Conversation with Veena

Chennai, September 28
Veena is a friend that I work with--she works at the school part time and teaches French at the Alliance Francias. Our discussion started about how her video production company (Voices of India) is pulling together a documentary about handicapped students. The project will pull together South Indian and Western filmmakers together to help fight stereotypes. Maybe it is just luck, but everyone I seem to meet is part of an NGO or working on some project to benefit someone less fortunate or someother worthy cause. Our discussion moved on to how the treatment of mentally handicapped children has changed in the past generation. The children used to be in come and received compassionate care from the family--they were a responsibility. Now the institutions have taken over. She commented how this is also being influenced by the changes in construction--the concrete apartments and smaller homes make caring for larger families more difficult. While many families may have an ancestral homestead that serves as a meeting spot, the early support when the child is young is vital.

Our conversation veered towards IB and the differences she noticed between her work within the curriculum and her classes outside the school with adults. Some of the differences were pretty pedestrian--no listening comprehension in IB, fewer materials. However, and this is what really opened my eyes and mind, she said the biggest difference was the lack of comparison between the home country and the Francophone countries--the curriculum is really only focused on France and its former colonies. Veena continued that there needs to be a cultural component--both Indian and French. Where do learn about their own culture? To know yourself is the only way to proceed. Through French, she told me, I've questioned alot--and now I know my culture and myself. She told me that she knew the Ionesco quote that I used in ToK--it's the question that enlightens. She then told me about when her father passed away and as part of the Hindu ritual surrounding the death of a parent she read the Garuda Puranam for 13 days. It was through this process that she really got to know herself--why study far away cultures when there is such a rich one here. For example, the investigation of ecology and nature conservancy is a mix of obligation and religious fear. However, when these are examined, there's a real profound link to the past and present.

Our conversation then ranged to the CBSE schools and she detailed her son's experience with the harshness in the classroom and how this affected him on assessments. He performed brilliantly in a different setting where assessments were treated more like learning tools instead of high-stakes exercises. Her comments sounded alot like what our district has been hearing from Dr. Thomas Guskey at the University of Kentucky. She noted that the more traditional approach is changing. She recommended that I visit Gurukul in Pune. In the gurukul tradition, the guru takes the child to develop skills--they are taught vedas and taught to be part of society as well as basic life skills (how to keep their surroundings clean, how to deal with people). In this model, the guru finds out what the child is interested in and then focuses on the development of these interests and knowledge. The teaching about subjects happens after the interest. The other unique thing that she pointed out is that the guru serves as a caring, involved adult who connects with the student and builds on what they are interested in. This last piece really got me thinking about what it means to teach and the role that we fulfill--or should or could fulfill to help our students learn.

Our last topic dealt with how culture is taught--and there are some really good schools that teach the culture--Chinmaya International Residential School performs pujas, for example. Other institutions may be international in their perspective, but they are not Indian--in this case the implication is that culture=spiritual. They cannot be separated here. She commented too that the scientific explanations that seem to dominate now have their own limitations. She stated that when ever a house is built, they must plant mango and coconut trees. Very little was done to examine why this was done, it's tradition. But now the students hear about environmentalism and begin to wonder why people do the traditions. In her opinion, this was a cyclical thing. Her last comment was that the state schools that teach Tamil, the students perform better. They hear Tamil all the time, they get the culture, the context and nuance--so much more than vocabulary. This in essence, makes the language a living thing--not a grammatical exercise and word lists.

Looking back at this conversation, again I can't help but see links to my project. Experiencing the awakening or a-ha moment. As a Westerner I don't look at our curriculum so critically--it's my culture so I miss what it would feel like to not be represented. It's like I don't even have to think about it, but now that it's pointed out to me I finally get it. I'm starting to work on what international really means.