Miseducation

Miseducation of its youth is the most dangerous problem any country can face. What do I mean by "miseducation"? Basically, schools not imparting the information & skills that a child needs to be a good human being and function in today's world. This seems to be an epidemic in India and across many countries today. In India's government and private schools, children are still being subjected to curriculums and teaching methods that don't encourage any kind of creative thinking or mental agility. In today's knowledge-driven, globalised economy, these skills are completely essential and without them so many are still destined to take up clerical positions and remain in them for the rest of their days. Of course, this was how McCauley's education system was designed and unfortunately, most of the teachers working in schools today are a product of the much maligned, rote-based system of learning which we hear about so often. However, I believe that one of the most significant scourges in the present Indian system is the automatic power held by teachers. The "guru-ji" status, which has been reduced to an empty, honorific utterance with no question for the teacher's background or skills of reason, sensitivity or intelligence, has given teachers such a terrifying ego-boost that they have become a threat to our children and thus society itself. Many teachers, both young and old, seem to think they are somehow superior to their students, and therefore believe they can treat them with the minimum of respect or even disdain.

I am firmly of the belief that learning is an experience which the student and teacher should embark on together. The second a teacher assumes superiority or makes the child feel like he lacks intelligence, this experience ceases to occur. Why, in so many schools are teachers still able to get away with the kind of inhuman behaviour, which simply alienates children and often leaves them terrified of expressing themselves? We should possibly look at what makes a teacher behave in this "I know and you don't" manner in the first place. Mostly, in my experience, it comes from a fear that actually teachers know very little about their subject, and even less about other matters. It may be all too easy for a student to catch a teacher out if he/she is given the freedom to ask questions or be inquisitive in any way. This is natural, when so many teachers have had a poor education themselves and therefore lack the fundamentals of conceptual understanding or possibly a lack of context which to relate their subject matter to. Another reason could be the fear of what could be considered more work. It's obviously less time consuming to be a dictator figure in your classroom and treat all students ad if they are equally non-existent, than to have to deal with each child as an individual and be aware of their needs and problems. I recently heard an interesting story from the principal of a village primary school who was attempting to train her teachers in new methods and more child-centred ways of teaching. She met with a lot of resistance from the older teachers, who had been working at the school for many years and were pillars of the local community. They obviously felt threatened by the idea that they might have to change their style of teaching, which had sustained their salary for many years regardless of how well the students performed or developed. Of course these were also the teachers that the principal found to be the most archaic and ineffective in their teaching, relying on rote-based methods and a stern, unfriendly classroom atmosphere. These teachers, managed to garner the support of the local community and threatened to strike, causing all sorts of problems for the principal who was seen as being the perpetrator of the crimes against them. Maybe you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but if this is the case in a well-managed, forward-thinking private school where parents are beginning to have choices in terms of where they send their children, what hope is there for the children in far-flung village government schools?

Although I come from a country where accountability is major part of the school system, and teachers are constantly observed, monitored and made to feel responsible for the performance of their students, I don't believe this is a system that can be transplanted to Indian schools. The UK government has just announced plans to introduce a "licence to teach" in its recent White Paper on Education, which means that all teachers at State schools will be assessed every five years to judge their competence. If they do not pass this assessment, they will have their licence taken away. In India, teachers are theoretically accountable to several monitoring organisations including the School Management Committee, Block Resource Centre and District Resource Centre. In reality, very little monitoring of teaching practice happens at all, and despite efforts to provide in-service training for teachers in government schools, the level of achievement of students in many Indian states has declined over the past years.

It saddens me that these kind of measures need to be put in place at all in any country. The only answer to these problems clearly lies in better education. If children grow up knowing what it's like to be educated by someone who cares about them and their future, then surely they'll demand the same for their children. Those who become teachers will have good role models to emulate and the cycle will slowly improve. It sounds simplistic and idealistic I know, but why should governments have to constantly monitor a teacher's performance to see if they're doing a good job? The communities have to take responsibility for these things and be able to notice when their child is not growing and flourishing like they should be. Therefore, any project or initiative which raises the bar and offers something better must be supported and the whole community should be constantly made aware of the effects.

Leaving

Walking in the oppressive heat of the Delhi summer evening, I savoured every smell, every gust of hot air, every pair of eyes that walked by as if I needed their existence as much as the air I breathe. I realised that India has become a part of every single cell of my being, and my heart is so firmly rooted here it is very difficult to say goodbye.

Leaving Purkal has been the most difficult thing I have ever done. My emotional strength has been tested to its limits and in the end I found it almost impossible to utter a word without tears coming to my eyes. The week has been full of farewell parties and "last times" and yet again I was overwhelmed by the affection everyone shown to me. A friend asked me the other day if I would miss the "caring" in India. At the time I wasn't sure what she meant but over the following week or so it became blindingly obvious.

On my recent trek in the Himalayas, I spent a couple of nights staying in wooden huts with some nomadic tribespeople called the Van Gujjars. They live in the lower regions around Dehradun and Uttar Pradesh in the winter months and migrate to the mountains in the summer. The Van Gujjars rely on their livestock, and are renowned for producing some of the best buffalo milk in India. We met a gujjar who had recently lost two buffaloes in a storm the previous night and the devastation that he felt was tangible.

Each time we arrived at one of their camps, my friends and I were offered a cup of steaming hot, sugary milk, so fresh and full of goodness that it felt like a complete meal. It rained quite consistently for the first couple of days of the four day trek, so we ended up spending much of our time with the gujjars. Wherever we went, despite the lack of any kind of luxury, they made every effort to make us comfortable, giving us blankets and sitting us as near to their fire as possible. When we asked if we could sleep in their huts, they gave us plenty of space and we all slept in a row, with families with 6 or 7 children and the cows sleeping opposite. Occasionally I was awoken by a buffalo poking his head through the open door or trying to eat our food supplies, but all in all I slept like a baby, despite the cold.

Shaadi

One of the major challenges of living in India for almost two years has been fielding the numerous questions about marriage. Being a bachelor in India is not easy and is certainly a rarity at my age (30). I am left in a strange social void as most men of my age are married, as are most of the females over 25. So I have found myself socialising mainly with people slightly older than me, who are married and have children. Although I have many dear friends in this situation, it means one is constantly aware of being single and you can't help feeling a bit left out. It has led me to think about marriage a great deal and I have often considered whether to look for a suitable match, Indian style, and settle down in what has become my second home.

I was recently asked if I wanted to meet a young lady who was a friend of a friend's daughter. I happily accepted, thinking it would be a interesting experience if nothing else. We met in a very informal environment, with my friend hosting us. This girl arrived, accompanied by a lady who looks after her and her sister while their parents are abroad and the four of us sat there and engaged in polite conversation for a while. It was a little unnerving and I felt like there was some kind of astute assessment going on. I even found myself asking "So...what does your father do?" and almost burst out laughing after having said it. Not much came of this particular occasion, but I started seriously considering the posibility of finding a wife in this fashion. If nothing else, it seemed attractive to let someone else do all of the hard work.

Several questions sprang to mind immediately;

1. Will an Indian girl and her family want an Englishman for a husband? When looking at the marital pages in the newspapers you can see that they are full of specifications of caste, jobs, qualifications, height, skin tone, family background, values. Indian families are very picky about who they marry their daughters to. Unfortunately, I haven't come across any adverts that specify a white-skinned, penniless man with dutch and irish blood from the Bricklayers caste.

2. Should I let someone else handle the selection process? Traditionally of course, the family play a major role in choosing a partner for their son or daughter. I have many willing friends and motherly types who I'm sure would relish the opportunity to choose me a good wife. More and more, I'm of the opinion that we are not particularly good judges of our own partners as our view is usually obscured by some irrational sensation or other, so it could be for the best to let someone objective do the tricky work.

3. Could I cope with the extended family? This weekend I went to visit the family I live with's family in Rishikesh. It is a relatively small family, but the scene was constantly full of children, elderly relatives, chatting wives and men discussing cricket. As an observer, I find it all intensely interesting and amusing, but maybe it would be different if I was more closely connected.

4. Would I get a dowry? Well, It's always worth asking!

I decided that since I'm only in India for a couple more weeks, why not do an experiment and see what happens if I post my profile on Shaadi.com, the famous marriage website that allows you to input in great detail your specifications, down to astrological charts to find your perfect partner. I was also planning to put an advertisement in the newspaper to see what responses I get. The wording was tough, as I've obviously got to market myself well but a few friends helped me come up with:

Wanted - Attractive, educated Indian girl with a mix of modern and traditional values. Must be open-minded and willing to travel....for a....
Tall, white, handsome (not my own words) British boy (30/6"0) MA student, working as a teacher in an NGO. Caste and religion not important.

I'll keep you posted...

Fire

Children here seem to have an incredible ability to adjust to new situations. Someone suddenly disappears from their life and they accept it with occasionally a few tears, then smile bravely and get on with life. They change schools, someone they know dies, they move in with their uncle or grandparents, they get sick, but still they continue to laugh and play, make new friends and teach us adults how to live. Life in India is fluid. Situations and events are completely beyond your control and leave little space for planning and predicting. Whereas in the west most pursue a secure and predictable life, where things can be neatly organised and tomorrow holds no surprises, in India the size of the population and nature of life leaves little space for this. So, you're left with little choice but to let go. Abandon your resistance and just enjoy the ride, and although it can be emotionally exhausting, frustrating and unnerving, you generally feel very much alive and have no trouble sleeping when night comes.

One afternoon last week, I was walking down to the basketball courts when I saw people running around with sticks and shouting about a fire. I ran to the side of our building and saw small fires burning on the slope next to our learning centre. Some of the students had climbed up there and were putting the fires out by hitting the flames with branches. Bobby, the accountant and one of the teachers were directing from below and co-ordinating the troops. The fire had spread from a field above us where they had been harvesting their wheat that day and just below where it was spreading was our wood store where the carpenters work. If one thing caught fire, we would be likely to lose thousands of rupees worth of wood. It has been reaching temperatures of 40 degrees recently and everything has become very dry too. After a lot of effort on the part of the kids and plenty of coughing and spluttering, they managed to get it under control.

We went down and started playing basketball and were soon joined by the most notorious class at PYDS, who had been in my bad books all week because of their unhelpful attitude and general misbehaving. I decided it would be good to have it out on the basketball court and we got stuck into a match. As I walked back up, sweating and exhausted I noticed some smoke coming from the wood store. I ran towards it and saw a burning cloth on top of a big pile of wood and quickly tried to pull it off and stamp it out. After this was under control I noticed that the fire was continuing to spread on the slope and was on its way towards us again. I shouted down to the naughty class and told them to come and help. Most of them came running with sticks and buckets and clambered up the slope to get to the fire. At one stage it was raging through a bush and was nearly twice the height of one of our students, but he managed to put it out single-handedly. Some were running around passing buckets while others were on the frontline beating it down with sticks, and within half an hour we had managed to reduce it to a pile of smoldering ashes.

Foreigner

It's taking me time to adjust being back in India after two weeks in Australia. I underestimated how different these two worlds were, and found myself having to adjust to being there and coming back quite significantly. The first thing that strikes you is the excess of choice and the amount that is consumed everywhere around you. The streets, cities, beaches and shops are all so meticulously clean and organised, which seems like a bizarre, make-believe reality after living in India. Of course another obvious (not necessarily bad) thing, is the amount of flesh on display as people walk around in next to nothing and you find yourself doing the same because it feels good. It follows that you end up paying more attention to how you look, what clothes you wear, what your hair looks like and I found myself looking in the mirror, checking myself out all the time. The relaxed attitude to drinking obviously stands out, and a beer in the afternoon becomes a habit quite comfortably, but the main thing that you notice is a huge difference of attitude to others and sense of self.

I arrived back in Delhi and again felt like a complete observer of this chaotic, dirty, confusing place. People were so pleased to see me and so open in their affection when I came on the overnight train back to Dehradun, but I found it all quite difficult to cope with. This brutally honest affection is something which demands something of you and it's something that I have only found in India. It demands you to return it and completely forgo your selfish nature and any egotistical tendencies you might have. I often find this unnerving, because my whole life has been spent preserving my personal identity and retaining that individual space regardless of other people. This morning I went for my morning walk up into the hills around where I live and sat down underneath a majestic tree as I climbed the slope back to Old Rajpur village. A little boy was walking up the hill in his school uniform, carrying his disproportionate bag of books. He must have been about six or seven years old and as he came towards me he began to stare and said "Hello". I had a little conversation with him and asked him whether he was going to school and he continued on up the hill. Every few feet he turned back to look at me, waved and said "Bye" and we continue this little game until he disappeared out of sight.

I stayed there smiling for a while, then made my way up the hill too. As I rounded the corner I saw the little boy standing frozen still on the path with two monkeys (that were both bigger than him) sitting directly in his way without showing any sign of moving. He saw me coming and looked relieved and as I walked towards him and the two butch-looking monkeys I expected them to run away. One of them disappeared into the undergrowth, but the other one stood his ground firmly bearing his teeth and looking quite scary. Despite my being a bit scared too I realised I was the adult and took the boys hand and marched him past the stubborn obstacle. He grabbed my hand tightly and we both sighed a sigh of relief as we made our way together to the street.

Directorial debut

In the past, I used to be constantly concerned with my body. There was always some ache or pain that was at the forefront of my mind, which meant that anything I had to do or accomplish took considerable effort and focus. For years I suffered with back pain, neck-ache, migraines, sinus trouble and I always felt I could have achieved so much more, if these things hadn't been in my way. Now I realise that these pains and aches were a product of my fear of achieving those things, and simply something I put in my own way to give myself an excuse. After some years of regular yoga practice, I am beginning to be less concerned with these physical ailments and if I was to draw a graph of my productivity and mental capacity over the past ten years it would show a sharp rise around the time I started focussing on improving my bodily health.

As my physical health grows, I find I am able to focus a little more on my mind and to ask myself important questions like, "what am I capable of?" and "how can I use my skills and knowledge to help those around me?" My yoga teacher often emphasises the intention behind your actions, and continues to ask us why we are practicing. Are we doing it to get a flat stomach or are we aiming to improve our minds? I read something recently which said our attitudes can be divided into two types; complaining or grateful. Our aim in life should be to move away from the complaining and towards gratitude.

I'm sure most people reading this will probably be thinking, "It's easy for him to say when he's living in the mountains in India, but most of us have to get on with the realities of the world." Of course, I accept my good fortune and recognise that I have always been a lucky boy.

I have spent the past few days making my directorial debut to give people a little taste of PYDS. You can have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbQJ0TH5KU4

Cats & Dogs

This morning I was woken up at about 2am by loud barking. This is nothing too unusual, but usually it stops after a while. This barking went on and on and seemed to be closer than usual. When it had reached the point when I was fully awake and my curiosity overcame my tiredness, I got up and walked to my balcony to see what was going on. We have a dog called Raja, who is a huge, stinky beast that is usually found skulking around the garden or slumped in the sun somewhere. At first we had some "getting to know you" issues, but now we've become reluctant friends who can bear eachother's presence, but that's about as far as it goes. Manish warned me repeatedly when I first moved in that I should stay away from Raja, because he is dangerous and doesn't like strangers. Seemed like good advice to me.

As I looked over my balcony I was wondering where the barking was coming from and why it was so loud. I soon discovered that this was due to the amplification of being in the bathroom (which is adjacent to the house). I stared at the open bathroom door for a while, listening for noises or human screams, but ould only hear Raja's barking and growling. I heard Manish's wife shouting at Raja from downstairs and I assumed he would shut up after a while. I turned around and went back to bed, burying my head under the covers.

It continued... As the only remaining man in the house (Manish is away in Rajasthan), I felt duty bound to go outside and see what was going on. I put my jacket on over my pyjamas and wandered outside to the bathroom. I crept slowly towards the door and called Raja's name with a tone of what I like to think was authority. The barking stopped for a second then continued. By now, the household was awake so I went inside to see what the theory was. Apparently a dog had got into the bathroom and was therefore in Raja's jurisdiction, and he wouldn't rest until the case was closed. Manish's mother and wife and I stood around and laughed for a bit. I said I thought it might have be a tiger or leopard, and then I went back to bed as it seemed that no action was to be taken (a welcome relief, as I didn't fancy wrestling with Raja or a rabid dog at that point in time). Soon after I had laid my head down, there was a pathetic wail and some scuttling around...then silence.

It turned out to be an ill-fated cat, who had sadly picked the wrong toilet to frequent. I don't know what the moral of the story is, but thought it was worth sharing...