Carolyn Stephens

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

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

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

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.