Day 4: People Make People (Policy Edition)

Today we had the wonderful Maya Menon share with us about the challenges of teaching in India. We began with a few videos showing teachers in classrooms interacting with students. There was a 1st grade teacher engaged in a lesson of rote memorization and spelling of words and 1 sentence in English. The teacher spelled out each word in the sentence "the cat sat on the chair”, then read the whole sentence. The students emulated her. This video makes me think about countries like Nigeria where the mother-tongue is not in English and teachers are tasked with imparting reading and writing skills in a language students are unfamiliar with. Is it impossible? No. Does it require a strong grasp of the process of learning to read and write in a new language? I believe so. A teacher’s awareness and buy-in regarding established theories of how children learn could perhaps motivate them to keep trucking on and not to get despondent. My thoughts regarding this video are fueled by the American experience of teacher development mandated and sought after by teachers in America. (How can I help with imparting pedagogy and best practices in teaching; specifically Early childhood, to teachers in India?). Other questions I had during the video included:

How many students are in class (there appeared to be a lot of first graders; how does small group instruction happen, if at all? [this question is addressed in the session by Dr. Banerjee of Pratham NGO].

What are the cultural or educational policy expectations for behavior? Is there an underlying social expectation of what ‘schooling’ looks like for students? This might provide support for behavior management. This may, of course, be impacted by parents' experiences of school.

What teacher development is available/required for teachers (Maya Menon and her associate Sandhya Shivaprasad mentioned that a certain state in India had a powerful enough Teacher’s union that demanded the state discard the requirement for lesson planning, and they succeeded).

The second video shows a class of boys engaged in an art assessment. They were asked to draw and color. The teacher used phrases like ‘that is terrible!, very bad piece of work, shall we clap for the first person to get an A?’ Classroom management appeared to involve the use of shame as a motivator. Is this part of societal expectation for the teacher-child-school relationship? Subsequent snippets of feedback given by teachers included a comment that ‘if we give them too much importance, the relationship is affected (paraphrased). Another teacher stated that there has to be a sense of distance between the teacher and students, and that fear and shame (perhaps) are a teaching tool. This is perhaps needed to control/manage the classroom because with proper monitoring, the percentage of work is improved. A summary of the teacher-child-school dynamic is represented by fear-love-respect

The third video shows a bilingual classroom, considered an English medium school per policy designation and the students and teacher interacted in English as well as the local language.

Maya then moved on to share about the teaching experience in India. With a population of 1.4 billion (430 million of which are aged 18 and under), 22 modern languages and 1527 rationalized mother tongues, teaching a core curriculum in a standard language may be challenging. Education is on the concurrent list of the constitution, meaning that both the State and National/Central government are responsible for it. The schools available are categorized into government/public schools, subsidized private schools, private schools and a small group of homeschoolers. Private schools are a growing business and educational trend as parents are disillusioned by the state and success of government schools, even though they see the value of education. Poorer children tend to be enrolled in government schools, while more affluent families prefer private schools. These elite schools are typically located on the outskirts of cities and students either have to take a bus to school or be transported by their families. 

From a structural and systemic perspective, the constitution deems education as the right of every child. With the recent National Education Policy (2020), the Right to Education act has been expanded to include early Childhood education. Children are engaged in school for a total of 12 years; 5 years in the lower elementary/Foundational stage, 3 years in the preparatory stage, 3 years in the middle stage and 4 years in the secondary stage. A significant  threat to education (for the present and the future), in my opinion, is the incidence of girls dropping out of school. Included with the societal expectation that girls of child-bearing age begin to focus on marriage and home-making, girls who begin menstruation may be pulled out of school by parents due to inadequate public hygiene support. I believe this is significant because mothers’ experiences of school influences the success and degree of engagement their children have with schooling. 

Another significant threat is the limited funding allocated for education from the National and state level. The state of Bihar, for instance, allocates 54 rupees per student, while the state of Kerala allocates 483 rupees per child. There is a great degree of variation regarding education funding. This limited funding affects the government schools that are better able to provide the educational needs of poorer children and families. This lack of funding has inevitably impacted the quality and perception of education. Parents perceive education as a medium for social mobility and are inclined to seek out private education and tutoring services for their children. Parents who get an increase in salary may decide to invest that money in private education, consequently ensuring that there is no social mobility or better quality of life from that financial increase. This cycle/dynamic reflects the impact education has on societal and citizen 

growth. 

Teachers experiencing challenges is ubiquitous to all countries. The challenges faced by teachers in India stem from historical, political and cultural differences. 

According to Maya Menon, challenges can be categorized under:

Shortage, Training and Systemic absence of vision and purpose. 

Shortage: teacher salaries are low (government/public schools pay better than private schools in most cases), the profession of teaching is perceived as having a low status, and teachers don’t feel empowered as professionals. The teaching profession is perceived as a job for women for whom the work hours are convenient and the requirements are ‘easy’.

Training: the curriculum that is made available to teachers is disconnected from classroom practice. Government expectations of where students should be is not facilitated/supported by day to day teaching practices. In some cases, summative exams that are meant to evaluate learning after a specific period of instruction are too difficult for students to pass. Additionally, teacher educators are authoritarian and unimaginative in their approach, leaving little room for teachers in training to learn how to encourage student autonomy and critical thinking. Instead, teachers in training develop a dictatorship approach to teaching and are left to figure things out on their own as there is no mentoring support for newly qualified teachers. 

Systemic absence of vision: The education system has developed a culture of convenience and shortcuts. In the face of challenges, the tendency is to find the easier path to resolution, whether or not it provides quality and efficiency. Additionally, there is very limited collaboration and an environment that supports collegial interaction for professional development and support of students is lacking.

Armed with this background knowledge, we visited MCD Primary school , Andrews Ganj, a government school that collaborates with and is supported by a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) called Simple Education Foundation. By the time we arrived, students were just leaving for the day. The school environment was surrounded by trees and consisted of a bank of classrooms that framed an open area in the middle. The heat was near oppressive to us, but not to the teachers and students it seemed. I can only assume that this is because they have acclimated to the weather and their bodies are better able to regulate the temperatures. This leads me to consider the impact of the heat on learning in closed spaces without the ability to regulate external temperatures. I realize, of course, that outdoor schools existed in India and other regions where learning was housed in one room or under a tree. However, temperatures have shifted since then as climate change becomes more and more pertinent. And if the heat is not an impact for the students, what about the teachers? (Note: In discussions with Kritika, it was shared that the school year is variously scheduled in response to the weather. The hotter regions of India begin the long break in the hotter months, while their colder areas begin theirs in the colder months. Schools generally begin their long break between April and July.)

We met the teachers and the principal who shared some information about the demographics of the school. The teachers were all women and were designated ‘class mothers’ as they stay with their students throughout the allotted time for elementary education. A teacher will begin with a grade 1 class and stay with them until grade 5. This concept of moving with students is not foreign as it is a practice implemented in the U.S. It begs the question of teacher capability. During my time as an elementary teacher, I have changed grade levels from Kindergarten, First grade and Third grade. Those transitions required a period of adjustment to the grade-specific curriculum and practices. If Indian teachers move with their students, what support and expectations are available to help a teacher transition from teaching, say, grade 1 math to grade 5 math? Are these supports systemic or localized? 

This visit also highlighted the distinct way that education is intertwined with culture and societal growth. The demographics of the school we went to includes families of a low socioeconomic status. The parents are wage earners (the monthly salary for unskilled workers in India ranges from INR 2,250 [US $26.95] to INR 70,000 [US $838.50], with a median salary of INR 29,400 [US $352.17] A guide to Minimum Wage in India 2024) who may leave for work earlier than when the children leave for school, consequently, the children may come to school to get ready for school. School is also a source of mental and physical nourishment. Children are able to get at least 1 hot meal per day, and the class mothers implement morality lessons (essentially social-emotional lessons) through the medium of stories. Class mothers take the time (at least the first month of school) to get to know their students and build relationships. They also communicate with parents through social media applications (WhatsApp primarily) regarding school/learning related events like homework engagement strategies. Parents also share pictures and videos of their children engaged in learning or specific events. For instance, June 15th was International Yoga day and parents sent pictures of their children participating. Parents receive school related resources (uniforms, books, stationary, etc) from the school at the beginning of the year, thereby mitigating the financial challenge of purchasing school supplies. Schools are a conduit for resources and connections (social and physical) that build the fabric of a society. I wonder, however, if the interactions between school and the community is transactional, or if a reciprocal relationship exists between these two contexts. To what degree does the community participate and affect the gamut of educational policy and practice (nationally and locally)?