My first forays into understanding the need for what is today called “locale specific” learning was made when I visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands some eight years ago. The islands are unique in many respects. They support a variety of habitats – tropical rain forests, deciduous forests, mangroves, littoral forests and beaches and coral reefs. These habitats are a hotspot for biological diversity and support a number of endemic species of plants and animals. The islands are also home to the Onge, Jarawa, Great Andamanese, Shompen, Sentinelese and the Nicorbarese tribes. All these tribes, excepting the Nicobarese, face extinction.

As I travelled around the islands, I discovered how rich the place was in history, geography, culture and wildlife. However, our interactions with the school educational system (with department officials, Headmasters and teachers) and with school curricula and text books showed a sad disconnect between students’ immediate surroundings and classroom learning.

There was no exposure to the wealth of the islands’ species and the ecosystem diversity, or to the threats that the islands face. One may ask why all this is important enough to warrant inclusion into school-level curricula. The reasons are many. The tragic tsunami of 2004 threw up a stark reminder of how important learning could be for just sheer survival. One may recall reading how Tilly Smith, a young student, helped save the lives of scores of persons in Thailand because, having learnt about it in a geography class, she was able to recognise the receding tide as a sign of an impending tsunami. If this were common knowledge to coastal communities, then far more lives would have been saved.

The islands threw up many examples that showed that learning about the environment one lives in is linked to survival, safety and livelihoods: the knowledge that corals are living organisms and that coral reefs protect the coast and hence are not to be treated as stone to be used for construction purposes; that stands of mangroves are a first line of protection against a storm; or that species that are introduced to the islands from outside may cause a lot of damage to the habitat like the Spotted deer and the African giant snail have done, to mention just a few.

Children’s early reading and learning experiences must move from the familiar to the unfamiliar. This facilitates success which is crucial in the early years of education. We often forget how strongly children relate to their immediate surroundings and their experiences. This was vividly illustrated to me by a child who lived in a small village in the Himalayas, who was very concerned when I told her that I lived in a city where there were no mountains. “How does the sun rise everyday if there are no mountains?” she asked – she was so used to seeing the sun rise from behind the mountains!

My subsequent travels to a very different bio-geographic region (the cold deserts of Ladakh) reinforced the case for site-specific learning. In one of my early trips to Ladakh I interacted with a group of class X students who were in an English Conversation class. Given my interest in wildlife, Isoon found myself asking them what wildlife Ladakh had. Pat came the answer: ‘Tigers.”

In all the formal years of schooling that this group had been through, their text books spoke of tigers and lions. The charts displayed on the walls of their classroom had pictures of elephants, zebras, rhinos and giraffes! Nowhere in their entire school learning did they hear of Snow leopards, marmots or blue sheep. Their education did not teach them to feel proud of the Ladakh urial, a species of wild sheep that is endemic to Ladakh! Nor did it help them feel concerned about the Tibetan antelope whose underfur was used in making shahtoosh shawls.

The problem with the text books is not limited to what they do not portray: what they do portray is equally problematic: trains, coconut trees, ships, road traffic signals, etc. Take for example, a class 4 EVS text book prepared according to national guidelines. The book has a chapter on “Care and Protection of the Environment.” Some of the activities that it indicates as wasteful are: each family member driving a car, the son bathing under a shower, a fan left on by the daughter. None of these will apply to a region like Ladakh, where most children walk to school, many rural houses do not have taps let alone showers, and where the only appliance used to regulate room temperature are room heaters in winter! The chapter on balanced diets will not help Ladakhi children to learn how they should make their diets healthy. The recommended list of foods does not include what they eat!

How does one expect primary school children living in the Himalayas, over 11,000 feet above sea level to relate to these with ease? Most textbooks had no reference to Ladakh at all. And if they did (usually only at middle and high school levels) they were full of erroneous facts: a desert region with no vegetation; a vast sandy desert; an area where all settlements are along the River Indus and so on.

The sad situation was partly corrected by an innovative collaboration called Operation New Hope (ONH) between the government in Leh and a local NGO called SECMOL. Under ONH, locally relevant text books for English and EVS were produced for the primary school level. The EVS text books for classes 4 and 5 were published by the Jammu and Kashmir State Board. These text books were produced for Leh district in 2003 and 2004. They are currently being used in all the government schools in the district.

A glance at the list of contents tells us how relevant and meaningful these are to Ladakhi children: they include chapter names such as Wild Plants of Ladakh; Making a Building Warm; Wild Animals of Ladakh; Life in a Farming Village; Some Historical Monuments of Ladakh and The Life of Nomads.

The examples that have been used to illustrate the need for locale specificity are from two ecosystems that harbour rich biodiversity. However, the need to move from the familiar to the unfamiliar and to enable children to observe, understand and feel for their local environment, are as important in any ecosystem, region, city, etc.

“How local should locale-specific be?” was a question that was posed recently at an environment education conference. There will be no simple answer to that in a country like India, which has such different regions, cultures, peoples, languages, lifestyles, etc. However, the challenge facing our policy makers, administrators, educationists, text-book writers and teachers will be how best to address such diverse needs. How do we make school learning meaningful to children’s present situations and to their future lives?

The author works with Kalpavriksh, an environment action group. She is a trained special educator and has worked with children with multiple disabilities in Delhi for 10 years. She can be reached at: kvedu@vsnl.net

Sermonisation, (‘sermon’ from Middle English and old French ‘sermmo’ meaning speech, conversation), probably the kindest form of punishment, is one of the many punishments meted out to children regularly by teachers and parents, in fact by all concerned adults, to communicate the norms of societal behaviour to ‘youngsters’ hoping to ‘bring them in line’ and pursue the beliefs and goals that the concerned adult thinks should be held by all.

‘We live in a disciplinary society, not a disciplined one’ an observation by Michel Foucault, 18th century French thinker, is something we have to take note of if we are in the field of education and schooling. Schools and the classroom reflect in microcosm all of that social strata which they serve with dreams of upward mobility that will be achieved with schooling. Corporal punishment, which means punishment inflicted on the body, the least of which takes the form of caning in school, and slapping and spanking in the home, is against the law. But the types of punishment inflicted in school vary and there is a wide consensus and common justification for punishment as a means of maintaining discipline in society and consequently all institutions including in schools.

Vidyaranya High School is a 43-year-old institution named after Acharya Vidyaranya who was the architect of the Vijayanagara Empire (about 1336-1669). Surprising, though it maybe, not every one at Vidyaranya knows who Vidyaranya was and the students are not compelled to learn about yet ‘another great man’ let alone honour him and have his words thrust down their throat. This is representative of the overall environment in the school.

‘How can you work in a school without formal rules, a dress code, definite supervision of syllabus coverage by teachers and assessment through a regimen of unit tests, quarterly, half-yearly and finalexaminations that seek to select and reward the “best”?’ is a question often posed. ‘How is discipline maintained?’

Issues of discipline do not seem to pose a major problem at Vidyaranya. Isolated acts that violate societal norms of acceptable behaviour are dealt with in small group discussions and the larger middle school or senior school assemblies depending on who is involved. Problems in primary school require that adults, both the teacher and parent(s), be involved. Discussion in groups and/or with individual students (staff and students) almost always brings to the surface, not only the person(s) directly responsible but also other important constituent factors like home environment. Almost inevitably there is some crying but this usually comes as endorsement by the child or member of staff of their acknowledgement of their part in the problem and willingness to conduct themselves differently in future.

John Dewey examined the role of discipline in education, particularly in education for democratic citizenship. As he views it, ‘A disciplined person is trained to consider his actions and undertakes them in a deliberate manner; an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.’ Children can learn to act with discipline, and the way they do so is by discovering that by so acting they can reach their goals more consistently as is essential for democratic living in a democracy. As the individual and common good are tied together in a democracy, the lack of discipline makes effective pursuit of either impossible.

Discipline is not the outcome of reading a chapter in a book, although included in numerous fast-selling school textbooks and self-improvement workshops. Dewey’s point is that if children cannot see the reason for an activity as their own purpose, then the activity cannot be intelligent, and therefore cannot be educational. Educational experiences are those in which looking ahead to their ends, we check the actual outcome of actions against the expected ones to see if they are getting closer to their goals. Without goals, there is no aim; without aim, we cannot exercise foresight; without foresight, we cannot determine the best sequence of actions, taking into account the obstacles in the way; we cannot, therefore, consider alternative courses of action that might have a higher likelihood of success. All of this is what Dewey considers actingintelligently; if the child’s purpose is not part of the action, then the action cannot be intelligent, nor can it be disciplined.

The school bell, which is now electric in most schools, rings every forty minutes as it does in factories, prisons and barracks and places of religious worship as well from time immemorial, to mark for every participant member of the institution, transitions in the activity. In a school these activities are specified in detail by timetables, the making of which is a well-honed skill. But, at Vidyaranya the bell rings minimally–five times; once to mark the start of the school day, once to mark its end and three times to herd into class students let loose for break time when the large old brass temple bell is brought out of its place by Moin who solemnly strikes it. As far as most people are concerned, Moin is a repository of all information pertaining to the school to serve as the school’s enquiry counter or front office personnel in plusher places. In these duties first by Zahiruddin, Moin and now Shankar, all have a sense of deep pride in their contribution to the school of which they are a part.

I do not know whether there is a downward percolation of such attitudes and values of work ethic or whether it is upward absorption; whether it comes from within or from four decades of a philosophy that is neither counter to common sense nor estranged from technological development and the scientific method.

In fact, Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom the founder of the school has been influenced by (refer recently published biography by her of JK, Sahitya Kala Akademi, 2005), dwells at length on the education that develops intelligence–true intelligence that is not shackled by generations of conditioning nor controlled by ambition and fear, but an intelligence that is sensitive, free and true. Krishnamurti speaks of fear and how deep-rooted acknowledged and unacknowledged fears rise up like demons to paralyse us; competition not only kills the spirit of learning and prevents true intelligence from emerging but also distorts mind and personality.

Schooling, however free from the visible discipline used by authority to maintain order, depends on almost unrecognisable roots in fear to be set in place from above.

The subjects we teach are subjects based on the ‘disciplines’ we have mastered. You cannot be a mathematician unless you subject yourself willingly to the demands of the study itself. However, there is an interesting paradox in this view of discipline: one masters a discipline in the act of submitting to it. So long as one resists the demands of mathematical discipline, one never quite becomes a mathematician. But when one yields to the discipline of the subject, one becomes at the same time its master.

Discipline must be a way of life.

Collocation refers to the way in which words are naturally paired together. Such language patterns are generally only acquired intuitively or consciously learned. This article provides a few tips on how to encourage students to ‘pick up’ collocations.

Among the most common usage errors in any language are those that have to do with the use of collocations–words that ‘go’ together in idiomatic and common usage. We almost instinctively pick up the use of these seemingly natural pairings of words as we read and listen to language. There is no logic to these pairings, they just are. So how do we teach correct word combinations other than simply by asking students to learn them by rote?

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Profession: a job that needs training and a formal qualification

Professionalism: the ability or skill expected of a professional

Sorry to be defining words (thank you, Oxford Dictionary) but we need to be on the same wavelength, you and I. If you are a teacher then it is good to know if there are any other angles that I may have left out. If you are not a teacher, then it would be good to know if you had ever thought of the teacher as a professional or wished to make some addition of your own.

Of course, teaching is a profession. It is a job that needs training and a formal qualification. Like all qualification-seekers, the teacher needs some basic qualities, some characteristics which will give her a reasonable chance of success. School-leavers have always been advised by adults in the family thus: it would be a dogmatic ‘All eldest sons in this family are doctors’ or ‘Girls in our family don’t work, but you can be a teacher, it is respectable’. Thank goodness we have gone beyond that stage and most young adults are able to join whatever profession pleases them.

Now for our would-be teacher comes the next phase – where do I take my teacher-training? At what level? Primary, Secondary? There are now umpteen training colleges and one needs to make some decisions about one’s ability and interest in a particular age group. If I may be allowed a personal grouch for a minute – those who are in education understand the need for specialists – you need specialists at all levels, but what each teacherneeds is what is special to the particular teaching level. Those with a B.Ed degree are trained to teach beyond Class VI; M.As are acceptable for Class XI and XII, but surely a B.Ed. would be a necessary qualification? And at the four years-old level, the teacher needs to be a specialist with the young, vulnerable first-timer in school. She needs a T.T.C. At Montessori schools you need a Montessori training which is very specialised.

Now comes the latest phenomena. Schools have become BIG BUSINESS – we get a new one each week, offering yet another great facility usually associated with a five-star hotel. Recruiting teachers for such BIG BUSINESS becomes quite a problem unless there is a professional at the helm! After all, it may be the newest form of commercial enterprise, but you need to have an educationist to remind the entrepreneur of the objectives of a school, and thereafter comes the task of finding suitable professionals to achieve the objectives.

I read somewhere that a good teacher never dies, she becomes a Consultant! There is surely some professionalism required there as well. Quite frightening!

What makes a professional?
A professional is not just able, authorised, licensed and educated. A professional is experienced, skilled and competent. One would expect that being efficient, thorough and conscientious, the professional is, in a word, committed. As a teacher/co-ordinator/principal/consultant, all these points of professionalism need to be evaluated – self-evaluated – so that levels of accountability are back on track.

Ayesha Das is a teacher educator at Teachers’ Centre, Loreto House, Kolkata.

Young children love drawing and enjoy learning while playing. We should provide creative learning activities to make teaching and learning a joyful experience. This article gives you a few tried and tested activities meant for the primary classes. Besides the children, parents too will enjoy doing them.

1. Teaching estimation: Estimation is the process of using mental and visual information to measure or make decisions without the use of measuring instruments. It is integral to mathematics and science, and is of importance even in our life. We estimate before buying something, or investing in something, or while communicating with a person. We should help children estimate physical quantities like length, temperature, area volume, etc., right from the primary classes.

The author is Principal, Eklavya Institute of Teacher Education, Ahmedabad. He can be reached at: shailendarg@icenet.net

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But perhaps nowhere did the fan gain as much importance as it did in China and Japan. These countries had different types of fans for the different classes in society. And in Japan distinctive fans were designed to be used in different places. Thus, the fans of courtiers were different from the fans carried by the warrior caste, and the fans brought to a tea ceremony were different from those taken to a theatre.

The rigid fan (a fan with a stick for a handle and a rigid leaf) was the most common type in China untilthe Japanese folding fans came into fashion during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). There are no actual records of when the Japanese first thought of the folding fan, but it may have been around the 7th century. With the importance that was accorded to fans in China and Japan it is not surprising that they spent a lot of time making them. Fans were made out of silk, paper, sandalwood, tortoise shell and mother of pearl.

The folding fans reached Europe during the Middle Ages, when the Portuguese discovered the sea route to China in the 15th century. By the 17th century, fans became a rage in the West and several new designs began to originate from here. However, after 1900, hand fans began to die out both as fashion accessories and air cooling instruments as mechanical fans began making their appearance.

The Industrial Revolution has given birth to many inventions that are still in use today. The first mechanical fans were also a product of this revolution. In the early 1800s, the industrial fan was invented. This fan was powered by a factory waterwheel (a machine used to generate power from flowing water). Several similar fans, with slight variations, were invented mainly for industrial purposes. Fans for personal use began to be made only in the late 1800s. The first of such fans was introduced by Schuyler Skaats Wheeler, an American engineer. His two-blade electric fan was also the first table fan. In 1882, Philip H Diehl, a German settled in America, invented the ceiling fan. During the 1920s, when industrial advances allowed steel to be mass produced, fans became more affordable and were no longer something that only the rich used. In the 20th century, the ubiquitous ceiling fan became the best means of cooling oneself. However, with the temperature continually on the rise in the 21st century, the fans are making way for air conditioners both in offices and homes.

The popularity of air conditioners has not yet sounded the death knell for fans. We continue to use fans not just to cool ourselves, but also to cool our machines. Electronic devices like computers, hair dryers, automotive engines and ironically even air conditioners come fitted with small fans to cool the circuits inside. And despite what might appear to be a bleak situation for the fan, the ceiling fan of old is getting a makeover. Ceiling fans come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colours today. It is not just the designs that are new, but new functions are being found for the ceiling fan. If until yesterday, fans were by and large used to cool the air, today fans also give you the option of distributing heat in colder months. There are fans that come attached with lights that can be set at different settings using a remote control. There are even fans with a single blade available! These futuristic looking fans are called sycamore fans as they are shaped like a sycamore seed. Fans are also being specifically designed for wet or damp areas like the kitchen and the bathroom. These fans are made out of materials that can resist moisture and rust. Toy fans that operate using batteries are also becoming popular.

Hand fans too have made a comeback. They are becoming popular as decorative items and as souvenirs given away at weddings. Made out of anything from paper to mother of pearl and intricately carved or artistically designed, hand fans are being cleverly used to beautify homes. As wedding souvenirs too, they are being used in different ways. Scented fans that diffuse pleasing aromas when fanned, fans with the wedding programme inscribed on them to keep guests both cool and informed, personalised fans with the name of the person it is being given to are some examples.

Over the years, fans have been used in ingenious ways by man. Perhaps one of the most interesting and unique use to which the fan was put wascommunication. Yes, there was a language of the fan! Used by lovers, the language of the fan dates back to 18th century Europe when young men and women were not allowed to freely mix with each other. As hand fans were popular fashion accessories during this period, they became the best means for women to secretly communicate messages to their lovers.

Here is a sample of how the fan was used to convey messages:

• If a woman hid her eyes behind an open fan she meant –– I love you
• If she shut a fully open fan slowly she meant –– I promise to marry you
• If she placed her fan behind her head she meant –– do not forget me
• If she dropped her fan she meant –– we will be friends
• If she twirled her fan in her left hand she meant –– we are being watched.

There were similar gestures designed to mean other things like I hate you, I can’t marry you, see you soon, etc. As you can see, an entire language was built around the fan.

Ceiling fans, table fans and hand fans are common knowledge. Here are a few other types of fans:

Pedestal fan: A pedestal fan rests on an extendable pole that can be moved up or down for maximum comfort.

Exhaust fan: An exhaust fan is used to eliminate odours. Used in kitchens and bathrooms, the exhaust fan has rotating blades encased in a square covering. This fan draws in the air from one side and expels it out the other.

Misting fan: Misting fans work on the principle of evaporative cooling. Using built-in water pumps and nozzles it creates mist to cool its surroundings. Misting fans are typically used to cool large groups of people in stadiums or any other outdoor arena.

Whole house fan: A whole house fan is a perfect ventilating device. It draws into the home cool air from outside and exhausts the hot air inside through the attic.

Fifteen years ago when I was teaching regular class in an English missionary city school for boys, it struck me that the uniform they were obliged to wear was very expensive. It comprised: white shirt, white pants, school tie, school badge, school belt, white socks, black shoes. In the monsoon it must have added hugely to the burden of the parents to turn their children out clean and tidy everyday. So I discussed with the Principal the acceptability of offering the children an option: white pajama-kurta, with only the school badge as identifying insignia. Foot-wear ‘ad lib’. The Principal accepted. In view of the important fact that we were originally intended for the poor, we recognised that at least the poor among the students would be happy with the little relief this might offer.

Of the 400 approximately who comprised the classes IX through XII, where the option was given, only about 30 youngsters accepted it – and they, not the poorest, not by a long shot. Some parents invaded my office in a body to demand explanation of this insult to them that such a uniform implied, and did I think their children were ‘village children!? My innocent inquiry as to what wascontemptible about village children went unanswered, and my explanation that this was not an imposition but an option met with hardly better grace.

Anyway, the offer was maintained. After a few weeks, though, a few sentences appeared in white chalk on the deep red walls of the school within full view of all who cared to enter the premises. It was the sort of thing one is used to finding in boys’ toilets, but it was the first time we had encountered it here, in public. Enquiry revealed that it was a group of five children in one of the IXs, three of whom had chosen the less expensive apparel. The Principal dealt with the issue, and that was that.

Well, not completely. A month or so later, much the same thing appeared again, and once again the perpetrators were a small group of Xs, some of whom were of the pajama-kurta brigade. Sadly, the option had to be withdrawn, and with it the graffiti ceased to appear.

Troubled at the time, however, I went to the XIIs, and asked them to answer, first in writing and individually, then in teams of six, and finally through their team representatives in front of the whole class, what they thought was the connection between the proffered dress-code and the unsocial behaviour. It was startling for me to find the class unanimous that it was the uniform that kept them up to acceptable behaviour in public, and that, as they then acknowledged, without it their value system sank to insignificance. At that time we had a carefully calibrated and monitored Value Education (ValEd) system throughout the school. It was, therefore, not simply perplexing but deeply disconcerting to hear this comment on the flimsy influence of the school on their ‘inner’ lives.

We have kept up the ValEd work, but I have to admit with a lot less faith in its effectiveness than we used to – despite the encouragement of the famous educator Edmund Rice to the effect that ‘the good seed will grow up later on’.

On the same campus with this school we run another for very poor children, and within the past year or two we have taken girls into it as well as boys. They are ‘funneled’ in from a third project we have on this campus called Aashirvad, designed for the poor Hindi-speaking children of migrant parents in the locality. Seeing their poverty, the authorities in this school decided that the funneled-in youngsters need not wear a uniform, anything clean would be acceptable. However, almost all havescrambled together enough to get the associated skirt-and-blouse / shirt-and-trousers.

I was on a job recently in Uttarkhand on behalf of an NGO (called EGG) working for the education of poor girls on the outskirts of Dehradun. In a valley called Bindalpul, which one slithered into by a sort of path from the main road, the local team introduced me to the desperate plight of the people there. Our focus was, of course, on the school-age girls who were in fact not in school. The place was covered with plastics of every kind, and other detritus that didn’t help perfume the ‘blasted heath’. The children were largely unwashed, unhealthy-looking, bored. We spent some time there, but I shall pass it by, to get to the point of this particular experience.

At the far end of that valley we encountered a slightly more ‘respectable’ scene and a small government primary school, bricked, roofed, walled, painted. I was allowed into the classroom, on the left, Class III, on the right,Class IV, about 12 in each group. They looked bright and cheery, and responded willingly to questions I asked – despite my heavily-accented Hindi! Then one of the NGO team whispered to me that many of these girls were from Bindalpul. I was incredulous. Bindalpul! Dickens would have been hard put to sketch it as I had just seen it! But almost every girl in the class not just raised her hand, but did so with pride and appropriation. I was dumbstruck. What had happened to produce this amazing change?

Well, you know the answer. All these girls wore the uniform – red and blue. Yes, they were thin, and the uniform was not Burton’s Tailor of Taste, but it was the uniform and it was clean. Somehow, somewhere, they had scrambled together the resources to dress themselves for the job.

It is of course the drive to Belong, ranked third in Maslow’s famous pyramid of needs, that lies behind this compulsion. We casually use it to explain family, linguistic, state, team, and lots of other groupings in the sociology texts. But, its application in other contexts I had never seen demonstrated so convincingly, first negatively in that missionary school all those years ago, and now in Bindalpul. My previous misgivings about financial implications are a lot less powerful now, though the elaborateness of the outfit in the city is still cause for concern. But: uniform there must be.

The author is CEO of SERVE, an NGO and is also consultant to several teaching NGOs.

At Centre for Learning, a school in Bangalore, we have an open library both in concept and reality. This means that there is free and open access to all material and resources, at all times of day and night, and throughout the year. Mutual trust and shared responsibility provide the ground from which this library functions. The rules and conventions of library interaction evolve out of a sense of co-operation, consideration and care for the community as a whole.

The challenge for the librarian is not one of policing and monitoring, but to perceive and hold the library and its users as a vibrant functioning whole. This can only be done when the community of users feels a sense of ownership and accountability.

The collection in this library reflects the commitment to quality and excellence. Classics, traditional and contemporary, can be found on the shelves. Staff and students are actively involved in the selection process.

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There is the belief that education means scientific, technological or industrial training. But if the world of education is to experience a flowering in which a variety of sensibilities – artistic, scientific, and poetic – are to flourish, what Tagore called the dreary desert sand of dead habit, has to be crossed.

Almost all accounts that I have heard or read about Santiniketan by old students, contain anecdotes of some unique and intriguing aspect of the place. Old girls and boys reminisce knowingly of the closeness to nature they experienced as children, or the vivid colourfulness of the festivals of dance, drama, art and craft, or the benefits of outdoor classes that were so pleasant.¹ The thread that runs through all these narratives is the fact that long after they have left school, memories of Santiniketan remain with these individuals, continue to influence their ways of thinking, and has much to do with what they choose to do in life.

The uniqueness that the students ascribe to the place is perhaps to do with the way Santiniketan was started, and the course of events that led to its inception. Tagore, in his talks with students, says that when he was quite young, he ran away from school. The step, he says, saved him – ‘all that hung by a thread until then’ – the tenuous relationship with books; the chore of sitting still in the classroom, was now abandoned. Tagore had always had the ‘gift of poesy’; every morning, when he was a child, he would “…run out from his bed in a hurry to greet the first pink flush of the dawn through the trembling leaves of the coconut trees which stood in a line along garden boundary, while the grass glistened as the dewdrops caught the first tremor of the morning breeze… all my heart, my whole body in fact, used to drink in the overflowing light and peace of those silent hours.”²

The blue skies, the seasonal flowers, and a heightened ability to empathise became actualities that commanded him to do what he most cherished; write poetry.³ He says – “You may call me uneducated and uncultured, just a foolish poet; you may become great scholars and philosophers, yet I think I would still retain the right to laugh at pedantic scholarship.”⁴

These are telling words and actions. Boredom, a feeling of restriction within the walls of a classroom, the earth and the skies only glimpsed through the windows, and made contact with during intervals between classes, are the plight of millions of children across the country today. Poetry is laughed at in today’s educational programmes – why wouldn’t it be when the pursuit of competitive excellence in the sciences is given prime importance? Scientific excellence should definitely be striven for, if after careful consideration, the student thinks that it is indeed the subject she would like to specialise in. But a culture in which the exclusive pursuit of science and technical subjects is encouraged by schools and parents is pervasive in the country today. While there is a profusion of courses offering other options, scientific, numerical, analytical ability is still considered, by a large majority, to be an indication of worthiness, intelligence and success in life.

Tagore saw in the rationality of science an opportunity to free the minds of the majority of his countrymen from superstitiousness. He held conversations with Einstein on the importance of the observer in science, rather than an independent, absolute truth. Tagore’s view was that neither complete objectivity nor the perception of beauty was possible without an observer.⁵ Poetry, it wouldappear then, is not too far away from science. Taking a cue from conversations of this kind, it is interesting to ask if scientific study in our country (at the school level at least) could be accompanied by a study of the processes of science. Science at the senior secondary level at least, instead of becoming a series of formulae to be derived from principles, could be taught in such a way that the student gets a glimpse of the aims of science – the search for beauty and order through rigorous methods of observation and calculation; the involvement of the senses in scientific observation and experiment; and finally, of science itself as one among many ways of looking at the world.

When Tagore was 40, he started Santiniketan (in 1901). He did not set out to experiment with education, nor was it an attempt at bringing about a progressive school focused on innovative ways of teaching and learning. Over the years as he studied, wrote novels, plays and short stories, and composed songs and poetry, a school grew. Tagore’s artistic personality became the centre of all the activities of the school. As soon as a song for Gitanjali was composed, children would sing it. Seasonal festivals were arranged, and lyrical dramas composed for the season. Artists and singers were invited to live at the school, so that children could be inspired. Opportunities were created so that artistic talent could be expressed, and only when a strong inclination or love for a particular activity was shown, was formal training arranged for.⁶

Thus, if talent in a subject (other than science) is to flower, patient and consistent observation of a child’s inclinations should first be established. This may not be possible in most schools, as music and art are not given enough space and time – a period a week for each. The child whose learning patterns are artistic, musical or largely sensory is, then, by the age of five or six already in a position where shehas to spend the majority of her day with activities which she is not especially inclined towards–numerical activity, linguistic skills, elementary analytical ability and so on. Also, artistic talent is usually ‘spotted’ through festivals that are competitive in nature. These festivals could remove their competitive aspect, and all students (not only those chosen by teachers) present what they have worked on during their art and music classes. Teachers will not find it difficult to identify children whose learning patterns are predominantly musical, artistic, dramatic (which involves a number of skills and intelligences) and so on. ‘Parent’s day’ could become a day-long festival of drama, dance, art and music in which all children participate.

There is a mantra in the minds of students, parents and teachers in our country, and perhaps the world over–that education means scientific, technological or industrial training. But if the world of education is to experience a flowering in which a variety of sensibilities – artistic, scientific, and poetic – are to flourish, what Tagore called the dreary desert sand of dead habit, has to be crossed. Perhaps teachers, parents and students need to embrace Tagore’s attitude, expressed in what is perhaps the best-known poem from Gitanjali:⁷

Where the mind is without fear
and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been
broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls; …
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit; …
Into that heaven of freedom,
my Father, let my country awake

Notes and References
1 See Sen, Amartya. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. ‘Tagore and his India’ (New York, Allen Lane Penguin:2005):115. The chapter on Tagore gives a comprehensive account of his views and attitudes on a variety of subjects – the West, Patriotism, his relationship with Gandhi, his views on education and so on.
2 Ed. Soares, Anthony. Lectures and Addresses by Rabindranath Tagore: Selected from the Speeches of the Poet. ‘My Life’ (London, Macmillan:1955):13.
3 Anna Akhmatova’s poem. ‘The Muse’ describes the poet’s awed attitude when she encounters her muse.
“All that I am hangs by a thread tonight
as I wait for her whom no one can command.
Whatever I cherish most – youth, freedom, glory –
Fades before her who bears the flute in her hand.”
Tagore’s inspiration is, however got from a source different from the personalised, mythological muse that Akhmatova describes – he found his in the natural beauty of his surroundings; his poetry too is filled with a sense of wonder and awe in the variety of forms, colours, sounds and fragrances in nature.
Ed. Paine, Jeffery. The Poetry of our World: An International Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. “The Muse” Anna Akhmatova (New York, Perneial Harper Collins: 2000):224.
4 Ed. Chakravarty, Amiya. A Tagore Reader. “From Talks to Students in China” (Boston, Macmilllan:1961):207.
5 Sen, 2005:104.
6 See Soares, 1955, the chapter entitled ‘My School’:37-39.
7 Tagore, Rabindranath. Gitanjali. Online Publication <<http.extext.lib.virginia.edu>>

In the year 1007 a Japanese noble woman, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote the world’s first full novel. Called “The tale of Genji,” it tells the story of a prince looking for love and wisdom. A traditional novel is said to have a unified and plausible plot structure, sharply individualised and believable characters, and a pervasive illusion of reality. Initially, one major characteristic of the novel was realism – a full and authentic report of human life.

As readers were accepting this illusion of reality and were passive receptors to everything the novel was saying, the anti-novel style emerged! An anti-novel is any experimental work of fiction that avoids the familiar conventions of the novel. The name was coined by French critic Jean-Paul Sartre.

The anti-novel was invented by the French. Anti-novel writers insist that traditional novels sketch a false appearance of the world in much the same way as television soap operas do – or as Murasaki Shikibu did. Instead of creating fantasy plots and characters, antinovelists emphasise the minute details of life and the world. The anti-novel usually fragments and distorts the experience of its characters, forcing the reader to construct the reality of the story from a disordered narrative.

Newer styles of novels have been constantly emerging. Novel in verse form or Verse novels are a contemporary genre combining the power of narrative with the rich, evocative language of verse or poetry. Although the narrative structure of a verse novel is similar to that of a novella, the organisation of the story is usually in a series of short sections, often with changing perspectives. Verse novels are often told with multiple narrators, providing readers with a cinematic view into the inner workings of the characters’ minds. Some verse novels employ an informal, colloquial register. Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin is a classical example of this style.