Morning Assembly
At my request, Rathnakaran allowed us to attend another school assembly. These powerful events happen every day, including Saturday, because classes happen every day. Because the school is multi-lingual, two assemblies use Hindi, two Malayalam, and and two are in the English language. Rathnakaran pulled some wires and made Saturday’s event in English, although it was not scheduled that way.
Students lead the assembly. Some set up. Another group plays drums (loudly). Other groups consist of the audio crew, a keyboard player, a tabla player, and singers.
The teachers select one student to be the school’s leader and other students are the heads of their houses. Each house is named after one of the four mountains in India: Alavali, Nilgiri, Shivalik, and Udaigiri.
The assembly begins with a prayer, and the school song. Two students share the news of the day, using notes they prepared that morning from their reading of newspapers. One student gave a speech. Another student recited from memory Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain.” The assembly concluded with remarks from the Fulbright guests and a stirring rendition of the Indian national anthem.
India National Anthem
The Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore composed the poem and wrote the music for what would become India’s National Anthem. The anthem links all the languages of India because Sanskrit offers a “common source of formal vocabulary” and uses nouns that can function as verbs (Wikipedia). The English translation follows, with links to some of the places named in the anthem:
Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
Dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and Maratha,
Of the Dravida and Odisha
and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of Vindhya and the
Himalayas,
Mingles in the music of Ganga and Yamuna
and is chanted by
The waves of the Indian sea.
They pray for thy blessings and sing thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
Thou dispenser of India's destiny.
Victory, victory, victory to thee.
This link captures children singing the anthem at an Annual Day celebration. Some of them wear costumes and makeup reflecting people and events in Indian history. This anthem carries great emotion. Watching audience members sing it with such respect and power makes for a humbling experience.
Principal Rathnakaran asked Peter Boller, Gerald Smith, and myself to address the school at the end of the assembly. We each mentioned how impressed we are with Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) and the work of its students and teachers. The Teachers for Global Classrooms program has given us an entree into a wonderful cross-cultural experience, a two-way street of informing and being informed.
At the conclusion of the assembly, in a matter of minutes, students had disassembled the microphones and instruments and had left the courtyard for class.
Arriving From Other Schools
The loud sound of several auto-rickshaws meant students from another vidyalaya had arrived at JNV-Mahe. These students would stay at JNV for the following year. Other JNV-Mahe students had already left for other schools. This cross-attendance promotes a feeling of solidarity between students and schools, and is a feature of the residential program. Some of the arriving students already knew each other because of a previous exchange when JNV-Mahe students had stayed at their schools.
4:43 pm
In the tension between individuality and belonging, which your description of the assemblies makes me think of, we in America seem so far toward the “me” end of the spectrum. There seems to be so much “us” in the schools you’re visiting. Alienation haunts so many here, as evidenced by drug addiction, gun violence, the list goes on. Of course India has pervasive ills. But your description here points to schools as pockets, microcosms, where belonging is built into the culture.
I found myself trying to imagine such an assembly at our school, and then thinking about when folks discuss improving our “climate and culture.” It seems like we’re swimming upstream into a torrent of self-centeredness, social media, frayed community ties. Not that I’m despondent, just thoughtful.
When I’ve gone on school visits (only in America, in my case!), I find watching their experiences helpful to contextualizing ours, and evolving new, hopeful ideas for how we can grow. Sometimes, I feel a deep yearning for something different. Your posts are awakening in me that emotional and intellectual tug toward other ways of co-existence that may better serve our “human-ness.”
11:54 pm
Matt: I agree completely with your assessment of American versus Indian schools. There is a selflessness here that touches every aspect of education. Students compete in exams and sports (each school displays a large poster with photographs of the top students outside the front gate and their individual scores) but they also help each other with reading and reciting. No teacher asks them to do this. The students see a peer struggling and then spend time with that person.
In our cohort discussions, and with our Indian hosts, we could see much that is right with Indian education. Cell phones are banned in schools. Reading plays a central role as does recitation. Discipline and respect mean a great deal. There is a marvelous sense of community and inclusiveness, which I believe comes from combining the secular with the religious. As the origin place for four major religions, India stresses acceptance of “the other.” Of course, there is still the caste system but even that structure seems ignored in the schools.
What I’ve seen in India is all about the “human-ness,” the acceptance of difference and promotion of the greater good. There seems to be a strong love of country and community, a pride in what is and and easy-ness in human interactions. Call it love or some other higher emotion but I see it vividly in the classrooms I’ve visited and with the teachers who have spoken to me. Such feelings amaze me. How do we get there? Perhaps a thousand-year history of conflict followed by an extended period of colonial control? What I see in Indian education has evolved over an extended time and in reaction to many difficulties inherent in country with the third largest population in the world.
Like much of what is good in the world, I think promoting progress toward a goal of equality and acceptance is our answer. It is not the goal that matters as much as the willingness to pursue a higher good. Perhaps discussions like ours can move us toward accepting goals of inclusion and community as actions we take because they are the right thing to do and have them become part of our culture and awareness? I have no answers, simply an appreciation for what I’ve seen on this trip.
Thanks again for cogitating along with me and responding to my work. I am very appreciative of your comments and our ongoing discussion. —Bill
1:47 am
Matt: Your comment is very real and at the sharp end of what I’m seeing in India. I’m responding at length here because you touched on some of the anomalies I’ve seen in comparing American and Indian education. This reply brings in some empirical thought but focuses more on my half-formed opinions, with which some may disagree. I’m struggling to reconcile what I’ve seen in India with my own sense of academic instruction and development. Truly, this project is a work in progress and I hope you (and other readers) will understand that position.
My colleagues here, while acknowledging the problems inherent in a large country, come back to the innovations that administrators engage in, such as the Happiness Project. The social, spiritual, and emotional needs of the students come first. That’s innovative yet perhaps the educators here demand too much. We are seeing a pedagogy that disappeared in the U.S. in the 1950s through the 1970s: Memorization. Heavy dependence on lecture. Group silent reading. Standing to address the teacher. Frankly, it seems old-fashioned but it also seems to work.
The Indian pedagogy is rooted in the colonial system and dependence on the textbook. Krishna Kumar—Kumar, K. (1988). Origins of India’s “Textbook Culture”. Comparative Education Review, 32(4), 452-464. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1188251, see https://www.jstor.org/stable/1188251?read-now=1&seq=13#metadata_info_tab_contents)—examines the colonial structure of Indian education starting with the British East India Company and the focus on basic skill instruction. At first, teachers had some autonomy to select “culturally significant texts” in order to promote learning skills useful to a village-based society. Then, official routines came in and teachers were forced to develop more bureaucratic procedures: Admission registers, daily dairies, expense records, examinations. (I will never forget the huge registers of student progress I saw on Principal Rathnakaran’s desk and watching him sign attendance records for each teacher in the morning.)
According to Kumar, Indian teachers came to have little role in syllabus preparation or in the freedom to choose the textbooks used in class (and the textbook became the king of education). In this culture, textbook publishers sold to inspectors responsible for evaluating education, not the teachers who used the books. An educational system of administrators told the teachers what to teach, and Indian teachers had to teach to the text. This posed a problem for English language learners—most of the population—because they had to learn grammar and language structure solely from books then test their knowledge in examinations, a system of “mechanical reading and rote learning.” Finally, Indian teachers—while respected by their students—are at the low end of social status. They are wonderfully dedicated individuals but not necessarily recognized in the social hierarchy. I sense that this structure is changing in some of the more advanced schools as innovative thinking begins to play a greater role in Indian education. But cities such as New Delhi have more ability to embrace innovation that schools in the outlying areas. The advantage of JNV schools is that they can innovate and are willing to do so because of the autonomy they possess.
The Indian educational system produces an outstanding student, someone who can read, write and speak—but unfortunately the element of critical thinking seems lacking. Kumar describes the “extraordinary powers of memorization” that allows students to learn textbooks by heart and reproduce them in an examination. A Punjab saying expresses the wish to grind the text into a pulp and then drink it in order to gain knowledge. I heard several student essays that were produced with a teacher’s help and recited in an assembly. The students did this work quite well, but I questioned whether they understood the material or simply repeated it.
I’ve learned that India is unique because of its heritage and culture, something we in the U.S. find it difficult to understand and might do well to adopt. Indian students are superior to American students in many ways but also show a shallowness of independent thought (in my opinion). When I ask a question in an Indian classroom, students either shout out an answer or sit silently. Raising a hand is not part of the social structure. It takes an effort for a student to stand up—often with a teacher’s encouragement—and the answer feels mechanical and structured. One of my major takeaways is how our American students from other cultures bring similar cultural norms with them. Unless we can give them something to say in our instruction, they lack an ability for critical and independent thought. I want to continue our emphasis on critical and independent thinking and marry that pedagogy to a memorization system that exposes students to literature and other ideas. That idea summarizes my experience in India. These students are well-prepared by a system that works for the structure the government has created but at the same time that system leaves out independent thought.
Matt, your comment sparked some deep thinking on my part about my experience. I’m not sure whether any of us have answers to the problems of education. Like the Indian teachers, we do the best we can in exposing our students to ideas. That’s the cornerstone of our system. Whether it works depends on how future generations will assess our work and the results our students will produce as adults. I love the breadth of the Indian system: Learning multiple languages, emphasizing structure and memorization, providing time for spiritual growth, incorporating sports and non-academic activity into every day, relying on support outside the classroom, and fostering a long academic day. (Students rise at 5:30, have an athletic activity and snack, attend an assembly, go to classes until 4:00 and then have study time and athletic activities until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. Such a system works well for residential students dedicated to their learning. They also show a joy in the process. The mad rush for the exits at 3:00 in an American school bespeaks a polar opposite in learning styles.)
—Bill
5:35 am
We are very happy to be with you in the morning asembly for one more time. Students are really excited to present their program in the morning assembly in formt of the Selected Fulbright Teachers from the U.S. Thank you, Dr. Bill for your encouragement and the speech in the assembly on 9th and 13th.
6:11 pm
It was a great assembly. You have so many talented students. It’s joyful to watch them express themselves. And the national anthem gives me chills whenever I hear it.
12:18 pm
Dear Bill, Thank you so much for all your sharing of student life and culture in India.
It is so refreshing and beautiful
The courtyard assembly brings me back to my school in England in the 50s when we had a prayer the national anthem and brief calisthenics
Continue your adventure and come back with many tales to tell us, so many