo. Watching less TV and taking more nature walks is a good option.

What role can the media, community, school and parents play in cultivating eco-friendly habits among the children?

Media encourages unsustainable, consumerist life styles. One has to just look at the advertisement in magazines and on TV. Students should be made to look at them critically.

This could be done through interesting activities in the class. There are some good programmes too.

In the context of the city, the community comprises of the housing colonies, neighborhood etc. Ecologically conscious housing societies, can work out garbage segregation, waste recycling, encouraging solar energy, rain harvesting, minimizing use of private transport by car pools, minimum use of lifts, electricity off for 2 hours a day etc.

Schools can play an important role. Best example, "Say No to Crackers" campaign in Delhi — the capital of India - made a big difference as many children abstained from crackers. Schools should go beyond merely making projects, having quizzes, debates.

They should evolve environment friendly practices and follow them - less use of paper, plastics, and packaging may be a starting point.

What kind of activities would you suggest to inculcate an attitude among children that is conducive to conservation?

Occasional visits to adjoining slums will help middle class children develop a respect for the resilience of the poor. If they can stay for just one day in a slum, that would be very educative. Where do the poor shit? How difficult is to get a pail of water? These direct first hand experiences of deprivation of the vast majority should be the first lessons for a lasting eco-conscious-ness. Without lectures or sermons, children will imbibe the lessons of frugality, of doing things with less.

The consumerist trash plastic bottles, tetrapacks, ice-cream sticks and so much junk are overflowing from rubbish dumps into streets. Children should be encouraged to make their own toys, learning / teaching aids using trash. It will have a double benefit — it will break the stereotype that science can be only done with burettes, pipettes and fancy glassware and plasticware. Also, the children will become active agents of cleaning up the societal mess and will also be learning to manipulate different materials to make a good working science model.

You have been engaged in innovative toy making from waste and discarded material. How far do you think your efforts have succeeded in creating an ambience for conservation?

There is a very strong element of re-cycling in the toys and science models I make. The Indian tradition implicitly believes in reincarnation. This could be easily extended to the material world - all the cartons, bottles, tubes, batteries, plastic cups we discard every day.

I have a website http://arvindguptatoys.com. There is a section on toys, which is the most popular section. There are 1400 photographs of Toys from Trash on the website. It opens up amazing possibilities of doing creative activities using junk. My efforts are a small step towards creating more sustainable, low-energy, eco-friendly toys - converting societal waste into children's assets.

Do you think that environmental education should be made compulsory at all levels?

Experience has shown that anything made compulsory in schools and colleges is met with resistance from students. No one likes to study an additional subject. Our children are already overburdened and a new subject is not a good idea. Instead, environmental concerns should be integrated into already existing subjects. For example it would be greatly educative to show a 20-film "Story of Stuff" (Free download from www.storyofstuff.com). It will help children see the consequences of their own livestyles on the environment.

The Internet has been liberating in many ways. You need not be a big media baron or politician to have your voice heard. One of the proposals with the National Council for Educational Research & Training (India) is that children in schools survey their immediate environment — make a list of the plants, animals, birds in their region, make a survey of the polluted water bodies, industries and each schools uploads it on a common website. In due course we will have an authentic biodiversity register — a common pool of information, which everyone can dip in. Students could do all this

Accomplishment

2008-11-02T11:58:00.002+05:30

I read about the InfoChange India media fellowship some weeks ago and suggested to our teacher, Amina, to apply.

Amina has been working since 2006 as free-lance reporter and photographer for the Urdu daily Akhbar-e-Mashriq published from Calcutta. She had filed over 200 news reports, about 25 news photographs and about 10 special articles. She had written on missing children in Howrah slums, illegal construction, communal and electoral violence. Amina is perhaps the first Urdu newspaper woman crime reporter in the Calcutta region.

It was decided that she would propose a series of five articles, in Urdu, with the title Yahaan se sheher ko dekho (See the City from Here). That is the title of a poem by Faiz about the cruelty and injustice of the city. The articles would be accompanied with photos. The five articles would be on: 1) shelter & housing; 2) health; 3) education; 4) crime; and 5) culture and community (how people try to be human despite all the difficulties).

Despite the preoccupations of Ramzaan and Id, the application was sent off on time. Meanwhile, Amina has become something of a heroine recently, with her series of hard-hitting articles about slum conditions, administrative failure and crime in Howrah. These were written in the context of the forthcoming corporation elections in Howrah. She was threatened repeatedly by the local political goons.

On 31 October, we learnt that Amina had been selected for the fellowship.

A tremendous accomplishment, and tremendous honour indeed, for Amina, for Talimi Haq School and Howrah Pilot Project. She has come a long way in the ten years since she began working with us.

Education to serve our people

2008-10-18T16:13:00.003+05:30

Sanjeeb Mukherjee

Education has always been used to cater to the economic and ideological needs of dominant social forces. Today, education is increasingly geared to the requirements of global capitalism; instead of meeting people’s needs our education system acts as a gigantic sieve, which continuously eliminates students who do not meet the needs of global capital. The others find places in subaltern layers of the economy or administration. As a result, the education system involves waste and incompetence on a colossal scale. The other obscene feature of this system is that the doors of education are permanently closed to a huge number of children. The idols of our education today, are the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management – providing technological and managerial skills to service global capital. The emancipatory possibilities of education have been transformed into world-class technical skills and services, subsidised by the Indian state, needed by global capital.

If education has to serve our people and our community from the lowest level, we need to make major changes in the goals, content and structure of education. The education system produces and reproduces knowledge, skills and different cultural practices, like art and music. The education system in India is split into two compartments, with internal hierarchies in each. The first is the formal or official system and the other is traditional. We are more familiar with the formal system of schools and colleges, but there is a large pool of knowledge, skills and cultural practices, which are produced and reproduced within traditional society, sometimes formally, more often informally. Agriculture, traditional industries and crafts, traditional medicine, folk arts and our whole repertoire of music and dance, both folk and classical forms continue to flourish by this informal system of education, which is often local and regional. In fact, the most important contribution of India to world knowledge and culture is in the field of Indian philosophy and music, and traditional institutions, both formal and informal, largely sustain both of them.

A large part of the modern system is marked by massive waste, redundancy and parasitism; whereas, because of want of proper institutional support many traditional knowledge systems and skills are simply becoming extinct. The crucial question is what role could these systems of knowledge play in building a just, good and beautiful society?

In the sphere of education, the district should be the key unit of operation to cater to the diversity of culture, knowledge, skills and needs. It follows that every district must contain the key institutions of education, namely, schools, colleges, including technical and professional colleges, and a university. These institutions, instead of being pale and emaciated copies of global institutions, must have a distinct character and function of their own. They would be expected to perform the following roles: first, they would primarily serve the knowledge based needs, both theoretical and practical, of the people of the district; secondly, they would bridge the divide between the modern and the traditional systems of knowledge by opening up to the other and by mutual respect and learning; finally, no society or institution can flourish if it is closed, hence, district universities particularly, should be open to the outside world.

This plan at first sight, appears formidable in terms of resources – where are the trained people and the money? Since the plan is based on the politics of here and now, rather than wait for the revolution or for the mega funds to set up fancy institutions, we need to spell out an action plan with existing resources. Almost all districts have colleges and hospitals, but people running them are either poorly trained or are under utilised, especially in colleges. To start with, a leading college could be awarded autonomous status and deserving teachers could be brought there from the district or even from outside and gradually it could be further upgraded into a postgraduate college or university. District level hospitals could be used for medical education, at least at the diploma, if not graduate level; the non-clinical subjects could be taught at the district university or any college and some advance part of the medical education could be conducted at other state level medical colleges. So without much extra expenditure a university or a medical college could be set up. Engineering colleges are already coming up. What is more important and challenging is reorienting university and technological and medical education by integrating with traditional knowledge systems and addressing the needs of the district.

There are not only two systems of knowledge, but two systems of needs as well. Modern needs, like building a concrete house is addressed by the modern knowledge system, but traditional needs, like improving the quality of a mud house, is left unaddressed. And most people like in mud houses or in shacks and slums. This is where the two systems of knowledge and skills must integrate, learning from each other. The best example of such an enterprise is the work of Laurie Baker in Kerala

On a much larger scale the two systems of knowledge and needs must meet and interact at the school level. Our modern method and content of schooling is essentially a device to colonise the minds of our people, first by the British and now by their Indian disciples.

Our schools have to undergo three kinds of transformation, first, schooling must liberate us, emancipate us; for that it should be a place for creativity, critical thinking and play. Secondly, it should be related to the life experiences of the students and their community; and finally, the content of education should be based on both modern and traditional systems of knowledge and needs. To start with this requires that students in schools study, in addition to science and maths, agriculture and local art and crafts. This means there would be an additional lot of teachers, who would be the local peasant, the potter, the weaver, the blacksmith, the folk singer or the cook. The school would be the meeting ground for interaction and learning and improvement of new and old knowledge and needs. Institutionalised support for research and critical thinking and interaction with modern sciences could overcome the ossification, which has come about over several centuries, in most traditional knowledge systems and practices. This again can be done now and here. The other imperative is to universalise school education, which in turn, would considerably solve the problem of unemployed graduates.

From: "The Left Front Government’s Development Strategy: A Critique and Notes Towards an Alternative Imaginary", Nov 2007.

What Is Education For?

2008-07-05T14:33:00.008+05:30

Six myths about the foundations of modern education, and six new principles to replace them.

by David Orr

We are accustomed to thinking of learning as good in and of itself. But as environmental educator David Orr reminds us, our education up till now has in some ways created a monster. This essay is adapted from his commencement address to the graduating class of 1990 at Arkansas College.

David Orr is the founder of the Meadowcreek Project, an environmental education center in Fox, AR, and is currently on the faculty of Oberlin College in Ohio. Reprinted from Ocean Arks International's quarterly tabloid Annals of Earth, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1990.

If today is a typical day on planet Earth, we will lose 116 square miles of rainforest, or about an acre a second. We will lose another 72 square miles to encroaching deserts, as a result of human mismanagement and overpopulation. We will lose 40 to 100 species, and no one knows whether the number is 40 or 100. Today the human population will increase by 250,000. And today we will add 2,700 tons of chlorofluorocarbons to the atmosphere and 15 million tons of carbon. Tonight the Earth will be a little hotter, its waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare.

The truth is that many things on which your future health and prosperity depend are in dire jeopardy: climate stability, the resilience and productivity of natural systems, the beauty of the natural world, and biological diversity.

It is worth noting that this is not the work of ignorant people. It is, rather, largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs. Elie Wiesel made a similar point to the Global Forum in Moscow last winter when he said that the designers and perpetrators of the Holocaust were the heirs of Kant and Goethe. In most respects the Germans were the best educated people on Earth, but their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? In Wiesel's words: "It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than conscience."

The same could be said of the way our education has prepared us to think about the natural world. It is a matter of no small consequence that the only people who have lived sustainably on the planet for any length of time could not read, or, like the Amish, do not make a fetish of reading. My point is simply that education is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom. More of the same kind of education will only compound our problems. This is not an argument for ignorance, but rather a statement that the worth of education must now be measured against the standards of decency and human survival - the issues now looming so large before us in the decade of the 1990s and beyond. It is not education that will save us, but education of a certain kind.

SANE MEANS, MAD ENDS

What went wrong with contemporary culture and with education? There is some insight in literature: Christopher Marlowe's Faust, who trades his soul for knowledge and power; Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, who refuses to take responsibility for his creation; Herman Melville's Captain Ahab, who says "All my means are sane, my motive and object mad." In these characters we encounter the essence of the modern drive to dominate nature.

Historically, Francis Bacon's proposed union between knowledge and power foreshadows the contemporary alliance between government, business, and knowledge that has wrought so much mischief. Galileo's separation of the intellect foreshadows the dominance of the analytical mind over that part given to creativity, humor, and wholeness. And in Descartes' epistemology, one finds the roots of the radical separation of self and object. Together these three laid the foundations for modern education, foundations now enshrined in myths we have come to accept without question. Let me suggest six.

First, there is the myth that ignorance is a solvable problem. Ignorance is not a solvable problem, but rather an inescapable part of the human condition. The advance of knowledge always carries with it the advance of some form of ignorance. In 1930, after Thomas Midgely Jr. discovered CFCs, what had previously been a piece of trivial ignorance became a critical, life-threatening gap in the human understanding of the biosphere. No one thought to ask "what does this substance do to what?" until the early 1970s, and by 1990 CFCs had created a general thinning of the ozone layer worldwide. With the discovery of CFCs knowledge increased; but like the circumference of an expanding circle, ignorance grew as well.

A second myth is that with enough knowledge and technology we can manage planet Earth.. "Managing the planet" has a nice a ring to it. It appeals to our fascination with digital readouts, computers, buttons and dials. But the complexity of Earth and its life systems can never be safely managed. The ecology of the top inch of topsoil is still largely unknown, as is its relationship to the larger systems of the biosphere.

What might be managed is us: human desires, economies, politics, and communities. But our attention is caught by those things that avoid the hard choices implied by politics, morality, ethics, and common sense. It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to attempt to reshape the planet to fit our infinite wants.

A third myth is that knowledge is increasing and by implication human goodness. There is an information explosion going on, by which I mean a rapid increase of data, words, and paper. But this explosion should not be taken for an increase in knowledge and wisdom, which cannot so easily by measured. What can be said truthfully is that some knowledge is increasing while other kinds of knowledge are being lost. David Ehrenfeld has pointed out that biology departments no longer hire faculty in such areas as systematics, taxonomy, or ornithology. In other words, important knowledge is being lost because of the recent overemphasis on molecular biology and genetic engineering, which are more lucrative, but not more important, areas of inquiry. We still lack the the science of land health that Aldo Leopold called for half a century ago.

It is not just knowledge in certain areas that we're losing, but vernacular knowledge as well, by which I mean the knowledge that people have of their places. In the words of Barry Lopez:

"[I am] forced to the realization that something strange, if not dangerous, is afoot. Year by year the number of people with firsthand experience in the land dwindles. Rural populations continue to shift to the cities.... In the wake of this loss of personal and local knowledge, the knowledge from which a real geography is derived, the knowledge on which a country must ultimately stand, has come something hard to define but I think sinister and unsettling."

In the confusion of data with knowledge is a deeper mistake that learning will make us better people. But learning, as Loren Eiseley once said, is endless and "In itself it will never make us ethical [people]." Ultimately, it may be the knowledge of the good that is most threatened by all of our other advances. All things considered, it is possible that we are becoming more ignorant of the things we must know to live well and sustainably on the Earth.

A fourth myth of higher education is that we can adequately restore that which we have dismantled. In the modern curriculum we have fragmented the world into bits and pieces called disciplines and subdisciplines. As a result, after 12 or 16 or 20 years of education, most students graduate without any broad integrated sense of the unity of things. The consequences for their personhood and for the planet are large. For example, we routinely produce economists who lack the most rudimentary knowledge of ecology. This explains why our national accounting systems do not subtract the costs of biotic impoverishment, soil erosion, poisons in the air or water, and resource depletion from gross national product. We add the price of the sale of a bushel of wheat to GNP while forgetting to subtract the three bushels of topsoil lost in its production. As a result of incomplete education, we've fooled ourselves into thinking that we are much richer than we are.

Fifth, there is a myth that the purpose of education is that of giving you the means for upward mobility and success. Thomas Merton once identified this as the "mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade." When asked to write about his own success, Merton responded by saying that "if it so happened that I had once written a best seller, this was a pure accident, due to inattention and naiveté, and I would take very good care never to do the same again." His advice to students was to "be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success."

The plain fact is that the planet does not need more "successful" people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every shape and form. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these needs have little to do with success as our culture has defined it.

Finally, there is a myth that our culture represents the pinnacle of human achievement: we alone are modern, technological, and developed. This, of course, represents cultural arrogance of the worst sort, and a gross misreading of history and anthropology. Recently this view has taken the form that we won the cold war and that the triumph of capitalism over communism is complete. Communism failed because it produced too little at too high a cost. But capitalism has also failed because it produces too much, shares too little, also at too high a cost to our children and grandchildren. Communism failed as an ascetic morality. Capitalism failed because it destroys morality altogether. This is not the happy world that any number of feckless advertisers and politicians describe. We have built a world of sybaritic wealth for a few and Calcuttan poverty for a growing underclass. At its worst it is a world of crack on the streets, insensate violence, anomie, and the most desperate kind of poverty. The fact is that we live in a disintegrating culture. In the words of Ron Miller, editor of Holistic Review:

"Our culture does not nourish that which is best or noblest in the human spirit. It does not cultivate vision, imagination, or aesthetic or spiritual sensitivity. It does not encourage gentleness, generosity, caring, or compassion. Increasingly in the late 20th Century, the economic-technocratic-statist worldview has become a monstrous destroyer of what is loving and life-affirming in the human soul."

WHAT EDUCATION MUST BE FOR

Measured against the agenda of human survival, how might we rethink education? Let me suggest six principles.

First, all education is environmental education. By what is included or excluded we teach students that they are part of or apart from the natural world. To teach economics, for example, without reference to the laws of thermodynamics or those of ecology is to teach a fundamentally important ecological lesson: that physics and ecology have nothing to do with the economy. That just happens to be dead wrong. The same is true throughout all of the curriculum.

A second principle comes from the Greek concept of paideia. The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person. Subject matter is simply the tool. Much as one would use a hammer and chisel to carve a block of marble, one uses ideas and knowledge to forge one's own personhood. For the most part we labor under a confusion of ends and means, thinking that the goal of education is to stuff all kinds of facts, techniques, methods, and information into the student's mind, regardless of how and with what effect it will be used. The Greeks knew better.

Third, I would like to propose that knowledge carries with it the responsibility to see that it is well used in the world. The results of a great deal of contemporary research bear resemblance to those foreshadowed by Mary Shelley: monsters of technology and its byproducts for which no one takes responsibility or is even expected to take responsibility. Whose responsibility is Love Canal? Chernobyl? Ozone depletion? The Valdez oil spill? Each of these tragedies were possible because of knowledge created for which no one was ultimately responsible. This may finally come to be seen for what I think it is: a problem of scale. Knowledge of how to do vast and risky things has far outrun our ability to use it responsibly. Some of it cannot be used responsibly, which is to say safely and to consistently good purposes.

Fourth, we cannot say that we know something until we understand the effects of this knowledge on real people and their communities. I grew up near Youngstown, Ohio, which was largely destroyed by corporate decisions to "disinvest" in the economy of the region. In this case MBAs, educated in the tools of leveraged buyouts, tax breaks, and capital mobility have done what no invading army could do: they destroyed an American city with total impunity on behalf of something called the "bottom line." But the bottom line for society includes other costs, those of unemployment, crime, higher divorce rates, alcoholism, child abuse, lost savings, and wrecked lives. In this instance what was taught in the business schools and economics departments did not include the value of good communities or the human costs of a narrow destructive economic rationality that valued efficiency and economic abstractions above people and community.

My fifth principle follows and is drawn from William Blake. It has to do with the importance of "minute particulars" and the power of examples over words. Students hear about global responsibility while being educated in institutions that often invest their financial weight in the most irresponsible things. The lessons being taught are those of hypocrisy and ultimately despair. Students learn, without anyone ever saying it, that they are helpless to overcome the frightening gap between ideals and reality. What is desperately needed are faculty and administrators who provide role models of integrity, care, thoughtfulness, and institutions that are capable of embodying ideals wholly and completely in all of their operations.

Finally, I would like to propose that the way learning occurs is as important as the content of particular courses. Process is important for learning. Courses taught as lecture courses tend to induce passivity. Indoor classes create the illusion that learning only occurs inside four walls isolated from what students call without apparent irony the "real world." Dissecting frogs in biology classes teaches lessons about nature that no one would verbally profess. Campus architecture is crystallized pedagogy that often reinforces passivity, monologue, domination, and artificiality. My point is simply that students are being taught in various and subtle ways beyond the content of courses.

AN ASSIGNMENT FOR THE CAMPUS

If education is to be measured against the standard of sustainability, what can be done? I would like to make four propsals.

First, I would like to propose that you engage in a campus-wide dialogue about the way you conduct your business as educators. Does four years here make your graduates better planetary citizens or does it make them, in Wendell Berry's words, "itinerant professional vandals"? Does this college contribute to the development of a sustainable regional economy or, in the name of efficiency, to the processes of destruction?

My second suggestion is to examine resource flows on this campus: food, energy, water, materials, and waste. Faculty and students should together study the wells, mines, farms, feedlots, and forests that supply the campus as well as the dumps where you send your waste. Collectively, begin a process of finding ways to shift the buying power of this institution to support better alternatives that do less environmental damage, lower carbon dioxide emissions, reduce use of toxic substances, promote energy efficiency and the use of solar energy, help to build a sustainable regional economy, cut long-term costs, and provide an example to other institutions. The results of these studies should be woven into the curriculum as interdisplinary courses, seminars, lectures, and research. No student should graduate without understanding how to analyze resource flows and without the opportunity to participate in the creation of real solutions to real problems.

Third, reexamaine how your endowment works. Is it invested according to the Valdez principles? Is it invested in companies doing responsible things that the world needs? Can some part of it be invested locally to help leverage energy efficiency and the evolution of a sustainable economy throughout the region?

Finally, I propose that you set a goal of ecological literacy for all of your students. No student should graduate from this or any other educational institution without a basic comprehension of:

the laws of thermodynamics
the basic principles of ecology
carrying capacity
energetics
least-cost, end-use analysis
how to live well in a place
limits of technology
appropriate scale
sustainable agriculture and forestry
steady-state economics
environmental ethics

Do graduates of this college, in Aldo Leopold's words, know that "they are only cogs in an ecological mechanism such that, if they will work with that mechanism, their mental wealth and material wealth can expand indefinitely (and) if they refuse to work with it, it will ultimately grind them to dust." Leopold asked: "If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for?"

Building Understanding between the United States and the Asian Muslim World

2008-06-27T14:15:00.003+05:30

Susan Kreifels, Jon Beaupre, Neva Grant and Donna Leinwand.

Neva Grant, Donna Leinwand, Maria Ebrahimji, Allie Shah and Snehasis Sur.

A group of senior journalists from the USA visited HPP on 16 June 2008. They were on a dialogue, travel and exchange programme for journalists from the United States and Asian countries with substantial Muslim populations (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Pakistan). The objective was to foster greater understanding among these Asian countries and the United States. The programme was organised by the East West Centre in Honolulu.

While in Calcutta, the group met with government officials, journalists, community and religious leaders. The Honorary Chairman of HPP, V Ramaswamy, was invited to address the group. The theme of the talk was "Muslim Slums in Kolkata: Problems and Prognosis".

The visitors included: Mr Jon Beaupre, Associate Professor of Broadcast Journalism, California State University of Los Angeles, California; Ms Maria Ebrahimji, Associate Director & Senior Editorial Producer, CNN Network, Atlanta, Georgia; Ms Neva Grant, Senior Peoducer, "Morning Edition", Chevy Chase, Maryland; Ms Donna Leinwand, National Reporter, "USA Today", Washington DC; Ms Allie Shah, Staff Writer, "Minneapolis Star Tribune", St Louis Park, Minnesota. The programme coordinator was Ms Susan Kreifels from the East West Centre, Honolulu, Hawaii. The local coordinator was Mr Snehasis Sur, TV News Correspondent, Doordarshan Kendra, Calcutta.

Also present on the occasion was our close associate Hasnain Imam, a school teacher, political scientist and grassroots activist. Hasnain has been selected for a school teachers' training programme in the USA, and he will be travelling to the USA later this year.

Sit-and-draw competition

2008-06-27T11:51:00.025+05:30

Festival of Life, by Soubhik Mondal, Consolation prize, Group D.

To commemorate the tenth anniversary of the founding of Talimi Haq School (on 1 June 1998), the teachers and students of the school organised a Sit-and-Draw Competition for school children from the Shibpur locality of Howrah.

The competition was held on the morning of 11 May 2008, at the Shibpur Ambika Hindi High School. About 250 children, between the ages of 2 and 18, participated.

Ms Dipali Bhattacharya, eminent painter and professor at the Govt. College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, kidnly consented to judge the winners. She was very impressed with the quality of the artworks. The prizes were fine quality art materials.

The prizes were distributed at a special tenth anniversary commemoration function held on 7 June 2008, at Sarat Sadan, Howrah. Children from Talimi Haq School put up a variety entertainment programme on stage to mark the occasion.

Ms Dipali Bhattacharya, selecting the winners.

The prize winners.

The prizes.

1st prize, Group A, Rajeshri Ray

2nd prize, Group A, Adrija Adhikari

3rd prize, Group A, Anurupa Maiti

Special prize for youngest participant, Meher Naaz

1st prize, Group B, Purbasha Ballav

2nd prize, Group B, Rupsa De

3rd prize, Group B, Madabbir Aziz Anwar

Consolation prize, Group B, Farzana Salim

1st prize, Group C, Deboshree Roy

2nd prize, Group C, Sushobhan Dey

3rd prize, Group C, Pratyush Senapati

Consolation prize, Group C, Subhechchha Datta

1st prize, Group D, Parveen Naaz

2nd prize, Group D, Dipanwita Nag

3rd prize, Group D, Sahar Bano

Audience at Sarat Sadan.

Drama performance

Mahatma Gandhi's marksheet

2008-04-01T12:56:00.003+05:30

The Mahatma's Marksheets

by Ramachandra Guha

Once, while I was in college, I picked up the autobiography of a man who, at various points in his career, had served as vice-chancellor of the University of Delhi, governor of the Reserve Bank, and finance minister of the Government of India. Curiously, his memoirs had as many pages on his achievements in school and college as on his experiences running central banks and devising union budgets. He first reproduced his matriculation results: the marks listed by subject, never less than 96 per cent. We then learnt of how, in his intermediate examination, he set a record that stood for years in the Bombay Presidency. As if this was not enough, a statistical proof of his gold medals in the B.A. and M.A, followed. Later, as I read more such works, I came to regard this as characteristic rather than curious. When they came to write their memoirs, famous professors of sociology and high officials of the Indian Civil Service alike seemed to single out, above all other high-water marks, success in school examinations. Then I came across an exception: the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi. The Mahatma claimed: 'I was not regarded as a dunce in high school', before—in the spirit of truth with which the work was conceived— speaking of the difficulty he once had with Sanskrit and, for a time, with Euclidean geometry.

Gandhi spoke in general terms, but his somewhat vague recollections of life at school were to be given a devastating specificity in a book published in 1965. It is called Mahatma Gandhi as a Student, and its author, J.M. Upadhyaya, had been principal at the high school in Rajkot where the Mahatma had spent seven years.

Upadhyaya's book packs a great deal into its seventy-four pages. The boy Gandhi, we learn, changed several schools before he reached the age often. At times his attendance was noticeably lax: a mere 110 days out of 238 in standard III, for example. His marks at the annual examinations normally averaged between 45 per cent and 55 per cent. In junior school he was always comfortably beaten by one Tribhuvan Bhatt, who in the manner of 'coppers' of the time ended as a babu, albeit an elevated one. (His last job was as chief minister of Rajkot state.) The one early sign of the young Mohandas's superiority to his fellows was that his elder brother Karsandas was a less distinguished student still. Karsandas lost two years, and ended up in the same class as his sibling, where he usually logged lower marks.

Things turned worse in middle school. Mohandas's attendance slipped again, as he attended on a sick father and a newly wedded wife. Asked to repeat a year, he bucked up and for once 'grew quite serious in studies'. He achieved 8th rank in class, with a (for him) remarkably high overall score of 66.5 per cent. The momentum carried over into high school. Outside the classroom, his life was rich in incident—he played the 'lustful husband', experimented with meat, and tried unsuccessfully to sell some of the family gold to payoff a debt incurred by brother Karsandas. Yet, despite this, his attendance at school was 125 days out of 125, and he came fourth in class, with an average in excess of 60 per cent. In Upadhyaya's words, 'he could no longer be described as a mediocre student.'

This judgement was put sternly to the test in the third week of November 1887, when Gandhi travelled by train to Ahmedabad to take the matriculation examination of Bombay University. This was his first visit to a city he was to later make his own. In a lovely detail, Upadhyaya notes that Gandhi's examination number was 2275. There were 3067 candidates in all. Of these, 799 were successful. Gandhi's rank was 404th, and his marksheet was as follows:

English 89/200
Gujarati 45.5/100
Mathematics 59/175
General Knowledge 54/150

The total, 247.5 marks out of 625, comes to an average of about 40 per cent. Mohandas K. Gandhi could once again be described as a mediocre student.

Mahatma Gandhi as a Student is a work that bears testimony both to the author's industry and to the Gujarati respect for old records. And it contains much more than marksheets. We learn here that despite his rather ordinary performance in examinations, Gandhi's middle-school teacher marked his conduct as 'very good', whereas the best any other student achieved was 'good'. Upadhyaya's reproduction of the English paper that Gandhi answered in his matric exam seems to give certain clues to his later development. For 45 marks, he was asked to 'write an essay of about forty lines on the advantages of a cheerful disposition.' Could not this answer have helped encourage him to become that rara avis, a politician who was never known to have lost his temper? For 25 marks, he was asked to paraphrase a poem which described how Jesus would reveal himself only to the poor peasant, not to the rich men whose chariots went contemptuously 'whirling past'. Might not this exercise have stoked a precocious awareness of exploitation and injustice?

We must also consider the significance of the sociological snippets that Upadhyaya so casually throws our way. Consider this: Mohandas's best friend in high school was a Muslim, while their headmaster was a Parsi. The school building was constructed with a gift of Rs 63, 000 from the Nawab of Junagadh. In his last years in school, as Mohandas's marks percentage climbed into the upper fifties, he was given a scholarship of Rs 10 per month, this award being in the names of two Kathiawad nobles, one Hindu, one Muslim. Should we not consider this as part of an early training in multiculturalism, as essential preparation for the making of the inter-religious Mahatma?

But, the cynic will say, we can't finally gel away from the mark sheets. Byway of apology and, indeed, justification, let me then remind the reader of the career of one Albert Einstein. Nothing, writes one biographer, 'Nothing in Einstein's early history suggests dormant genius'. The boy was able to speak fluently only at the age of nine. When Albert's father asked the headmaster of his elementary school what profession he thought his son should prepare himself for, he got the answer: 'h doesn't matter; he'll never make a success of anything.' Later, at the Luitpold Gymnasium in Munich, Einstein was 'still slightly backward' and failed to complete his diploma. Later still, after he had moved to Zurich, Einstein failed the entrance examination to the university. 'The accepted reason for his failure is that although his knowledge of mathematics was exceptional he did not reach the necessary standard in modern languages or in zoology and botany.'

Such, in summary, were the academic records of the two men commonly regarded as the best, the wisest, and the most influential individuals of the twentieth century. Long ago, in the 1930s, the Bombay journalist D.F. Karaka wrote a biography of Gandhi entitled Out of Dust, He Made Us into Men. The reference was to the countless nationalists whose heroism and self-sacrifice was a direct consequence of the Mahatma's influence. Without him, these Indians would have been content being ordinary lawyers, teachers, brokers, and clerks or, perhaps, even black-marketeers. One knows what Karaka meant. So did J.M. Upadhyaya, except that he added a meaningful caveat: 'Gandhiji, it has been well said, could fashion heroes out of common clay. His first and, undoubtedly, his most successful experiment was with himself.'

Ingenious child

2008-04-01T12:50:00.001+05:30

Here is a great YouTube video clip of an ingenious child - on the streets of Mumbai -exhibiting a prodigious language ability.

From teaching working children since 1998, we know how intelligent, quick to learn and capable disadvantaged children can be.

Sylvia Ashton-Warner centenary

2008-04-01T12:45:00.008+05:30

"The organic behaviour.

Spontaneous dancing. There is more music in these children than flesh and blood.

By organic, I mean that way of growth where the strongest thing pushes up ahead of the less strong. I think of trees growing in a clump. The strongest get to the light.

In speaking of a child’s mind I mean the strongest impulses push up, irrespective of whether or not they should, at any given time ... Education fundamentally is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the unconscious.

A child does’nt make his own mind. Its just there. Your job is to see what’s in it. Your only allowable comment is one of natural interest."

This year, 2008, marks the birth centenary of a dedicated teacher, novelist and educational philosopher, Sylvia Ashton-Warner (December 17, 1908 - April 28, 1984). Sylvia Ashton-Warner pioneered a method of teaching reading and writing to Maori children. This is described in her book Teacher, which is a classic of educational philosophy. I had read Teacher in 1984. Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and Sylvia Ashton-Warner's book - helped me to know what I wanted to do in my life.

After a teaching career in rural schools she achieved international fame as a novelist and educational philosopher. She was committed to "releasing the native imagery and using it for working material" and recognised, well before others, the importance of building on the language and knowledge children already have.

While largely ignored in her native New Zealand, she was widely recognised throughout the world for her revolutionary ideas on teaching. The library of the Faculty of Education in the University of Auckland was named after Sylvia Ashton-Warner in 1987. Read an article on Ashton-Warner published in Time magazine in 1963 here.

The Faculty of Education and The Faculty of Arts at The University of Auckland, New Zealand, will mark the centennial of the birth of Sylvia Ashton-Warner by hosting an international conference during 9-10 August 2008. The conference is an opportunity for scholars, writers, literary critics, teachers and others to celebrate and discuss the work of this extraordinary woman.

In Talimi Haq School, 3 year old children are taught Urdu following the method pioneered by Ashton-Warner, which begins with each child receiving a small card with his or her name written on it. And thus begins the process of discovering the child's organic vocabulary, which becomes the subject of reading and writing.

The book Teacher is accessible here (zip file).

The Hindi translation of Teacher, by Purva Kushwaha Yagnik, is accessible here (pdf).

Colum

2008-02-16T13:54:00.003+05:30

Colum Murphy, from Limerick, Ireland and now working in Hong Kong, visited the Talimi Haq School on 15 February 2008.

Colum is with the Far Eastern Economic Review.

At the Indian Botanical Gardens

2008-01-24T12:57:00.000+05:30

Teachers and some children from Talimi Haq School visited the Indian Botanical Gardens, in Shibpur, Howrah, on 21 January. This was an outing proposed by Carolyn Stephens, while she was here to make a documentary video for putting up on YouTube.

Articles

2008-01-24T12:45:00.001+05:30

Eeva Puumala, a research fellow at the Tampere Peace Research Institute, in Tampere, Finland, had visited Talimi Haq School in Dec 2006, while working on her paper on migrant labourers in Calcutta. Eeva was a participant in the Fourth Winter Course on Forced Migration organised by the Calcutta Research Group.

Read Eeva's essay "What is it to be many? Iconic migrant and the gaze of the stranger" here (open in a new window).

Here are links to some more articles about / from Talimi Haq School. (Open the links in new windows.)

"In Search of Ramrajya", essay written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's independence, 15 August 2007.

"Design is Love", in ADA, Mail of the Month (from Sweden), Dec 2007.

"The Right to Education and a Pedagogy for Hope: a view of Talimi Haq School", by Sohel Firdos, et al. This would appear in the forthcoming book Quality and Inequality: Interrogating School Education in Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, edited by Manabi Majumdar & Jos Mooij.

"Using hope as a method of understanding poverty and empowerment in Kolkata’s urban slums", by Lorena Gibson, written in 2006.

"Poverty, Empowerment and Grass-roots Democracy" by Sita Venkateswar and Lorena Gibson, in the October 2006 issue of Graduate Women New Zealand (go to page 33).

"Beyond Four Walls", an essay by Amina Khatoon, teacher at Talimi Haq School, written in January 2006.

"Across the river", an essay written in early 1999 by Seema Tewari, a volunteer from Calcutta who helped to set up Talimi Haq School in 1998.

“Educational Scenario of Calcutta’s Urdu Speaking Community”, was written by Dr MKA Siddiqui, an eminent anthropologist, in 2005. This helps to put in perspective the larger context within which the work of Talimi Haq School may be seen.

Visitors in January 08

2008-01-24T12:38:00.000+05:30

Thusnelda Mercy, a member of the dance troupe from Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal, with Talimi Haq School teacher Binod.

Members of Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal at Talimi Haq School. We were especially delighted to meet Shantala Shivalingappa, an Indian member of the group.

Carolyn Stephens, Susan and Earl Hyde and Brendan, all from UK.

Samar Borges, from Shanti International, UK, visited us.

Sita Venkateswar, anthropologist, Massey University, New Zealand, visited again.

Bamboo Blues

2008-01-18T13:23:00.001+05:30

The staff and some children from Talimi Haq School saw the dress rehearsal yesterday of Bamboo Blues, a production inspired by India, performed by Pina Bausch's Tanztheater Wuppertal at the Rabindra Sadan in Calcutta.

It was spectacular and exquisite, an uplifting aesthetic experience.

See more pictures from the performance here.

Inspiration

2008-01-18T13:11:00.000+05:30

After the performance, Pina Bausch and the members of her troupe interacted with the staff and children of Talimi Haq School, Howrah where they had visited during their research trip in 2006. Flower bouquets were presented to Pina and her colleagues.

I was moved to tears to see the warmth of the reception.

Pina and one of her colleagues said that they had tried to express in Bamboo Blues the feelings they experienced when they were at Talimi Haq School.

On behalf of the group, Pina Bausch presented Talimi Haq School with a set of signed catalogs of Tanztheater Wuppertal and a box of chocolates.

Pina Bausch production in Calcutta

2008-01-10T15:34:00.000+05:30

Pablo Aran Gimeno, Ruth Amarante
Photo: © Ulli Weiss

Pina Bausch, the celebrated German dancer and choreographer, director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, will be in in Calcutta with her troupe this month. She is one of the leading figures of modern dance.

Bamboo Blues, a dance theatre performance inspired by India, its cultural multiplicity and a research trip to India in November 2006, will be staged in the city on 18th and 19th January, at the Rabindra Sadan.

Pina (67) and her associates had visited the Talimi Haq School in late-2006, during their visit to Calcutta in preparation for their India-based production.

The piece was premiered in Germany in May 2007 without any name as the company's "new work." Apparently Bausch had decided on the "inspiring" title after a visit to Kyoto, Japan.

Here are some reviews of the performance:

‘The splendid soloists seem to be expressing those ambivalent emotions when their bodies move, fall, stretch and bend. They give themselves up to the momentum of the dance. To experience this is to be moved, to be carried out of the hall into another world.’

Melanie Suchy, ‘Dance theatre to the rhythm of the heart’, Die Zeit, 24 May 2007

‘The work of recent years essentially comprises happy memories of journeys; the rich associations, memories portrayed to perfection through dance are always a delight to watch. This piece too is a sequence of striking, powerful dances - mainly solos -and vividly staged perceptions of a different part of the world. Once more, Pina Bausch tells us much more than what can be rendered in a few lines’

Rolf Pfeiffer, ‘The weightlessness of India’s magic’, Westfälische Rundschau, 20 May 2007

‘The choreographic composition of contrasting moods in which elegies float on gusts, like the flowers released with balloons among the audience, attests to one’s own body language as a triumph of multi-layered expression.’

Dieter Stoll, ‘Indian dreams for the new piece by Pina Bausch’, Abendzeitung Nürnberg, 21 May 2007

‘The genuinely moving moments of the new evening: when a dancer appears out of the apparently enchanted forest that serves as a curtain, swings her arm, pauses for a second . . . and then describes her finely chiselled and passionate body art on the large stage which for minutes belongs just to her.’

Sylvia Staude, ‘A gentle Indian breeze—in Pina Bausch’s new, still untitled dance-theatre piece, Frankfurter Rundschau, 21 May 2007

The teachers and children of Talimi Haq School have been invited to attend the dress rehearsal of Bamboo Blues on 17 January.

Bravo!

Carolyn Stephens

2008-01-10T14:59:00.000+05:30

Dr Carolyn Stephens, Senior Lecturer in International Environmental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will be in Calcutta in January 2008. Carolyn will be preparing a video documentary on Howrah Pilot Project and the Talimi Haq School.

Carolyn is an internationally recognised expert on urban public health policy. In 2007, Carolyn won a prestigious London Education Partnership Award in recognition of her groundbreaking work in engaging young people from deprived communities in East London with science. The awards are designed to honour those educational institutions and partnerships in London that have had the most impact in inspiring London students from disadvantaged backgrounds to believe that they can go to university and to succeed at doing so. At a national level, interest in science among the young is in decline, and trends indicate that disadvantaged young people are particularly affected, with few entering biomedical sciences.

With this in mind, Carolyn ran summer schools and offered work experience to disadvantaged young people in London in collaboration with science and education officers of London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. In 2004 she recruited a cohort of thirty one young people from three state schools in Barking and Dagenham, which is one of the most deprived areas of the capital. The pupils took part in a three-year project, entitled 'It's Our Science, Our Society, Our Health'. The aim was to encourage the young people to undertake their own science and research projects, to offer them support, and to inspire them to want to learn more.

The young people presented their findings at a reception hosted by the Royal Society in May 2007. The project topics they chose to work on had both local and international relevance, and ranged from the life cycle of malaria and other mosquito-related diseases, natural resistance to and protection from malaria, to connecting world-wide youth, the capability of young children's understanding, the history and usefulness of vaccines and triggers for asthma. The project has transformed the attitudes and aspirations of the young people who took part. In Carolyn's words, 'We all feel that higher education should be an option for all young people in London - irrespective of their social background. These young people changed our institution with their energy and enthusiasm, and their ideas on international health and poverty. We hope they go on with this work to transform the world we live in'.

For this work, Carolyn was also awarded the Royal Society Kohn Award for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science, for 2007.

Among the students were Nelson and Iram, who visited Talimi Haq School in January 2007. And after his return, Nelson linked the Talimi Haq School to Shanti International, a UK-based charity. We are currently awaiting govt approval to receive a small grant from Shanti to support Talimi Haq School.

Carolyn had been the Environmental Health Adviser in the Calcutta Environmental Management Strategy and Action Plan (CEMSAP), a project of the Dept of Environment, Govt of West Bengal, supported by the DFID, UK. So she is quite familiar with Calcutta and Howrah. It was from CEMSAP that Howrah Pilot Project was initiated, and Carolyn had played an instrumental role in its establishment in 1997. Over the years, she has made valuable linkages for the resourcing of our grassroots programme in Priya Manna Basti. But she had been unable to be here in person, though her LSHTM and CEMSAP colleague Tony Fletcher had come in early 2000. Now Carolyn will finally be coming - to join in person what she has always been part of in mind and spirit. We are grateful to the Royal Society for enabling Carolyn to come back to Calcutta.

Friends

2007-12-28T16:55:00.000+05:30

Tina, a student from Tampere, Finland, and Bipasha, an Odissi dancer and dance therapist from Calcutta, visited Talimi Haq School on 19 December 2007.

Education

2007-10-17T14:31:00.002+05:30

If we look at the "education system" in India, we have a perfect "apartheid" system. Millions upon millions of children are condemned at birth to a severely bounded life. And that is even if they make it to school and also complete schooling. (Read Adil Najam's essay on educational apartheid in Pakistan here.)

Quantity and quality are both factors. And basically, there is total apathy from the top to the bottom of the machinery of governance to the cause of "education for all", and "equal opportunity". The educated, privileged, empowered citizenry too is largely apathetic.

The second issue is about schools as they currently exist, including the so-called "good" schools. Our understanding today of the human being and of the world -renders these schools irrelevant, redundant and harmful to the cause of a just and humane society. Besides, economic and cultural globalisation (in the positive senses), information and communication technology, changing mores - all consign existing schools, curricula, teaching, textbooks etc to irrelevance.

The "good schools" as they now exist, notwithstanding all the "progressive" changes they are making; and the attitudes and world-views of the parents who send their children there - are unlikely to undergo any fundamental changes for quite some time. Current socio-economic disparities are also only going to grow.

So actually, ironically, other than being consigned to darkness and powerlessness, those deprived of the "good schools" are actually deprived of a non-thing. So they are not really so badly off. The thing that empowers the powerful is a non-thing. It is only a means for power in a distorted society. It does not have instrinsic value in itself. Sadly, even after forming a child negatively, or rather for that very reason, it continues to exist and be looked up to and aspired for. But this also means that the deprived have now to be empowered with something new , which can begin to exist and grow from them. What currently exists - schools - can be entirely bypassed, and a new alternative provided / realised by the deprived. All the traditional barriers to learning can be bypassed. And the most deprived and dismpowered can very soon be the most empowered.

Education, schooling, schools, curricula, teaching etc have to be radically redefined. We have to begin from first principles as it were, and think out anew: what needs to be learnt, why, how?

We have the traditional 3 Rs, reading writing, 'rithmetic (numeracy). Patrick Geddes, had spoken of the 3 Hs - head, hand, heart. And Ramachandra Gandhi spoke of the 3 Es: ethics, ecology, enlightenment. One could surely come up with many more 3s

The primary aim of the "school" must be to bring the child to self-learning capability in a life and profession of one's choice, with the help of learning counsellers, and computers and the internet. This could be boiled down to a very small amount of time. The rest of the time being devoted to the child's physical, mental, sensory, emotional, lingusitic, social, cognitive, intellectual growth and self-awareness.

Generating "teachers" i.e. learning counsellors is as important an objective as providing education. For without teachers, there cannot be education. But today's "teachers" are a far cry from what people really need.

Someone has to take the responsibility to imagine today's schools, education system, teachers - don't exist. And take the responsibility to conceive, envision, define, detail and demonstrate an alternative. Beginning with the limited core of "formal education".

This requires a large team of people, from different experience streams, backgrounds, disciplies, professions. So here is our plea to all who might be interested - to come forward to take up this challenge!

Meanwhile - here's the classic "Another Brick in the Wall" by Pink Floyd, from the film The Wall.

Iftaar, Ramzaan 2007

2007-10-17T13:59:00.000+05:30

On 6 October 2007, Howrah Pilot Project's and Talimi Haq School's customary Iftaar party - begun in 1999 - was held. Teachers, children and friends attended. Special guest this year was friend Marco, from Italy.

Pictures update!

2007-10-17T13:28:00.000+05:30

Much has happened at Howrah Pilot Project and Talimi Haq School since the last post was made, including visits by various people. Here are some pictures.

Rehana, Yasmin, Amina and Binod preparing biryani
for a picnic in Calcutta, Dec 2006.

Lorena Gibson, research scholar in anthropology,
from New Zealand, Jan 2007.

Nelson and Iram, from UK, Jan 2007.

Samran and Isabell (from Germany), Feb 2007.

Sadiq (from Bangladesh) and Priya, Feb 2007.

Priya and Alex (from Germany), Feb 2007.

Gomathy Venkateswar and Francesca
(from Italy), Apr 2007.

Marcello, from Italy, Apr 2007.

Vladimir and Teju, from USA, June 2007.

Rehana and Yasmin with students.

Rehana and students.

Human Rights Day

2006-12-23T11:41:00.000+05:30

Human Rights Day, 10 December, was observed at Talimi Haq School. The children of the school and teachers put up a programme of songs and drama.

6 December

2006-12-06T13:37:00.000+05:30

6th December 1992 was one of the darkest days in the history of modern India. The Babri mosque in Ayodhya in northern India was destroyed by a mob of vandals. Riots between Hindus and Muslims broke out across towns and cities in north India. Riots hit Calcutta too, with Muslim slums being torched in Tangra in east Calcutta and Metiabruz in west Calcutta.

After the experience of the Great Calcutta Killing of 16 August 1946, and more riots in 1963-64, Calcutta had at least been free of the horror of communal riots. The CPI(M)-led Left Front govt ruling West Bengal since 1977 had made communal harmony a major plank of its policy. But following 6 December 1992, sleeping demons were awakened.

Curfew was enforced in Calcutta in the days following 6 December 1992. For me, that led to an enforced engagement with this question, the Muslim question, something I had hardly thought about earlier. Afterwards, photographer Achinto and I went to Tangra. The people from the burnt out slum were sheltered in the municipal slaughterhouse. I will never forget that sight, a vision of hell.

A germ was planted in me. And that germ went on to take over and transform my life within 5 years. But before that all the habitual assumptions and notions, all the socialised conditioning and subtle prejudice in me had to be plucked out. I was fortunate to meet friends who aided in this.

There is a huge gulf separating Muslims (the overwhelming majority of whom are poor, barely educated, and self-employed) and educated Hindus in India. Its a question of perception and cognition. Very few even bother to recognise that such a gulf exists.

After I started working in Priya Manna Basti in Howrah and started Howrah Pilot Project, 6th December was observed by us as National Renewal Day. In 1998, we organised a cultural programme for the children of Talimi Haq School. A special harmony badge was made and worn by everyone. In 1999, there was a ceremony where the Muslim children of Talimi Haq and Hindu children of a nearby school tied rakhis on one another (a wrist band symbolising brotherhood). An elderly community member who had spent much of his life teaching children of Priya Manna Basti was felicitated and honoured. And in 2000, this date fell during Ramadan and so we had a grand iftaar (fast-breaking) gathering for my new-found Muslim activist friends from Calcutta.

The great thinker and poet Mohammad Iqbal wrote the song "Sarey jahaan sey achha Hindustan hamara" (Better than the whole world, our India). But he is also considered to be one of the founding fathers of Pakistan, which was born as a separate homeland for India's Muslims. Iqbal wrote "Shikwa aur Jawaab-e-Shikwa" (Complaint to God, and God's answer), about the miserable plight of Muslims. After I started working in Priya Manna Basti, and began to understand the power of Urdu poetry, I wrote a song "PM Basti ke ham sab sachhey mussalmaan hain" (We are all true Muslims of PM Basti). I wrote my own "Gratitude, and God's Acceptance", to express my feelings for the blessing of India's plural heritage. And I wrote my version of "See the city from here" (the title of poet Faiz's poem), celebrating the love and harmony I found working with the women and children in Priya Manna Basti.

It is 14 years since that dark day of 1992.

In the Ramayana epic, Prince Rama of Ayodhya had to take up 14 years of forest exile to uphold his father's honour. His father died grieving for his son. And before returning home, Rama had to vanquish king Ravana of Lanka to rescue his abducted beloved wife Sita.

Much has happened in these 14 years. In 2002, we had the horrific riots in Gujarat in western India. This was India's intimation of its version of the Final Solution. And just a few days ago, the report of the Sachar Committee was submitted to the govt of India. This examined the socio-economic backwardness of the Muslim community in India.

Like never before, the challenge is out in stark terms to all Indians:

Are we a pluralist nation, where everyone has a place of dignity, with justice for all?

Can Hindu and Muslim be as one, two inseparable parts that together make the whole that is India?

Does anyone want such an India?

Photo: Achinto

Pina Bausch visits Talimi Haq School

2006-12-01T13:37:00.000+05:30

Pina Bausch, the celebrated German dancer and choreographer, director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal, was in Calcutta recently. She is one of the giant figures of modern dance.

She is preparing an “India piece” to be staged next year, and was here with her group in this connection.

The Goethe Institut in Calcutta arranged for their visit to Talimi Haq School.

It was a happy experience.

Shajahan

2006-11-10T11:00:00.000+05:30

My name is Shajahan Khatun. I am 12 years old. My father’s name is Babu Jaan. I have 2 brothers and 2 sisters. My brother’s name is Raju. I work as a domestic help. My mother also works as a domestic. My sister’s name is Noorjahan. She also works as a domestic. I like to eat bitter gourd preparations. I live in No. 5. I have been to the zoo for a visit. I also cook at home. There are 7 people in my home. I like to roam around.

Banana

2006-11-10T10:50:00.000+05:30

by Shajahan Khatun

This is a part of a banana leaf. I got this from the botanical gardens. Banana leaves are used to eat on. Raw bananas are cooked as a vegetable. We eat the ripe banana. The banana flower is also eaten as a vegetable. The banana tree is used in religious ceremonies.

Heena

2006-11-09T11:18:00.000+05:30

My name is Heena Parween. I am 12 years old. My father’s name is Mohammed Ali. My mother’s name is Asma Parween. My father works in a tobacco factory. My mother works as a domestic help in other people’s homes. We are 3 brothers and 6 sisters. I have 2 mothers. I study in Class 2. I like to eat mango pickle. We had gone to the botanical gardens for an outing. I like to go out on visits.

The coconut

2006-11-09T11:15:00.000+05:30

by Heena Parween

This is a coconut leaf. I got this from my school field. The coconut tree is very tall. Its fruit is the green coconut, and when this is ripe it’s the coconut. Coconut gives oil. We apply this on our hair. Brooms, fans and mats are made from coconut leaves.

Artwork

2006-11-09T11:10:00.000+05:30

by Heena

I bought this flower from the market. This flower is called kucha. It is offered at dargahs (the shrines of saints).

Imran

2006-11-08T09:35:00.000+05:30

My name is Mohammad Imran. I am 10 years old. My father’s name is Mukhtar Ali. My mother’s name is Farzana Khatun. I have 4 brothers and 1 sister. My favourite food is biryani. My father is in the fish trade and also works as a cook. I like bitter gourd preparations. I study in Class 4. I like to go out but I have not been able to go anywhere. I really want to study. I only go to my granny’s house. My mother works in other people’s homes. I eat puris (fried wheat bread) in the morning. When I grow up, I would like to work in the court with a black gown.

Tulsi

2006-11-08T09:00:00.000+05:30

by Imran

This is a tulsi leaf. I got this from a neighbour’s courtyard. The tulsi plant is worshipped. For coughs, the tulsi leaf is boiled in water and drunk and you become well.

Decoration with flowers and plants

2006-11-07T12:28:00.000+05:30

by Mohsin Kamal

We can decorate our homes and workplaces with the help of flowers and plants. We can decorate many things with the help of the leaves and flowers of plants. The flower of Hibiscus is used for worship (puja) or sacred offerings of the Hindus. Banana leaves are also used for puja. Apart from this, green coconut is also placed on a bowl and used for pujas.

Hibiscus is also used by taxi and bus drivers to decorate their vehicles and to ward off the bad effects of an evil eye. During marriages, the car of the bridegroom is wholly laid out with flowers. Roses, sunflowers, jasmine and marigold are used for such decorations. The face of the bridegroom in a Muslim wedding is covered by a veil made of flowers, called sehra.

We also use leaves for decoration of cars. The leaves are usually cone shaped. Mango leaves strung on a string are hung from doors of houses to ward of evil spirits. Lemon and chillis are tied together on a string and hung on doors of homes and workplaces. This is also to ward off the evil eye.

Apart from this we also keep flower pots for decoration of homes.

The women here decorate their hair with champa and jasmine. They also use garlands made of beli.

An unforgettable incident

2006-11-06T12:43:00.000+05:30

by Akbar Ali

There was a straw basket hanging on the wall in my house. As my eyes roamed the wall I noticed a snake sitting in the basket on the wall. Then I saw a rat going into the basket. I hurriedly shouted to my brother. My brother got up and grabbed the basket and the rat fell out. As the basket was removed we saw the snake coiled around a large nail dug into the wall. My brother jerked back. There was also a hole above, in the wall, and the snake hurriedly slithered into it. As the news spread many people gathered in my house to see the snake. Some suggested killing the snake by crushing it in the hole itself with the help of some heavy tool. Some suggested that it was here to drink milk. My father did not listen to anyone. He got some cement, mixed it with some sand and plastered the hole.

I can never forget that day.

Sabir Ali

2006-11-06T11:45:00.000+05:30

A couple of years back the children of our school had the opportunity to perform a pantomime in the auditorium at Science City in front of an audience of about 2000. The drama went very well and at the end of it all we got presents. I got a geometry box which had a pen, pencil, eraser and sharpener. I still have that box with me today.

Mohsin Kamal

2006-11-06T11:30:00.000+05:30

We have an annual function in the school every year. Once, I too took part in it. There was singing, drama etc. I had originally planned to sing a song. So when my turn came I went to the stage and started singing but halfway through I forgot the lyrics. All the children began to laugh which made me very angry. I was also very ashamed. At the end of the programme we all got a packet of sweets which made me feel better.

When I was in Class I, I used to go for private tuitions. During that time, I once skipped my tuitions for eight days telling my parents that tuitions classes were closed for a few days. On the eighth day some friends from my tuition class came home and began inquiring about me from my family. My father told them that classes were closed. On coming to know the truth my father gave me a good beating. I went for my tuition class the next day and again got a good dose from my teacher. I can never forget this incident.

Nasim Khan

2006-11-06T11:20:00.000+05:30

Once I told my friends of Talimi Haq that I would not come to school any more as I had been put to work by my father. It was meant to be a joke. The next day I went to the ground where all the boys go to play and began to play. Soon I realized that I was now late for my classes and could not go to school. I came to know that Sir had sent some boys to my house to fetch me for my classes. My sister told them that I was in the ground. They came to the ground but could not find me as I had left. They then ran into my father and asked him if it was true that I would now not come to school as he had put me to work. My father denied this. When my mother came to know the reason why I had not gone to school she gave me the beating of my life. The next day my friends in Talimi Haq School had a good laugh at my expense.

Looking from here

2006-11-05T11:26:00.000+05:30

It is hoped that through the work of Talimi Haq School, extremely valuable action experience and learning would be generated – about the education of very deprived children.

What should the school seek to do – replicate the education provided by the existing schools that others go to ? Why are they not there in the school in the first place ? What is the future confronting these children ? How much can they hope for , or someone interested in them hope for? What can their parents do for them ? And for how long ? The likely future personal circumstances of all such children, are severely limited within certain specific limits, not very different from that of their parents, and their parents before them, and so on, all of whom were illiterate. Is this acceptable ? If this is accepted as inevitable and unchangeable, is there yet something education can seek to do ? In terms of personal qualities, capabilities, skills, values, character, the lack of all of which is also a principal feature of the blighted environment, and something that is negatively socialising the children.

Society has consigned such children to become delinquents, anti-socials, criminals, hoodlums. Working with children so that they grow up and contribute to the sustenance of a better community environment is a specific, locally rooted practical goal that any intervention should address. The educational effort has also to be seen in the light of the social, economic and environmental situation in the neighbourhood.

More fundamentally, in a context where there is a complete vacuum in terms of committed and honest local ownership and capability for community development and slum improvement - as a result of which the local environment sinks into ever-more degradation - what could be sought to be instilled in such terms through education of the poor children of this milieu?

Creative challenge

2006-11-05T11:00:00.000+05:30

Creative educational initiatives can be taken up using multi-media computers and internet. Microcomputer technology offers the interesting potential of bypassing several of the barriers that society itself imposes for a deprived learner. Besides, it is in itself something stimulating and enhancing the development of multiple faculties in the child’s brain.

Language education in such environments throws up challenges, since the sought after language (English) is very far away from the children’s social environment, and their own language, Urdu, is a second-rate or third-rate option, clearly understood to bring with it a second-rate or third-rate future. At the same time, through building a sound foundation through the mother tongue, Urdu, the felicity in language learning that young children have is something that should be taken advantage of. The possibility of new social and economic avenues and opportunities that the language ability opens up has also to be grasped.

Similarly, for science education. If education seeks to enable someone who is known to be heading towards a humble future to become a good human being – what is the ‘science’ he or she should know, and how should it be taught? What exactly is a scientific outlook in a humble, deprived environment and how is it to be inculcated?

The resources of the city - various museums, gardens, the zoo, libraries - offer rich potential to design live, action-based learning opportunities.

Music, drama and dance offer significant educational and child developmental potential. Developing a curriculum and teaching routine based on this could be a very creative effort. Talimi Haq School could offer a valuable opportunity for talented persons seeking an opportunity to work with poor children using music, drama and dance. Similarly with sport and physical culture.

It is hoped that Talimi Haq School can become a venue for serious action-research efforts in such directions by educational activists, even as the intensive, long-term effort at improving the social environment in PM Basti continues.

Akbar

2006-11-05T09:50:00.000+05:30

My name is Akbar Ali

I am 12 years old. They call me Raja. My mother, Halima Khatoon, is a housewife and my father, Mohammad Suleman, is a rickshaw-puller. I have three brothers and three sisters. One of my brothers is unschooled and works in the jute mill. The other studied till Class 4 and now works in the mill. All my sisters studied till Class 6.

I study in Class 3 in Howrah High and have been coming to Talimi Haq ever since it started. I like mathematics and cycling. I also like playing video games. I would like to be carpenter.

Once there was a party in the school. We had good fun. There was biryani to eat. Ranjit Sir had given the money to make the biryani which was cooked in my house by my sister. There were about 25 boys and girls to eat the biryani. There were also cold drinks at the end of the party. It was an unforgettable experience.

Kabaddi!

2006-11-05T09:30:00.000+05:30

by Akbar

This game is played in a play field. We form two teams of about six persons each. A dividing line is made on the ground and two boxes or houses are made on each side of the line, which is a common border.

Each team takes up one house. The play then begins. One person from one of the teams enters the other team’s house and his job is to touch as many of the other team members without himself being caught by them. And all the while he is to keep muttering “kabbadi, kabbadi, kabbadi…” without any pause.

If he manages to touch any of the other team’s members and return to his house and team mates without being caught, those touched are out. On the other hand if he is caught by members of the other team, then he is out. If he loses his breath and stops saying “kabaddi …”, he’s out.

Now the other team has to send one of their members to do likewise, and the play continues in this fashion. At the end of the play, the team with the most number of mates still in wins.

From our students

2006-11-03T12:15:00.000+05:30

In 2003 children from Talimi Haq School participated in an internet communication project on the theme of "nature", together with children from a school in Hastings, UK.

Here are some narratives from then of our ex-students introducing themselves.

Note: In India children start formal schooling at age 6, in Class 1. At the end of Class 10, the secondary school examination is taken. This is followed by Classes 11 & 12, after which the Higher Secondary Examination is taken, which is a prerequisite for undergraduate studies at university.

Kaneez

2006-11-03T12:10:00.000+05:30

My name is Kaneez Fatima.

I am 12 years old. Javed and Parvez are my brothers. I study in Class 5 in Howrah Haat School. I like Urdu and drawing. I would like to be a teacher.

Shamsad

2006-11-03T12:08:00.000+05:30

My name is Shamsad Ali.

They call me motka (fatso). My mother, Unti, is a housewife and my father, Idris Mohammad, works in the jute mill. I am eleven and have two elder brothers, Taj Mohammad and Raj Mohammad. Taj has not been to school, he repairs bicycles, while Raj, a year older than me, studies in the madrasa (Islamic religious school).

I go to the Howrah Haat School, and am now in Class 2. I like quizzes and doing arithmetic problems. I would like to be a doctor when I grow up.

Shahnawaz

2006-11-03T12:05:00.000+05:30

My name is Shahnawaz Ali.

I am ten years old and have two brothers and two sisters. My mother Ajmeri Khatoon is a housemaid. My father passed away a year ago. He used to work in the jute mill.

They call me Irfan at home, while in Talimi Haq School my friends jokingly call me “Mahatma Gandhi”. My elder brother Shamsher works in a cloth store. He and I were in the same class (2) in Howrah High School when my father expired. He then had to give up his studies and start working. My younger brother studies in Talimi Haq School, while my sisters stopped attending school after a couple of years in Howrah High and then in Talimi Haq.

I am now in Class 2 in Howrah High. I like Urdu and would like to join the police.

Husna

2006-11-03T11:03:00.000+05:30

My name is Husna Ara.

I am eleven years old. My mother, Zarina Khatoon, is a housewife while my father died last August. I have four sisters and one brother. My two elder sisters did not go to school and stay at home. Farida and I come to Talimi Haq School. I don’t go to any formal school. My brother, Asgar Ali, works in the jute mill.

Urdu and English are my favourite subjects. I don’t know what I could do when I grow up.

Javed

2006-11-03T11:00:00.000+05:30

My name is Javed Ali.

My mother, Nissa Khatoon, is a housewife and my father, Mohammad Ali, works in the jute mill. I am twelve years old and I have four sisters and two brothers. My sisters go to school and help in the housework. My two brothers also attend school. I study in Anjuman School in Class 3. I failed in Class 2 for three consecutive years. That’s how my younger brother Parvez caught up with me.

I like studying English. I would like to work in the jute mill when I grow up. I like playing kabaddi (a traditional Indian game). I have also done odd jobs.

Parvez

2006-11-03T10:55:00.000+05:30

My name is Parvez Ali.

Javed is my brother. He failed in Class 2 and I caught up with him. Then we both failed together for the next two years. Now we’re both in Class 3. I am eleven years old.

I like studying English and I love playing football. I would like to join the police when I grow up.

Shaher

2006-11-03T10:52:00.000+05:30

My name is Shaher Ghaznavi.

I am 11 years old. They call me Sitara. My mother, Shehnaz Begum, is a housewife while my father died a few years ago. He used to work in the jute mill. I have two sisters and two brothers. One of my sisters studied till Class 8 and the other completed Class 10. They now stay at home and make necklaces to sell. One of my brothers works and the other studies in Class 5.

I study in Class 4 in Howrah Haat School. I like Urdu and playing football. I would like to be a doctor when I grow up.

Hassan

2006-11-03T10:45:00.000+05:30

My name is Hassan Kamaal.

I am 13 years old. They call me Sunny. My mother, Mustari Begum, is a housemaid and my father, Mustafa Kamal, is a signboard painter. I have four brothers and one sister. My eldest brother is a plumber and the others go to school.

I study in Class 7. I like studying Science and playing football. I would like to be a teacher of Science when I grow up.

Priya Manna Basti

2006-11-02T12:05:00.000+05:30

All my dawns cross the horizon
and rise from underfoot.
What I stand for
is what I stand on.

Wendell Berry

Priya Manna Basti is a century-old jute workers’ settlement, that is today home to about 50,000 people, mainly labouring, Urdu-speaking, Muslim households.

This is a degraded, poverty-stricken locality, with inadequate civic amenities. Gastro-intestinal and waterborne diseases are common.

What is today known as PM Basti, was originally the property of two Englishmen - John Chew and James Chew. It was then known as ‘Chew’s Garden’, and there were a number of flower gardens, ponds and small structures on the site. One of the Chews was killed when he suffered a riding accident and fell from his horse into a pond. His brother then sold the property. The new owner re-named it after his wife.

Basti means “settlement” in north Indian languages. In common parlance, basti also refers to the habitation of low-income workers, of the common folk, of the labouring poor.

After Howrah Mills, Ganges Jute Mill, and Fort William Jute Mill were set up, and workers from the neighbouring states of Bihar and UP came to work in these factories, there was an acute need for housing the jute mill workers. Workers took small plots of land on the former Chew garden on rent and built huts for themselves - made of earth and wattle-and-daub. In this manner, about two hundred densely packed houses came up. This was around the turn of the last century.

Photo: Achinto

We are here

2006-11-02T11:30:00.000+05:30

The space in the lower left quarter of this picture - is where we are. In the far distance, the light towers of the Eden Gardens cricket grounds in Calcutta loom over the eastern horizon. Across the river Hooghly, across the Howrah Jute Mills and the now closed Remington typewriter factory, across Grand Trunk Road, is PM Basti, and Talimi Haq School.

Photo: Achinto

Like a gardener

2006-11-02T11:25:00.000+05:30

"Town planning is not mere place-planning, nor even work-planning. If it is to be successful it must be folk-planning. This means that its task is not to coerce people into new places against their associations, wishes and interest - as we find bad schemes trying to do. Instead its task is to find the right places for each sort of people, places where they will really flourish. To give people in fact the same care that we give when transplanting flowers."

Patrick Geddes

Friends of Talimi Haq School

2006-11-02T11:20:00.000+05:30

This is a good opportunity to express our deepest gratitude to Friends of Talimi Haq School from all over the world.

Last year, following an urgent appeal for financial help to secure our school premises, we were blessed to get an immediate response from them.

We vacated our old premises in April and moved to a temporary accommodation. And in November 2005, we shifted to the new premises. We have more space than we had earlier, two large, airy rooms on the first floor.

Our friends’ donations have also provided the running expenses since last year.

India: Dr Gita Chatterji; HK Chaudhury; Ashoke Banerji; Manav Jalan; Banashree Bannerjee; C Basker; VS Gopalakrishnan; Mihir Bhatt; KS Chhokar; Arun Mamgain.

UK: Anya Sitaram; Malathy Sitaram; Nihat Tsolak; Karan Bilimoria; Polly Gould.

Israel: Einat Kalisch Rotem; Elana Rozenman.

USA: Nancy Owens; Medha Chandra; MS Chhikara; Abir Samuel; Seema Parakh and friends; Anand Swaminathan.

Sweden: Camilla Porshede; Pers & Diana; Faculty and students from the Royal University College of Fine Arts, Stockholm.

Australia: Samir Shrivastava.

Canada: Juliette Patterson

Malaysia: JS Kairon.

New Zealand: Sita Venkateswar; Lorena Gibson; Robyn Andrews.

France: Etienne Vernet; Olivia Buffi.

Germany: Rimini Protokol

Earlier this year, we were fortunate to receive Nazmuddin Munshi’s father’s zakaat contribution, towards our running expenses. This year he hopes to give us the zakaat of other family members too. It’s a modest beginning, but zakaat could be a good means for the sustenance of our school, which is dedicated to enabling opportunties for growth and learning to children from poor Muslim households.

About the school

2006-11-01T09:55:00.000+05:30

Here's a note from when Talimi Haq School was started (on 1 June 1998).

1. The school shall cater to : (a) Children of school-going age who are unable to go to school because of their poor backgrounds; and (b) working children who are not attending school.

2. A survey of slum households reveals that the largest group of children under the above two categories are in the 7-9 years (20 girls, 19 boys) and 10-12 years (43 boys) respectively. The final decision about the number of students in each class would depend upon space considerations as well.

3. The school shall run from 3 30 - 5 30 pm, and from 4 - 6 pm for the working children. School shall run for 6 six days in the week, with Sunday being the weekly holiday. The school shall have a proper annual calendar including vacations and holidays.

4. Each of these 2 hours school sessions will be divided into 4 half-hour periods.

5. Priority subjects shall be : Urdu, Arithmetic, English. Additional subjects shall be : History; Geography; Religious and Moral Education; Nature, Environment and Science; Social awareness; Drawing & Painting; Clay modelling; Craft; Singing; Physical culture; Drama.

6. Three periods each day during Monday to Friday would be devoted to the priority subjects. The fourth period on these days, and all the periods on Saturday, would be utilised to cover the additional subjects.

7. The whole emphasis, approach and objective of the school will be to stimulate the bodies, minds, feelings, creative and expressive faculties of the children. The school shall aim to equip the children to be honest, hard-working, capable and loving adults. Thus, no formal syllabus, or school board curriculum shall be followed. However, clear, meaningful targets (indicators) for attainment would be specified for each of the subjects, as well as in regard to the qualities and values sought to be inculcated. Value-oriented, and stimuli-oriented education would be sought to be concretised in terms of a practical and progressively developing routine of everyday practice. On the basis of this, lesso plans would be prepared. This would include teaching materials, primers etc. In essence, a single, comprehensive primer would be developed through the teaching, using the initial lesson plans as a starting point. Once the exact staff requirement is clear and the teachers have been recruited, there would be a orientation workshop on ‘Creative Education’. Such workshops would be organised on a regular basis with a view to developing high quality capabilities in this approach.

8. At this stage, the thinking is that the students shall remain in the school for a year, around which time a detailed review of the experiment would be undertaken. On the basis of this review (as well as practical matters such as finances), a decision would be taken about the future programme. Either the first batch would leave the school, after having developed a basic level of competence in the subjects and underlying values and qualities. Or, the batch would continue in the school for another 2-3 years, after which a fresh batch is taken on for another 3-4 years. Thus, one could hope to take responsibility for making a group of children into capable, honest and decent people.

9. Fees : There shall be an admission fee of Rs 10 per student, and a monthly fee of Rs 5. No school uniform, no text books to buy. Primers developed by the school would be distributed to the students, against a small contribution. Slate and pencil, and later, note-book, would have to be purchased by the students.

10. There would be a strong emphasis on cleanliness and proper behaviour and habits. Thus, clean clothing, hands, hair, face, nose, ears etc; classroom discipline, and behaviour outside the classroom.

The Great Banyan Tree

2006-11-01T07:30:00.000+05:30

PM Basti, where Talimi Haq School is located, is on the Grand Trunk Road. Built in the 16th century by the ruler Sher Shah Suri, it runs from Shibpur, in Howrah, to Peshawar in Pakistan (near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border).

Very near the beginning of the Grand Trunk Road is the Indian Botanical Garden. The most famous thing in the Botanical Garden is the Great Banyan Tree (Ficus Bengalensis, family Moraceae). Its almost 250 years old. The tree is a native of India.

The Great Banyan tree draws more visitors to the Indian Botanical Garden than its collection of exotic plants from five continents, the plant houses or the special garden of bamboos, palms, succulents etc. The fruit of the banyan is like a small fig, red when ripe, but its not edible. In terms of its spread, this tree is the largest known in India, perhaps in Asia.

There is no clear history of the tree as to the time of planting etc, but it is mentioned in some travel books of the 19th century. It was damaged by two great cyclones of 1864 and 1867 when some of its main branches were broken, exposing it to the attack of a hard fungus. With its large number of aerial roots which grow from the branches and run vertically to the ground and look like so many trunks, the Great Banyan Tree looks more like a forest than an individual tree. The tree now lives in perfect vigour without its main trunk which decayed and had to be removed in 1925. The circumference of the original trunk at 1.7 m from the ground was 15.7 m. The area occupied by the tree is about 22,165 sq m and the highest branch rises to 24.5 m. It has at present 2,800 aerial roots reaching down to the ground.

The Botanical Garden - is the favourite place for an outing for Talimi Haq School!

Photo: Achinto

Reaching out

2006-10-31T17:00:00.000+05:30

Hullo, from Talimi Haq School!

Many thanks to Mr Clarence Fisher from from Snow Lake, Manitoba, Canada - for providing the impetus to start this blog.

This picture is from 2000, taken by Jean Cassagne from France. Our school room has changed. The old building was demolished and a new structure was constructed in 2005. Friends and well-wishers from all over India and the world sent donations for our new premises. But we treasure the memories of the early days of our school.

In this blog, we will share our experience of running a school for non-formal learning. The school is in Priya Manna Basti, a century-old jute workers' settlement in the Shibpur locality of Howrah. The people in Priya Manna Basti are predominantly Urdu-speaking Muslims.

Talimi Haq means "right to education" in Urdu. It also means "truth is learning". Al-Haq is one of the sacred names of God in Islam.

The school was established by Howrah Pilot Project in 1998, as part of a community development programme in PM Basti.

Children between 3-12 study here. We prepare children to join the local primary school. Some 500 children have studied in Talimi Haq School. Right now there are about 120 children with us.

Teachers

2006-10-31T16:30:00.000+05:30

Talimi Haq School is run by trained volunteer teachers from the neighbourhood. Our teachers are:

Front: Rehana Khatun, Amina Khatun, Yasmeen Parween.
Back: Sarfraz Nawaz, Binod Shaw.

Children

2006-10-31T16:25:00.000+05:30

Here's a picture of some of the children.

Reunion

2006-10-31T16:00:00.001+05:30

Here is a letter I wrote to a friend in March 2005 about the Talimi Haq School ex-students' reunion.

Yesterday afternoon we had an old students' reunion at the Talimi Haq School in Howrah. I had thought about this for a long time, and also spoken to Amina and Binod who run the school. I had visited Howrah a few days ago after almost 4 months. The school reunion was planned, and it took place on Sunday, 20 March 2005.

It is difficult to express all the feelings from looking, as an observer, at all that had happened since I started working in Howrah in 1996-97. I had been at the Howrah office-centre virtually everyday, 6 days a week, from 1998 to 2000. In mid-2000, after I joined the CALMANAC website assignment, my visits became infrequent. After this assignment was over, for a month or so I again went there everyday. But then I began getting more and more into my new duty / responsibility, the family business. Through 2001 and 2002, I went about once a week. In 2003 and 2004, this became even less frequent. I went only for specific purposes. But I had remained in close and regular contact, with Prodyut, Amina and Binod, and earlier Ranjit and Anguri. And of course I worried about the funds to keep the school running.

To my surprise I learnt that since its inception in June 1998, over 400 children had studied here for some length of time. I was particularly keen that a group of boys who had studied in the very first year attend. I had taught them myself - arithmetic, singing - and developed a close rapport with them.

Some 30-40 ex-students came for the reunion, and together with a good number of the small children currently studying - there was quite a crowd in our school room. It was hot and sweaty inside the room, but that did not affect anybody's enthusiasm. Some boys who had been studying here until quite recently, were now strapping lads. Some girls from a few years ago were now very pretty adolescents. Among them a girl living across the lane who had joined after I had asked her father to send her to our school.

Photographs taken over the years were displayed on a wall - a school function on Independence Day, a picnic to the Botanical Gardens, a visit to the Science Museum, visitors from Britain. Looking at some of the pictures, I felt a lump in my throat and my eyes clouded over. Some of the tiny kids in the pictures were big boys and girls now.

The programme began with a short welcome address by me. I said like every school and college, Talimi Haq School too should have a reunion of the ex-students. They should feel happy and proud to have belonged to a special school, which set them off on their journey in education and life. Where they learnt something, and can remember a time of happiness, fun and frolic. For the current students, it will give them a feeling that they are studying in a special school, which is looked up to and with which ex-students feel an attachment. This a special school as its name proclaims. Education is a right of all, so this is a school for that. So many children have come here and then gone on to other schools, where they are now studying, or have even graduated from. And thus is the stream of education in this locality advancing. The students learn Urdu, English, Arithmetic, cleanliness, good behaviour, correct values. But at root, the teachers here give love and affection to the children. Boys and girls who were unable to continue with their schooling - learnt at least something here. All ex-students should know that this is their place, like their home. And we at the school consider you all as our own. You have a right to this place, it is yours. You can come whenever you want, when you are happy come and share your happiness with us. When you are feeling sad and burdened, come here and find a shoulder to rest on. And you will always be in our thoughts, and we hope you will drop in every now and then. We remember all those who are unable to come today. We remember in particular all the teachers who have taught here over the years and we miss their presence very much. I hope there will be a lot of happiness today, a lot of fun, jokes and anecdotes, remembering of joy and mischief, songs, recollection of old times.

There was a juice break. Several of the small children were given their juice and coaxed to go home to make space for the ex-students. Some of the boys and girls came to chat with me and I enquired about their studies.

A number of skits and songs were then presented by ex-students, which had the audience in splits. A group of boys sang a song I had composed, "PM Basti ke ham sab sachhey Mussalmaan hain" (“we are all true Muslims, from PM Basti”). A video recording of a women and children's rally on International Literacy Day in 1998 was played.

Amina and another new teacher asked me to sing. I sang three songs, including my composition "Hari aur Ali galey miley jab" ("When Hari and Ali embrace"). Finally there was an hour-long antakshari session, between boys and girls, with a male teacher, Binod, and a lady teacher, Rehana as the referees. The competition was fierce, and the enthusiasm quite explosive. The boys exulted in singing out love songs teasingly, but the girls were not going to be outdone in knowledge of songs and singing.

Packets of savouries and sweets had been prepared, to give to everyone - but because many more than estimated had turned up, everyone had to share. Two boys asked me to share their sweets.

The CPI(M) was organising an Anti-Imperialism Human Chain in the evening. I had invited the local councillor to attend a meeting with a group of visiting architecture students and faculty from Sweden next week. She had requested that the school teachers and older children join the human chain. So we all proceeded to the Grand Trunk Road, and stood in the chain for 10 minutes. Returning to the office, I bid them goodbye and said I really enjoyed myself.

The programme was shadowed for me by sadness and uncertainty, as I got the news that the building was going to be pulled down after 10 days and a new construction put up. This had been in the offing but nothing concrete had materialised. But yesterday morning my colleague Prodyut had been called by the landlord for a meeting. I remembered when we moved to this office, in early 1998, exactly 7 years ago. Every tiny detail in the office had been visualised and rendered with so much thought and feeling. And the school had been started shortly after that. So much had happened here, so much of me had been formed in this space. The bitter irony of the reunion happening right now was difficult to swallow. Where would we go? Would the school have to close down? Where will we keep all the things in the room? Maybe something will work out, everything will turn out alright - but something was over, a chapter had come to an end. I shouldn’t feel burdened by sadness over the past that's coming to a close, one should look forward practically to the new.

At home later in the evening, I spoke to Prodyut over the phone and he assured me that there was no cause for concern. After all we had a proper deed of occupation and payment of deposit. A new agreement deed for premises in the new construction would have to be prepared. The landlord was also going to find us an alternative temporary accommodation. And until all this was sorted out there was no question of vacating our centre.

At night, Rajashi, my wife, who had also attended the school reunion, told me that from being at the reunion I should be proud and happy about the school. She referred to something I had told her once, that everyone should have the right to failure. She said a lot of successful people would not have done something like this.

Get in touch

2006-10-31T15:00:00.005+05:30

Talimi Haq School
Howrah Pilot Project
12 Priya Manna Basti 2nd Lane
1st Floor
Shibpur
Howrah 711 102
INDIA

Email: rama.sangye@gmail.com, howrah.pilot@gmail.com
Teacher-in-charge, Amina Khatoon: amina_hpp@hotmail.com
Manager, Binod Shaw: binod_hpp@hotmail.com

Hony. Chairman, V Ramaswamy, Hony. Treasurer, Prodyut Paul.