Weekend Trip Part Deux/ Education Rant

Today I had a wonderful day touring historical sites, checking out crocodiles, and eating dosas.  The best part was of course the people- Devika kindly arranged for another great outing and brought along her daughter and two of her friends.  She also made arrangements for a special guest, Lakshme who was also a TEA fellow.  She was in the top group of people whom I secretly wanted to be paired with but I'd worried about her being too demanding since she was giving me homework at Purdue, which I did.  Her visiting teacher told her she was a slave driver, which I'm sure she was and I'm sure she was an excellent host as well.  Today she helped grow my understanding of their culture and the Hindu religion.  She said some incredibly profound things about their religion which really helped me understand what simple knowledge I already had as well as all the stories that I'd hear thereafter.

Being around the kids was great, they are very much like our students back home.  They were very eager to tell me about their beloved cricket, which I get now- or at least the short IPL professional version which is the 20-20 format.  I think some Americans are too quick to think of these parents and kids over here as American job stealing cyborgs.  When in fact they posses none of the Rocky IV soviet boot camp type practice or mentality. The kids I was around today are kids who are interested in kid stuff; music, sports, hanging out with friends.....  They were respectively in the 12th grade, 11th grade, and 8th grade.  I could see the same wonderful developmental qualities and traits that you see at these ages with our students.  I know I'll have a lot of takeaways from this trip on education and beyond, but one obvious and simple trait that we need to take note of is the way the families and education institution prioritize.  Learning is 1st.  Not to say the parents are not really more concerned about what college their kids are going to get into rather than are they really grasping the subtleties of a particular literary theme.  But rather than parents and schools trying to provide every possible opportunity to kids, they have simplified things by making school first and everything else secondary.  They do a lot of other activities and they have ample extracurricular opportunities at the school, but I can't imagine that cricket even spoken in the same breath or the same room as improving student academic performance. 

Respectively there are things that each system does better than the other, and there are things that we both do well that may not be culturally appropriate for the other side.  Their system is more teacher based, and it works.  They'll benefit from differentiating a little to inculcate some collaborative skills, but I think changing their approach radically would be a mistake.  I acknowledge that when I'm commenting on either Indian or American education I'm talking about what is working, not the converse.  If we focus on what is working we are better off than trying to pail out water in a sinking ship.  Our system creates very dynamic thinkers who are apt to experiment and eager to work together to explore ideas.  We do lack focus and it can create some holes in students academic knowledge.  We don't need to close the gap with the top Indian students knowledge and math skills, but we need to close it enough so when our students are creating their innovative solutions to problems, they are doing so with enough background to make it count, and to drive their eagerness to learn.  Anyone who thinks American kids don't want to learn, doesn't listen to kids and subsequently doesn't ask them the right questions.

Although our focus maybe off kilter with our do everything-for-everybody schools and super soccer infinite goal households, we do offer a breadth of academic exposure that prepares our students to be whole systems thinkers.  We may get carried away by offering a million electives, but on the Indian side they often ditch social sciences at 10th grade.  Why create engineers, researchers, or business leaders who don't understand the complexity of the society they are working in?  We offer all these wonderful subjects, but they often seem isolated and we miss the opportunity to show the interdependency  of different subject areas as real world examples.  What the Indians do, they do well.  There seems to be flawless horizontal and vertical integration of their organization from pre-k to 12th, or 2.5-18.  We need to carefully look at these positive characteristics and ask ourselves how can we improve our system to leverage our strengths? Or more directly how can we improve our organizations to improve student performance while building on their ability to think critically and creatively.  If we try to fix our problems by addressing the negative we will create more problems.  Indian teachers don't have a lot freedom in their curriculum, and that will not work for us.  We can create a more student-centered teacher-driven model by improving the focus and streamlining the organization.  Will we have to give up or alter the 89 electives and massive sports facilities and programs we offer? Maybe, but if the argument for keeping them is that those classes are what keep students interested and offer exposure, then what are we doing in the other classes?  We should shrink the scope as the Indians already do (but keep social studies), and provide enriching activities and programs as a secondary function of the teachers and school.  I'll have plenty of time to right in this vain later, back to the weekend.

Oh yeah the kids rocked! We finished out trip by stopping into an old Basilica in Chennai while they were doing a Palm Sunday mass  in Tamil, we then visited a store of a family friend which was very nice, and then we ate dinner at another great "veg restaurant."  I tried some idlis, which were good and a Masala Dosa that was good again.  Dinner felt good, I started the day not feeling hot after a little motion sickness driving out to Mahabalipuram.  We ate as soon as we finished our drive there, which was a good idea, but I still was teetering to the point that I had my escape plan to the bathroom pinned.  After dinner the kids mentioned again that Jan looked like Katrina Kaif an Indian Movie star.  Then they proceeded to ask me about what music I liked.  They knew most of my band references, I and agreed with a few of their choices.  I wasn't going to humor them by saying I like the Friends theme song or Abba.  Why don't I like Abba?  Because they are awful and they hurt my ears and soul.  They seemed to enjoy my honesty.

This should be a busy and eye opening week in that my involvement at the school will increase, and then I'll embark on some traveling with Rajagopal.  I've downloaded some pictures, so I'll add them here at the end.  One is a very light traffic pic, just note for us rule laden Americans, that there are no rules here.  When going through an intersection you just proceed, honk, and weave.  I think this would freak out most of us and the fact that they drive on the other side of the road further complicates crossing the street.  If intersections have no meaning where and how do you cross the street? 3-D frogger.

The last pic is what I see when I exit my hotel, I'll have a ton pics of me with people and some school pics from Devika.