Women and Girls

"Mine own eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people"

These  words  from a  favorite canticle are going to serve a purpose here. A purpose which they were not meant for but a purpose nevertheless.These lines haunt me as i give you authentic stories of the way girls are looked at.And maybe even women, the female of the species, in fact.I was sitting among parents in one of India's prestigious private universities. My son had been called for an interview and like the rest of the parents i was siting in a large hall, meeting the faculty of the respective departments.

Here, i would like to digress and talk a little about that sub species called Parents. I of course belong to the category, however with a difference.The difference is that i have been a school teacher and is an insider as far as education is concerned. But my training is barely recognized.Most people i have observed have their own views on the processes of education. Also most people refuse consultation and certainly don't accept the views of teachers.

All this was evident at this gathering.The most expected questions were about job placements and as to why the college had not advertised their clients. Graduates study for 4 years and in some courses for 5, so cam there ever be a prediction about the job markets way before that? And even if there is, it would be only a prediction, not a claim or a certainty. No one was interested in the academic principles, the courses of study, not even the kind of assignments their children would get. All that ,of course, is seen as though a punishment which the children will have to go through.

Then came the mother of all the questions.It was addressed to the head of the Msc. in Nuclear Science. A very worried voice piped up,"My daughter wants to do it.Is it a good choice for girls?" 

To do him justice ,the head was stumped.I was glad that he was speechless.It meant that  he hadn't thought about it. If he was glib then i would have taken him to be superficial.and that's not going to help the feminist cause. 

Did the set of parents know that a lady was heading, or maybe she still is heading, India's nuclear program? or, should this be our closely guarded secret? I do hope the education of girls really grow by leaps and bounds, but what are they learning? All careers are fine but if you are in a career because of a gender bias , that harms all of us .

I do hope that all our children, both boys and girls are following their dreams but without self imposed restrictions. My own eyes ...........

Women and Women

This was my life in college...... becoming a woman ,getting to know women and being friends with them. While trying to move onto how the human mind works i am really tempted to write about my days in college. I have written about rebellion.Well we had that.Sometimes, in our country just being a woman is rebellion enough. You aren't different, you are just you but a pair of eyes seem to follow you everywhere. Sometimes the pair of eyes develop a mouth. The mouth inches closer and you are no longer what you were building yourself into- no longer the intellectual or the professional.You run for cover from the prying eyes and the slimy mouths pouting deranged lines.

So , my most vivid memory of college is the bus ride from Delhi's Jantar Mantar to Greater Kailash , thrashing at the pair of gulping eyes. Yes beating the thronging crowd to docility as a brave young woman. We took oaths to stop going to marriages where gifts had been taken, dowry was exchanged. I remember reading a lot of Beauvoire  and we encouraged each other to look for jobs. Never shall we accept subjugation. Which actually meant, for us, that we would give up our daddy's cars to travel in the husband's. I was determined that this should never happen.

Spreading our wings, preparing for flight with our mothers' trying to clip those wings every single day. Who can imagine the pain of being cut down as soon as you have tried to spread your young magnificent wings ? I think imagination would fail here. Most of my male friends did not understand it at all.Except one, the one i married. In fact most of us did get married after college.So what did we do to the spirit of rebellion? We channeled it back to the family, of course. We are all virago wives, mothers and daughters. Did we contribute to the workforce? Yes, we did. Most of us just about managed the work life balance but some of us did it like a dream.

We did satisfy family. However, have we satisfied ourselves? In college we studied our courses, took interest in hobbies and were groomed to be the backbone of family. Welcome to the modern Indian woman. The system beat her by pretending that she is being taught rebellion. Actually we were being trained to conform, without us suspecting it. Cognition has nothing to do with gender. But bias will always pussyfoot around the growing woman , making her conform even when she does not suspect.

The film Mona Lisa smile is so true. Unfortunately, we never met a teacher like Julia Roberts.The lady teachers were chosen with care , they had to come from a certain background , they  had to conform. Weird, but the curriculum was always one of their weapons. So we never had an art appreciation or even an art history course.As a school Principal i miss this. The efficacy of art education is so evident to everyone now.But do we have such  exposure? We dont because the slimy mouth does not approve. Schools and colleges can have short  Life Skills courses so that aesthetics is a reality for everyone.

Will this tackle the crime rate? will it create more jobs? I can see the mouth working furiously. Frankly, let all this be rhetorical. Let's just sincerely offer youth Education in it's full sense , as promised.

IndYeah : the country's history of education

Most of us don't know much about India's history of education.At present, i would like to touch upon the beginnings of western education as sponsored by the British and modern times.For us in India today this is most important to understand the true relevance of what is really the problem. The problem, let me say at the outset has nothing to do with ancient India or any of it its systems.The problems which are evident in education today are created very recently and are largely a result of a phenomenon i term as poverty of the mind. 

This was and could  only have  been a result of  being a slave country and colonial policy. The breakdown of a certain cultural structure, the trauma of losing faith in one's language brings about poor thinking, deranged thinking even and a whole nation suffers from the poverty of the mind. India has been accused of being superstitious, of believing in hobgoblins. Who wouldn't blame a society which watched a small girl being thrown on the burning pyre of her dead husband?

However, this deranged thought process has a reason. That reason is relevant even  today. Lack of self-esteem. That is the global phenomenon that Indians all over the country suffered from and still suffer from. From this underlying cause springs the black falls of poverty of the mind. The antidote lies in education as intervention and not mere literacy or in the pursuit of technical skills as we still see education as.

Way back in the  early 19th century when Macaulay's system of education forced our children into stuffy shirts and English alphabets, some colleges were also opened as the British needed clerical staff to run the government. Indians, needed jobs. Some of us, however, resisted. My maternal grandfather was one of them. He studied political science from Presidency college but refused to work under the British. What he was doing was to delink  degrees from jobs, something we still haven't achieved.

H came back to his village,Runshi, opening a small school for the village children. The village schoolmaster was soon forced to marry one of his tomboyish pupils.He remained her Guru, however, and my grandmother graduated in English Literature from Dacca university under his care.They brought in the flavour of English romanticism in that village corner, so that, years later, i could feel it's heady scent and followed it in defiance of a technical education.

This spirit of rebellion is not peculiar to my grandparents alone. This was the flavor then, as Indian youth tried to understand modernity within a traditional context. I am sure most of us such stories tucked away somewhere. When India became free these rebels came forward to lead the country. The colleges were flush with idealism.

Our parents had difficult childhoods.Society was in transition and they had no clue as to where they would be as adults.But the spirit of rebellion continued and flavored college education. The very rich would go abroad for their studies. The middle class went to the colleges opened by the British.My stepfather attended Banaras Hindu University or BHU, a symbol of national aspirations.It was an institution built by Indians for India. A bastion of ancient culture BHU instilled the kind of confidence in him that took him from a remote village in Bihar to Prague ,addressing the labor unions.

We saw all this , were affected by it but our mantra was austerity. Our parents were not ready to shell out too much for a fancy education.My husband and his sisters entered government colleges to study medicine.Ever the rebel i took  up a course in English Literature in a private college.It was a tad expensive but the spoken language was tolerable. Then we had a comfortable ladies hostel and a fully functioning library which was open late evenings. An unheard of luxury those days.

Perhaps it was us who ushered in the era of private colleges and universities. It was certainly us, the debonair private scholars who patronized MBA or management education.Some of us went abroad and most of us girls decided to work. Braving well meaning aunts, mothers, possessive fathers and lady teachers we wanted to do everything. We smoked, we fought, we spoke to boys and broke all taboos. It was necessary. We felt that the onus of being change makers was on us. Privileged girls. We  had to show the way out of harassing in laws, dowry deaths and a host of things our deranged society forced on the young people.

We also fought through the issue of reservations. Some of us were for it others weren't but the fight was important. There was still rebellion. My grandparents rebellion, my stepfathers' rebellion and my own. Indian colleges fostered all this while still trying to plod on with Macaulay's justification for college degrees: cushy jobs.

Now What? The colleges are numerous , some are private and affiliated to foreign universities. But the youth do not rebel. Macaulay looms large. Most of us just want our children to get a job , preferably escape the country. They have forgotten the pain of slavery or maybe, poverty of the mind has numbed them. They have erased revolution.Instead, the young people are resorting to cheating, happily paying for seats in colleges or tamely going to private universities. The colleges are bigger, smarter but i look on with horror at the failure of all rebellion.There will be no myth making anymore and our sons and daughters will not blow their bugles for war. I applause the colonial culture for it has been tenacious, it has won.

The parliament of crows

Borrowing a phrase from classical  writers i would term the next experience as "the Parliament of Crows". I will spare the fowls as they are hardworking birds which give us our real food these days.Let's have a simile in that urban phenomenon, so common in Delhi, where i am at present, the crow. The creature braves all things urban ,namely, electrocution, manhandling, starvation and the weird rains of delhi, which are capricious at best. Just like them, the youngsters look when they gather for their interviews for admission to undergraduate seats,in one of the private universities of Delhi.

They were all sitting in a huge comfortable room sizing each other up. My son, too, after his harrowing ordeal at a private medical college was there.He wanted to be considered for a seat in architecture. A girl sobbed as she came out of the interview for the medical physiology course. Another looked worried so my son coached her somewhat.After all he used to have aspirations for medicine.Once. She was really happy as the questions asked were a little tougher than expected.

Then there was the geek whose parents wanted him to do architecture while he wanted the predictable computer science engineering. He had a good score in the architecture aptitude test. But his genius gained recognition. I watched all the young ones indulgently. Parents are not always self centered maniacs driving their kids up the wall.The geek's parents, obviously wanted to give him a creative break but the geek was not up to it. He wanted the challenge of long hours.

I watched as all of them turned into 18 year olds and spoke happily to each other about their dreams and aspirations. I watched my son's eyes turn cheerful once again as he went for his interview. There were no more fears in this world, no harassment or donations. Yes, fees in some of these private universities are high.But are they really for a privileged few? or are they for discerning parents who care for their children? We are ready to forgo all pleasures and make drastic cuts in the home finances so that our children can go to a real college.

Yes, if we think about it ,that is what it has come to.The government system has failed us totally. Some of the private medical colleges are setting a trend that can benefit just a privileged few. For most of us, tax payers ,the choice is limited to a few private universities and colleges who have tied up with universities abroad to strengthen their courses. I would say that they have restored youth back to the nation. Is it too much for a teenager to ask to safely go to college? without his parents getting harassed or his being murdered?

My son came back beaming from the interview.They had really grilled him.They also said that he could be a good doctor but hey, maybe that would be a loss for architecture. His lecturers had showed interest in his blog and said that his photography portfolio was terrific. Private universities. May their tribes increase....... As the parliament folded ,once again i decided to turn back to Kaku's theory......

He is not even 18 yet

Much as i would  love to discuss theory and of course, kaku's contribution to the Physics class, i cannot help but ponder on the scams in education that are a part and parcel of Indian life. Ask any set of middle aged parents in India and they will tell you how worried they are about their children's college education. The whole of the college scene is a dismal ,sleazy world dominated by goons.

One would think that education is the least likely o fields to have sensationalism rear it's ugly head but here, you cannot escape it. The stories connected with higher education are full of murder, tales of underhand dealings and the reality makes bollywood dramas look like primary school plays.As far as western education is concerned, India is a fairly young country. Most of our colleges have opened post independence and so higher education is just about 70 years old.

Colleges favoring humanities were the first to open. Technical education also began after the British left. Most doctors and lawyers would have to make a trip to the UK or Germany to get trained. However, things changed and by the 90s we had full fledged institutions. But instead of training brilliant students who would be an asset to the country, these institutions became the hot bed of politics and the exploitation of students is a saga that Indians today, should be ashamed of.

The common admission tests are all in the hands of goons whose duty it is to arrange mass irregularities in the selection process. Each day we wade through newspaper reports that go into gory details. Such details which would frighten any parent or any adolescent. In the long lists of such scams murder is also being added.

Worse, it's not only the children who want to pass in the usual way that are hit.Those whose parents arrange for an admission through a financial arrangement  suffer most. Some of them are murdered if the scam comes to light. Some are harassed for more money through out the course of their studies. Recently, i went to a reputed private medical college for my son's admission. They took a test and on finding him suitable invited me in a special study to confer with the director.

Silently, the man gave his calculator and said,"Madam, please deposit this amount in cash by next week for the offer of admission." I peered in to the device to see ,by my standards at least, a huge sum in Indian rupees. I managed to croak," Can i give this amount in a cheque or bank transfer?"
The man smiled indulgently and said""No, cash only." A phrase which has become so common in India nowadays that i have my doubts about our banks.Are they for show or they too have a hand in fostering this malpractice through the loans that they give out so readily?

But nothing had prepared me for my son's reaction. "No, mummy we musn't pay them.' he murmured. Still i ventured," Maybe we should ,after all it's your future we have to think of. ' What is he thinking of ? i wondered, is it heroism or too much honesty or is he feeling guilty about it.

Then he looked up and i saw the terror in his eyes."No mummy, don't even think of leaving me to study here, alone, with these goons." That's when pity , not just for my son but all of them, our children, my students welled up in me. What have they done to deserve this terror? He hasn't even turned 18 yet.

The mind and us

Reading Michio Kaku's book on the human mind is a real eye-opener. Effortlessly he gets rid of previous paraphernalia that maybe proving to be a nuisance to a clear thinking in your mind. The poem ,The Road not taken is similar in vein to this process of  cleansing of the mind.

In the poem the poet refers to the road as a metaphor for that which he might want in life.as he stood at a crossroads, hoping for a clear direction he got his answer.He chose the road which is "less traveled by". This is indeed attractive and for people like me hoping for less claustrophobic ways to travel it can appear attractive. A road does not just take you to a destination.As you travel it becomes your life.

It shapes your thinking and sometimes if the journey has been a night mare, it can also raise apprehensions about going further or, going back. All these possibilities are an integral part of humdrum life.Somehow i have also interpreted this poem to mean that the road you take may not be as important for the destination is the same,whichever road you may have taken.

Michio Kaku says confidently that any kind of sixth sense or paranormal abilities are unnecessary  as the mysteries of the universe can be understood by our native intelligence. What are the implications in education in all this? how does it affect the class room situation? This is extremely important for the classroom in my muse. I began writing this blog to clear my own dilemma about my aim in life.

After all, often in life the clutter gets to us.We forget what our compulsions are. COMPULSIONS. A very interesting word, indeed.It somehow defines us. It is different from goals.While goals can be set and are largely, externally set, compulsions are more inward.In the humdrum of life we tend to disregard them.But i feel if we can stay in touch with the inner self, we will understand these delicate attitudes that actually define us.

So, for me it's always a tiny voice asking me : will this work in the classroom? If it will how will it work? As i read Kaku i will write about the educational implications of his thoughts.I hope it will be a very interesting read............

Moving from good to great

The question of competitive  examinations is always on our minds.Is it good or bad? should we go for standardised testing?

The issue, according to me, is not so much about skills but about endurance.The  entrance tests in India are certainly to test endurance ,the patience of the public and the innocence of our children.Months of anxiety precede the circus that these tests have become. I would even venture to say ,that the anxiety could be of a thousand years.

Sometimes i have this quirky feeling that parents in India miss out on the giggles of their offspring.Maybe they just stare at it wondering whether they will make it in any of the entrance exams.Babies ,i have a feeling are judged entirely on an imaginary idea of success .Do they have a chance against prejudice? Will they ever be able to prove their mettle their individuality?

Standardized testing,again, has it's drawbacks.Has anyone ever  thought about those who can't get through an academic program successfully because  of developmental delay? They too  have to go through a process of assessment.

Somehow, this does not involve the artistic process. However,as Howard Gradner keeps insisting development is as integral to the artistic process as hormones are to sexual development.Which means that artistic development,the level of it achieved can truely reveal a child's development and it's potential for further growth.Then why do we disregard it ? why isn't the creative process in children left out of assessment? Standardized tests etc? Is it because most of us would rather ignore the potential given to us to move from being good to great ?