November 2012

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Finding who we are...searching for our own history...

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Improvement in quality of education through social science subjects and language in two Elementary Schools in Tadoba buffer zone villages
Overview:

November 24th 25th

27th 28th

Work in Villoda and Katwal schools Visit to Anand Niketan School, Wardha the school is based on Gandhijis Nai Taleem concept Visit to Markanda Dev- very important historical monument for documentation

Objectives: 1. To design and conduct training programs with teachers for improving education methodology 2. To work with students and teachers to find and document the history and geography of the villages in their own area and link it to the mainstream, known history-geography taught in schools 3. To work with students, teachers and parents (including community) to study linguistic patterns in the area and increase parents participation in learning teaching process 4. To study biodiversity of the area and design the ways of conservation of forest and wild life 5. To document the history and cultural patterns of the area that can contribute to preservation of the Adivasi culture.

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SCHOOL VISITS 24th and 25th November, Saturday & Sunday Villoda and Katwal schools After our last visit, we decided to focus on 2 schools of Villoda and Katwal from now onwards. This time, we purposefully scheduled our time in the villages on Saturday and Sunday, so that we could interact with the children during the entire day and also extend out interaction to the entire community. HANDS-ON APPROACH TO DOCUMENTING HISTORY We focussed on this objective: To work with students and teachers to find and document the history and geography of the villages in their own area and link it to the mainstream, known history-geography taught in schools. The eminent science populariser Mr. Arvind Gupta from Pune has given us a film called Young Historians. It is about a group of students from rural Karnataka, who, guided by their teacher, explore and discover the history of their own area. We showed relevant excerpts from the film to the children in both Villoda and Katwal. We wanted our children to become Young Historians too! The film shows that history is not only stories of kings and conquerors, but also the experiences and way of life of everyday people of the time. Our aim was that, just like the students in the film, out students would also identify historical spaces and sources in their own surroundings and learn from them by asking questions mainly to elderly people. They would thus gain authentic information about the past of their own village and also be introduced to a new methodologies of gaining knowledge. PROCESS : VILLODA We reached there on Saturday when their school was almost ending. But students were very enthusiastic to take part in this process. They went home kept their bags, changed and quickly came back to watch the Young Historians film. Some students did not come back. Some of the girls came late. We guess that this was because they had household chores or other work at home. One of the childrens mothers even came to call him/ her home in the middle of our session. Another woman came and left one a younger sibling in class, for the sister to mind. These issues of family responsibilities, especially for girls are distractions to their school work, but are also an inevitable part of their lives. They need to be considered while planning any activity, or else these children miss out. But it was touching to see that some children took turns minding the small baby in the class! This also indicated a community feeling among the children. It was great that since this was after school hours, many younger children also joined in. In fact a few Std. V students ended up being at the foreground of the entire process with their intelligent, sharp grasping of the concept and assigned tasks.

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KATWAL We went to Katwal on a Sunday, so it took quite some time to assemble children. The total number of children who participated was a bit less than expected. But the interesting part was that many who spontaneously joined in the process were Std. VIII and IX students, who did not even study in Katwals school (which is only till Std. VII.) Unfortunately, inspite of being from higher classes, their knowledge level was not exceptionally higher than the rest of the group. This group was quite distracted compared to the Villoda group and hence comparatively did not have enough time or focus to grasp the film. But nevertheless, many of them participated with zest. It was quite a poignant moment when the students confidently entered the Gram Panchayat of the village and posed their questions to the official there too. If only our people ask questions to the government in the same positively demanding spirit in the future! In the outdoor work, they were so enthusiastic that it seemed almost ruthless when they were asking their questions to all kinds of old people, irrespective of their age or health. But influenced by the tick mark methodology mostly adopted in our education system, most of the children seemed to be focussing on getting some answer or the other to all the questions on their list as fast as possible. They would have to be slower and ask relevant counter questions in order to gain real information.

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THE FOLLOWING PROCESS WAS FOLLOWED IN BOTH SCHOOLS: Process 1- Guided watching of excerpts from the film Young Historians 2- Two parts to finding history were identified: Family History and Village History Objectives and Expected Learning Understanding the process of finding out history as shown in the film The concept that each of them, their families and their village are all part of history and history is not restricted to what they learn in their textbooks about kings and conquerors

3- Children were explained the concept of The concept that our own family can be a Family tree and were given the source of information and so inculcating assignment of preparing their own a sense of pride about their own personal family tree, with the help of their histories parents, grandparents and family Including the family in education process members of children 4- Children were asked to draw a map of Introduction of new technique: Social their village and mark all important map landmarks in the village like well, Understanding the geography and temple, shop, river, roads etc. different sections of the village better 5- Making a list of historical spaces in the Children get a new perspective that they village: E.g.: old buildings, wells, places can learn from things they see in their of worship, old trees etc. surroundings everyday Systematic approach to finding history 6- Coming up with a list of potential Spirit of enquiry encouraged among questions related to these historical children points, to ask people in the village, Children identify new sources of mainly elderly people information E.g.: Food habits, clothing styles etc. can also be sources of historical information 7- Writing down the questions and giving Introduction of new technique: Interview some guidelines about how to ask Stress on importance of proper questions to people documentation 8- Going out of the school and walking through the whole village asking all possible people the prepared questions and writing down answers Actual process of discovering the history of their village

9- Coming back to class, discussing Consolidating differing answers, making findings from this exercise and writing sense of all information received a small report about information Rewriting information from a gained about the history of the village questionnaire format to a report format * With the understanding that all the above outcomes are not possible without consistent, long term
efforts, we are aware that these children would not have gained all these skills from our introductory session with them. Only the potential learning is indicated in the table, for the module we intend to develop at the end of this work.

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Students asking questions about history of their own village to the elderly and Panchayat officials in the village.

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OBSERVATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS: FOR BOTH SCHOOLS: The film was dubbed in Hindi and almost all children followed it quite well. The children thoroughly enjoyed the process of going into the village and collecting information from the people. They almost pounced on every old person they saw and bombarded them with question after question. Some even came up with new questions on the spot. As always, we were much moved by the childrens thirst for knowledge and intelligence. More such hands-on activities would demonstrate that children learn and participate much better if they get to Do more than just read and reproduce from books. The people were also intrigued and were amused to answer the questions in the survey. Many of the old people, especially women kept saying that they did not know anything since they were illiterate. But we prompted the children to ask them something from their particular spheres- food, agriculture, clothing etc. We hope that this process would make children look at their own community differently, in addition to learning new techniques of sourcing information. We feel that this knowledge would really contribute in building their self-image and confidence.

Involvement is the word...

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VISIT TO ANAND NIKETAN SCHOOL, WARDHA 27th November, Tuesday Anand Niketan School in Wardha has a very important legacy. It is based on Gandhijis principle of Nai Taleem. Their entire curriculum is work based, where children learn all subjects from activities that link the head, hand and the heart. We visited the school to see its methodology of teaching in detail. The school is from Kindergarten upto the 7th standard. Right from the Prayer to observing classes conducted to seeing different ways in which students learn through work, it was an enriching experience. In addition to learning the standard curriculum from textbooks, children learn to operate the charkha and spin khadi yarn, cultivate crops in small patches and also have art and pottery. Through this they form connections to and between all subjects. Ms. Sushma Sharma, the principal, gave a lot of her valuable time to answering all our questions and sharing her views and vision of the school. We were especially impressed by the organic, self-discipline we observed in the students. They were fun-loving and active like children everywhere, but when needed, they were quiet and self-contained and did not need to be reprimanded or punished harshly. The atmosphere was very positive, loving and conducive to absorbing knowledge. The Anand Niketan model is an excellent step towards education being the means of gaining real, relevant knowledge and character building. This is indeed a model that needs to be emulated (though with proper study and customisation according to specific needs) in all schools throughout the country.

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VISIT TO HISTORICAL SITE MARKANDA DEV, CHANDRAPUR 28th November, Wednesday Markanda is one of the less damaged sites in this area. It also seems to be quite popular with the people, because even on a Wednesday afternoon, it was quite crowded with devotees as well as families on a picnic. As part of tracing the history of the area, we felt that this visit was very important. This is a big temple complex situated picturesquely on the banks of the river Praanhita. The temple sculpture from around the 11th-12th century shows the splendour of the rulers of the era. The sculpture has a lot of stylistic resemblance with that in temples in Madhya Pradesh suggesting some cultural continuity. Some restoration work was also going on here. As in most historical sites in India, neglect and lack of cleanliness was quite sad. But Markanda Dev was not as bad as other sites we have seen in the area. We have taken detailed photographs of the site and will be showing them to students in our next visit. This visit was also planned with the intension of seeing the possibility of trip for the students in coming months.

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FUTURE PLANS
Something very important happened in Villoda. We were approached by the teachers themselves and requested to have to meeting with them. They have asked us to arrange training program for the teachers where we could discuss how they should plan their teaching. They are even ready to stay after school hours for this discussion. This is indeed a positive step. So, in our next visit, we look forward to having a detailed meeting with the Villoda teachers and share our views. We hope to come up with a plan of action for future trainings of teachers. They seem ready to participate in the process now and we are happy that this has come from them, on their own. Villoda teachers have also proposed a Parisar bhet (excursion to surrounding area), with the children, which we will try to do on our next visit. We plan to introduce concepts of documenting biodiversity and environmental issues through this excursion. In Katwal, some students approached us and told us that they would like us to teach Science in class. Though our focus is on social sciences, since our aim is to connect all subjects, we will now take up Science topics too. Students also said that they would like to learn Computers and it is supposedly part of their syllabus. But there being no computer in the school, we do not know if anything can be done in this regard. Students showed us a Computer workbook, which is part of the prescribed syllabus. So it is alarming that this whole subject is just not being taught at all. If the school is entitled to a computer it must be procured as early as possible.