As juxtaposed to that is the appointment of counsellors this year by the CBSE Board to help students and parents cope with stress and anxiety. A welcome change indeed, and an indication that counselling is gaining a foothold in our education system.

Factors contributing to the change
This change in attitude has come about due to various factors. Two major institutions – the family and the school – responsible for offering support and the inculcation of values have been shaken from their foundations, as a result of which alternate support systems have of necessity come in.

Family bonds are weakening due to long and odd work hours and the support and security that was unquestioningly provided by parents or extended family is lacking.

Our education system, in its attempt to reach out to large numbers, is cramming classrooms with children where the teacher has hardly a minute to spare for each child. Gone are the days when all round development of the student was emphasised, instead; there is a trend to pack information – far more than the students can absorb.

To complicate matters the media is creating a type of pressure that did not exist a few years ago. It is the pressure to perform and not be left out. Crimes are sensationalised creating a warped impression on young minds. Everyday we are inundated with reports about the increase in suicide and crime rates among students, anxieties among parents and inhuman treatment by teachers.

Today we need people to understand themselves, be self-learners with a set of life skills that will help them be responsible and accountable for their actions, improve the quality of their own and others’ lives at home, work and in the local community, make transitions for themselves and grow up to be caring individuals respecting themselves and those around them. All these are the goals of counselling and so it has come to be accepted as a much needed service.

Counselling may be defined as “an interaction between individuals where the counsellor adopts certain skills to introduce and sustain in the counsellee the learning process of self-exploration, leading to self-understanding, action and change in behaviour so as to solve her own problem.”

As generally understood by the layperson counselling is not:

• Giving any form of advice
• Jumping to problem solving prematurely
• Expressing opinions and judgments
• Taking charge of problem solving.

What is the scope of counselling in schools?
Counselling is much more than a quick-fix service to help children with problems. It is not restricted to children, but encompasses parents, teachers, management and the community; in short, it is a systems approach which believes that problems with any one group will affect the normal functioning of the other groups. For example, a crisis in a family will affect the performance of the child at school which in turn will affect his relationship with the teacher and other students.

There are many ways that the service can be developed depending on the needs, infrastructure and monetary considerations of a school. I began with a focus on children and parents in the initial years after which I extended it to teachers, the management and the community. Accepting the extent (and the constraints) of time it takes to counsel each child with a problem, my approach is two-pronged – a curative and a preventive one. I counsel those who seek individual help and also reach out to many by tackling age appropriate topics of a developmental nature with each class. Thus, a graded series of topics that cover personal, social and health issues are dealt with. These range from understanding oneself to developing self-esteem, from life skills to careers.

In addition to one to one counselling with parents, there are group meetings where information on parenting skills is imparted. These range from preparing children for school to guiding them for a career to managing homework.

Teachers are assisted in understanding group dynamics in the class so as to be effective communicators. As leaders they are equipped with value based teaching methodologies. Besides this, I am a liaison between teachers and management on the one hand and parents and students on the other, communicating effectively and bringing about desired changes.

This couplet written by an 11 year-old will illustrate the essence of counselling,
“All I want is a listening ear; far away from the gossip fear;
Then I will shed my tears, and they will wash away my fears.”

A brilliant, sensitive student, prone to weeping bouts once came to me expressing a desire to commit suicide. She was distraught with grief that no matter how hard she tried she could not please her parents who always kept reminding her of what she could not achieve. On probing I found her parents were on the verge of separation and the father found fault with her to vent his anger against his wife. The wife to prove that she was a good mother was unconsciously pushing the child to fare better. Having put up with this for a year she had gradually begun to believe that she was not good at anything. This was beginning to affect her actual performance. Meetings were arranged with her parents who were counselled about how their behaviour was affecting their daughter. They were helped to resolve their issues in a mature way. Simultaneous support was created in school by taking the class teacher into confidence. Through a series of sessions her self-confidence was restored and she was assisted in dealing with the crisis in her life.

Help without judgment
Mrs. Chitranjana, a teacher at Nasr School, Hyderabad feels that while teachers are in a position to identify the problems children face, they lack the time and professional skills to go about solving them. Mrs. Padmaja, another teacher, feels that most children might not feel as comfortable confiding in a teacher as they would in a counsellor.

A parent opines that a teacher finds remedies to problems, while a counsellor solves problems by making a cause and effect connection. She also feels the specialised training that a counsellor has equips her with the right way of going about solving problems. Yet another parent feels relieved that her child is safe and better off consulting a counsellor who will give the right advice rather than a wrong one she gets from a peer.

Students who form a large chunk of beneficiaries feel that a counsellor gives an objective view which is not often given by those close to them. They also feel the counsellor has the time, patience and a desire to understand their point of view which is not often experienced with parents and teachers. They look upon a counsellor as someone they can turn to for specific information and to clear their thinking.

Some skeptics resisting counselling argue that when the number of students per class is less, the teachers can devote individual attention to every student. Some others feel that teachers are the best counsellors as they know their students well and are also equipped to understand them because of the training they receive in Child Psychology as part of the B.Ed. course. With due respect to their training and thought, I beg to differ. The counsellor is equipped to identify problems and prevent them in the initial stages which experienced teachers may sometimes miss. Besides, she also has a professional way of solving problems. There have been instances when well meaning teachers have tried to help students but due to lack of professionalism have created bigger problems.

We must accept that change is the only constant in our lives and we have to keep pace with it to make smoother transitions. If the need to protect our environment has resulted in the introduction of Environment Studies, then why do we resist introducing counselling when it can help future citizens in their onward progress, help them understand themselves and others better, and equip them to deal with life situations in a better way?

In conclusion I must admit that these 21 years have been rich in professional growth. My vision will be fulfilled if counselling is looked upon not only as a service, but an integral part of the school system and the students’ curriculum complementing and supplementing the other subjects. Till then I will continue to strive.

The author is a counsellor based in Hyderabad and has over two decades of experience. She can be reached at zsr@rediffmail.com.

A little over two months ago, a seemingly well-adjusted 13-year-old boy in Mumbai was found to have hanged himself at his home in Dadar. Questions were asked as to why young Gaurang chose to die. Pressure of studies and the exam system, everyone chorused. Gaurang’s parents were understandably too shocked to make any statement at all, but then, a month after that tragic day, they spoke to the media about a ‘choking game’ that may have taken their son’s life – a game that he and his friends had apparently been exploring on the Internet.

Since that day, I have not been able to stop thinking about young Gaurang and what may have been going through his 13-year-old mind when he prepared to string himself up from the fan to see whether cutting off oxygen supply to the brain for a few minutes really did create the high that the internet site had promised. I have not been able to take my mind away from this tragedy perhaps because I have a 14-year-old son myself… . Perhaps because, like Gaurang’s parents no doubt did, I try my best to protect my son from the dark corners of cyber-space while worrying constantly that in spite of my best efforts to control his internet access, in spite of his relative intelligence, in spite of my trust in him, a scabby hand will nevertheless shoot out of a dark corner one of these days, and grab him.

Gaurang’s parents found out about the choking game after his death, from his friends and acquaintances. What a pity that these young people only decided to tell after it was too late – but then, I for one, have long given up using the terms “teenagers” and “anticipating consequences” in the same breath… . But what about the adults who are paid to think things through, to have their ears to the ground, to not only be there for our children when they need specialised help, but to anticipate dangers and warn about them, no matter how far-fetched they may seem – Where were the counsellors? a friend asked, angrily. If the kids knew about this horrible trend, why didn’t the counsellors? Aren’t they supposed to be on the same page as the kids, if not one step ahead? Indeed, counsellors, teachers, where were we?

It is definitely encouraging that so many schools actually have counsellors on their staff these days and that the counsellors’ orbit is no longer only around the so-called problem kids; it is however, probably deeply frustrating for the boys that so many of the counsellors are women, and that too, women who seem to view counselling as an extension of mothering – or should I call it Mother Hen-ing?

After interacting with counsellors in various schools, I get the impression that the counsellor’s role is often seen as largely passive – we wait, we say we “are there for them”, we say “Beta, come and talk to me if you have a problem.” But for some time now, I have been wondering whether this is enough. Gaurang’s death has convinced me that it is not. Today, more than ever before, our children need us to doff our Uncle and Aunty hats and wear combat fatigues. Our children need us to be guerrillas. Yes, guerrillas. And no, I don’t think I am over-stating the case.

We are at war to keep our children’s minds and bodies whole and healthy. If you don’t believe me, just google in keywords to your worst nightmare and you will, I am sure, find half-a-dozen sites that will help you live it. It’s as simple as that. Drug use sites (with details on how to use and where to get), suicide sites, pornography which almost makes one long for the good old days of Playboy and Debonair, hate sites, revenge sites, self-mutilation sites, gun use and gun supplies, insult-generating sites (sexist, homophobic, racist, communal – take your choice), how to get high using household supplies, how to maim and torture by practising on animals… this is what we are up against and we cannot fight this enemy by denial. We have to look it in the face and recognise it for what it is. Our much-vaunted and flaunted “age-old Indian family values and traditions” are no longer protection enough. And if we are to be effective guerrillas, we have to get onto the same page as our young people. If the children we seek to protect are to take us seriously, we need to take them seriously. We need to move out of our comfort zones and meet them in theirs – which is not to say that we need to espouse their tastes and causes wholesale – but we do need to be familiar enough with their issues to engage with them if required; we need to listen – really listen, words and all – to their music and search it for the relevance that they seem to find in it; we need to find out more about their games and visit their sites and yes, even eavesdrop (but not butt in) on conversations and read their books and magazines; we need to listen (without indulgent smiles) to their serious opinions seriously, rather than constantly make them listen to ours; and most of all, we need to think about it all, with genuinely open minds, and rearrange the furniture in our own heads. This is what we need to do, as parents, teachers and counsellors, this is how we may stop the lights from going out in our teenagers’ lives, and yet we continue to blunder along with blindfolds on, hoping that love will show us the way.

Coming back to the Dadar tragedy, a simple cruise through chat-rooms on adolescent issues, a simple Google search, brought up the dangerous choking game – temporary oxygen deprivation to the brain which is supposed to produce a kind of euphoria – in conversation after conversation, site after site. It isn’t really new at all. Deaths of school children have occurred in the US on more than one occasion, and schools there have been warning their students, setting up help-lines and support groups to deal with peer-pressure on this issue. Would it really have required extraordinary prescience on our part to anticipate this grisly fad in our schools too and not only warn, but educate and if need be, scare the hell out of children like Gaurang and his friends in order to save them? No, but for that to have happened, we needed to be out there, patrolling cyberspace, being guerrillas, protecting our children and particularly our boys.

Yes, particularly our boys. I worry about my son and other young teenage boys more than I worry about young teenage girls. There are enough people there looking out for girls – warning them about binge eating and anorexia, incest and date rape, about image issues, drugs, drinking and teen pregnancy; there are magazines to tell them how to dress and do their hair, how to make the best of what they have, how to boost their self-esteem, how to behave with boys… The metamorphosis of the school girl into a confident young woman is an entire (multi-crore) industry. But the young teenage boys, the ones who are no longer yesterday’s children and not yet tomorrow’s men, the ones sprawled all over the Web like sticky-fingered little spiders, willing to take a nibble of anything new and promising? Where are the counselling sites/centres especially for them? Where are the youth magazines/sites that deal with the real issues that concern young teenage boys – not just General Knowledge facts and how to get into IIT? Where do they get information about sports and girls and clothes and dealing with parents and making choices and looking after themselves? Are these boys doomed to learning about masculinity from magazines meant for adults and porn sites on the Internet? Who is talking to our boys in their own language (not uncle-aunty talk) about early adolescence – replete with its own particular insecurities, its sexual confusion, its rage and doubt, its moments of pure crystalline happiness, its recurring nightmare of humiliation and its desperate desire to fit in? Do these boys even figure on anyone’s agenda?

Only those of us who have been in extended relationships with teenage boys, whether as parents, teachers or care-givers, can vouch for the heart-stoppingly frail emotions, the almost unreal vulnerability, the gullibility bordering on stupidity that lies underneath the pre-fabricated shell (one size fits all) that society dumps on young male shoulders somewhere along the path from childhood to adulthood. Boisterous, rude, physical, energetic, moody, loud, irresponsible, irrepressible, impossible – these are the words that spring to mind when we talk about them. We expect our teenage boys to be this way, and paradoxically, we also expect them to suppress all these traits and be “good” boys in order to gain our approval. We indirectly glorify traditional male characteristics like aggression and physical strength and then punish their frank expression. We talk about channelling their energies positively but do not allow them to plough their own furrows. How narrow is the transition zone between childhood and manhood! One day, a little boy can come running for a hug and comfort, and the next, it seems, he is expected to fill a huge Man-shaped hole, the word DENIAL scrawled all over it, in a bitter parody of the game he may have once played, trying on his father’s shoes and coat. But whereas the price paid in childhood was merely good-humoured laughter, the price the young teenage boy has to pay for a bad fit is almost unbearable – disapproval from parents (When are you going to grow up? Stop behaving like a baby! Our family depends on you, son!), or humiliation (whether real or imagined) by his peers and seniors in school (Loser! Wannabe!) and most deadly of all, rejection by girls. In his moment of doubt and confusion, which adult can the teenage boy turn readily to? The well-meaning aunty-counsellor who will no doubt urge him to resist peer pressure, tell him to count his strong points, while suggesting that he bring up the issue in Circle Time? The parents who must not be angered, disappointed, let down or hurt? Nuclear families no longer have that contingent of young male adult relatives who played such a vital role in socialising the boys of an earlier generation. Only the Internet is always there, offering solutions without judgement, offering options without stinting – anytime, anyhow, to anyone.

With no age-appropriate role models to lean on, constantly bombarded with media images of sexually attractive (and active), rich, seemingly popular, musically or athletically gifted adult men, what then is a hesitant 13-year-old boy to do except to take what the Internet may offer and try, in his own faltering way, to prove to himself and to others that he can do ‘man-shaped’ things too, that he can be Superman for a day? But Superman, the 13-year-old, like young Gaurang, discovers only too often, can’t really fly. And when he falls, he doesn’t bounce. He breaks.

The author has been a teacher and is currently working with the Centre for Learning Resources in Pune. She can be reached at ujwala_samarth@yahoo.co.in.

N Sreekumar, Hyderabad.

Useful resource

Introducing worksheets along with the magazine is a great idea. I must say I welcomed it. The first one on birds will be a useful resource when we take students to bird sanctuaries as well as during our classroom teaching.

Also, we really liked the article by Cheryl Rao on the A to Zee of a class magazine. Normally, students do not get to read this magazine but such articles are handy for teachers as they can be used as a sample to be shown to students.

Anita Choudhary, Delhi.

A good break

I really enjoyed the section titled ‘Tea break’ in your March 2008 issue. Finding mistakes in the ads was fun. In fact, this section helped spark off an idea. I have asked my students to collect clippings or take photos of ads that have mistakes in them and make a scrap book. At the end of the year we will have a large collection of funny ads. This will be both a learning and enjoyable experience. Thank you, Teacher Plus.

Sangeetha Ghosh, Jabalpur.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?”
– lines from a nursery rhyme

With the current emphasis on state-of-the-art technologies that can be used in the classroom, we are losing sight of a very basic and simple ‘teaching aid’ – attention. Luckily for teachers in the developing world, this is a universal and inexpensive resource.

I was reminded of the importance of ‘attention’ in an essay by Doris Lessing titled ‘Group Minds’*. Asks Lessing, “In which town is it said to teachers something like this, …that attention is one of your most powerful teaching aids. Attention – the word we give to a certain quality of respect, an alert and heedful interest in a person – is what will feed and nourish your pupils.”

Allied to this remark is the observation that children respond best to teachers who expect them to learn well. In the classroom as in the world outside, stereotypes and unconscious prejudices influence and distort the attention – and the expectations – which a teacher directs at a particular student or at a particular section.

While in general, boys may be given more attention in a classroom than girls, I recall a classroom situation which was a little different. On that day, a student had been asked to tackle a section of the lesson, and being a teenager, he tended to keep looking for approval in the direction of the girls. After a while, he moved towards the girls’ half of the class, continuing to address them rather pointedly. At which point, some of his friends from the neglected half of the class, who had been getting steadily more restive and frustrated, called out, “Bhool gaye kya? Hum bhi hain class mein, yaar, hum bhi hain! (Hey, have you forgotten us? We are also here in class!”)

Clearly, this suggests that attention deficit from the ‘real’ teacher must be keenly felt, and quite consciously as well. Conversely, positive attention can be flatteringly motivational. Teachers and parents too, are presumably aware of this truth, but it is amazing how partial and biased we can be in meting out our attention.

A psychological experiment conducted in the States in the 1960s has always remained in my memory as an example of how magical the effect of positive expectations can be. This experiment, popularly known as ‘Intellectual Blooming’ is formally titled ‘Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinants of Pupils’ IQ Gains’**. It was conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson.

Eighteen classrooms were studied, and within each an average of 20 per cent of the students was reported to classroom teachers as showing unusual potential for intellectual gain. Eight months later, these unusual children showed significantly greater gains in IQ than did the remaining children in the control group.

This hints at the tremendous significance hidden in the power of simple attention over the average student, and underlines the unsuspected role of expectation in changing or subtly altering the way a teacher looks at or treats a student. It suggests that the power of attention is nothing short of magical. It is the key to transformation, which is what the dry-as-dust classroom, mundane as it may be, is designed to achieve.

The author is a former journalist. She can be reached at talitha_mathew@yahoo.com.

*Group Minds, Prisons We Choose To Live Inside; Doris Lessing; Jonathan Cape, 1987. www.dorislessing.org/prisonswe.html.
**Teachers’ Expectancies: Determinants of Pupils’ IQ Gains, Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University and Lenore Jacobson of South San Francisco Unified School District, Psychological Reports, 1966, 19, 115 – 118.
www.indiana.edu/~educy520/readings/rosenthal66.pdf).

Raise your hand, if you think the movie Taare Zameen Par showed parents in poor light.

A lot has been said of Taare Zameen Par (TZP) and a lot of what has been said adds up to – children with Learning Disabilities are for real; they have to be identified as such and shown tender loving care. I want to pay special attention to the family members of the child-hero.

A friend’s mother came away from the film feeling bad about the mistakes she had made as a parent. I know of many other parents who came away from the movie with tears in their eyes. The more stoic ones carried a lump in their throats, but almost everyone burdened their hearts with at least a small dose of guilt. For reasons that cannot be discovered, this movie partly assumed and has partly been endowed with the mantle of a social campaign. Given the circumstances, I would urge us to think of some of the messages TZP sent out.

A common view of the film is that the parents are depicted as being insensitive. What struck me most, and possibly because of my experience of teaching in both segregated and inclusive schools, was that the teacher comes off as a hero. Though the problem identified in the course of the film is the education system, as the film progresses, it becomes apparent that the burden of being Ishaan’s adversaries is meant to be shouldered solely by his ‘driven’ parents.

What is subtle, and goes largely unnoticed, is that the education system produces parents who are oppressive to their children. Regarding the film more closely leads one to discover that it is always in the context of school, marks, test papers and class performance that Ishaan’s parents become aggressively competitive and appear oppressive. More recently, education structures in schools have become more aware of and have tried to incorporate parents’ participation in a child’s development. Such a move is founded on the need to dispense with artificial walls erected to keep the child-teacher relationship distinct from the child-parent one. By making Nikumbh Ishaan’s only saviour, the film surprisingly reinforces the popular myth that a teacher is responsible for every aspect of a child’s education and leaves the parents out of it.

Moving on to sibling relationships, I would like to train my lens on the scenes that slipped by, and didn’t really make a mark at first, on you, me or the reviewer. Consider the scene when Ishaan is finger painting with a drop of red paint and his brother, Yohan walks into the room. Yohan’s long drawn “Wow!” visibly thrills Ishaan and a smile lights his face. Several later moments show that Yohan’s appreciation of his little brother’s painting talent is consistent and encouraging. And consider every moment when his brother’s attention brings wide smiles to Ishaan’s face. Ishaan wakes Yohan up in the middle of the night to tell him he took off from school on a jaunt and Yohan’s wide-eyed response buoys his spirits. Yohan’s interaction with Ishaan gives us very little reason to believe that the latter is not included or loved at home. What I am suggesting is that our understanding of the term ‘inclusion’ as a special needs education concept is rather narrow because our knowledge of it is bound in a limited theoretical framework – one that is restricted to the sphere of school education.

As teachers we have the luxury of studying learning disabilities and developing appropriate skills and techniques to work with each child. Consequently, we are privy to knowledge that enables us to engage with children with different kinds of learning disabilities. It is our business to pre-empt every kind of classroom situation. Parents are not provided with manuals, they improvise. And as parents and family members, we do not study how to deal with each other and merely play it by ear. There is obviously an imbalance, one which has always existed under the surface. Our modes of living are constituted by this imbalance whether we like it or not. In my opinion, the film, rather than dispelling the imbalance, given the subject it was portraying, only embellished it. While reflecting on the movie, it is not uncommon to think that the teacher almost effortlessly, and as if he were naturally gifted, adapts teaching skills to Ishaan’s needs. Consider the conversations Nikumbh has with Ishaan’s parents. In the first conversation he directs them to learn more about Ishaan’s specific ‘problem’, dyslexia. The father comes to report that Ishaan’s mother has been involved in extensive research about the child’s condition. The father is pleased about this effort. Nikumbh is miffed, says that theoretical knowledge is not enough, they have to love Ishaan and let him know that he is loved. However, Nikumbh’s approach is clinical; he has a textbook he can go to. It is also clear through several instances in the film that this love is not absent from Ishaan’s life, though there is no overt acknowledgement of it by Nikumbh.

There is the danger when we think of inclusiveness as a business that schools should take care of. The take-home message herein: inclusion is a lesson learned at school, which must be practiced at home. And so we forget Yohan’s encouragement of his brother’s painting, his mother’s affectionate ways and his father’s gift of strawberries. In emphasising the role of the teacher in Ishaan’s life, the film erases or at best downplays the part of the parents. I worry that the film makes us forget the social nourishment Ishaan’s family tries to accord him.

We forget that families can make children inclusive in ways that classrooms cannot. And so we forget to remember that inclusion is first and always invariably available at home.

Shilpaa Anand is a doctoral candidate in Disability Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago, USA. She can be reached at .

In the article “Solving Word Problems” in the December 2007 issue, Kamala Mukunda stressed the importance of forming Mental Models. I would like to take this process further and suggest some mental models for the primary classes, where a firm foundation in basic operations needs to be given. Using mental models, students can easily master these operations, and they can mix and match these models in the higher classes to understand and solve more complex problems.

The four basic operations to be ‘understood’ in the primary school are Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. These operations are mathematical abstractions of a wide variety of real-life processes. Students need to be exposed to a range of these real-life situations to help construct mental models in their mind so that they can relate the real-life problem with the arithmetic operation.

I describe here a few models for Addition and Subtraction before taking up the issue of how to teach them in the classroom.

The author is the Principal, Atul Vidyalaya, Gujarat. He can be reached at sundaram48@yahoo.com.

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How a precocious group of high school poets learned to provide verse on demand

In July of 2006, I received an e-mail from Richard K. Weems, who directs the creative writing division of the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts. He had hired me to teach poetry to a group of gifted high school students later that month, and he wanted to know if I was interested in conducting a “Drive-by poetry” field trip, which is what past teachers had done.

Drive-by poetry, as Rich described it, entails loading the students into a van, cruising around a commercial area in Trenton, and pulling over near targeted pedestrians. One of the students sticks his or her head out the passenger window and serenades – or accosts – the startled pedestrian with some passionately recited lines by Walt Whitman or Pablo Neruda. The kid pops back in, rolls up the window, and the van takes off in search of the next victim.

The author is a poet and writer based in USA. He can be reached at doug@janestreet.com.

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Be a friend and guide
One of the purest forms of relationships in the world is that between friends. You can share your inner most thoughts and secrets only with friends. Therefore, when you first meet your class, approach them as a friend. Although your primary role is that of a guide you should also be a friend to the children for only then will you be able mix with them and learn about what problems and difficulties they face. An authoritative teacher will only instill fear in the children who will hold back from expressing themselves.

The author is a teacher in Social Science at Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Uttar Pradesh. He can be contacted at hare_321ku@rediffmail.com.

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If one were to go through any book of English idioms, one would come away feeling the speakers of this language are a peculiar lot. These technicoloured individuals have ‘green thumbs, ‘see red’, have a ‘black tongue’, and when they talk, they often do so till they are ‘blue in the face’. When they are ‘green around the gills’, they see ‘pink elephants’, and the following morning, when they wake up with a hangover, they are in ‘black mood’. Like a chameleon they can ‘turn white’ or ‘turn yellow’ when they are in danger, and when they are angry, they turn ‘purple’. Very colourful lot the English, and for someone who has problems differentiating pink and purple, both the language and the people can be bewildering.

Think about it. Where else do you have people looking for that special someone who has ‘blue blood’ running in his/her veins? If matrimonial ads are anything to go by, we Indians too are rather colour conscious. Just ask Andrew Symonds about it. Even a dusky, portly, pot-bellied Indian male wants a “tall, fair, slim girl” as his potential mate. Compared with his English counterpart who wants someone with ‘blue blood’, the average Indian male isn’t that specific.

Have you ever wondered why people of nobility are believed to have blue blood running in their veins? I understand that the expression is actually a translation of the Spanish term “sangre azul” (blood blue). At one time, the Moors (people of the Arab race) ruled over much of Spain. The Moors were dark complexioned, and during the seven centuries that they ruled Spain, a lot of interracial marriages took place. But the Spanish aristocrats who lived in Castile did not intermarry with the Moors. As a result, they remained extremely fair and began to distinguish themselves from their rulers and fellow aristocrats by calling themselves “sangre azul”. What they meant by this was that because of their very fair complexion, the veins in their arms looked blue. It was as if blue blood was running in their veins! Talk about getting vain! Anyway, the term ‘blue blood’ was borrowed by other European countries to describe a nobleman.

In England, the expression was borrowed to refer to prestigious institutions as well. Do you know that universities like Oxford and Cambridge are called “blue brick” universities in England?

Colours play such an important role in this language, that common names are frequently used to refer to certain ordinary hues. For example, did you know that ‘Isabel’ means brownish yellow? Although there is nothing exciting about the colour itself, the story behind why Isabel means what it does, is rather interesting; and in order to tell it, I have let some dirty linen remain unwashed!

The story goes when Isabella, the daughter of King Philip II of Spain, was married off to Prince Albert of Austria in 1598, as dowry the young couple was given the whole of the Netherlands. Unfortunately, one of the cities, Ostend, was in the hands of the Flemish. Isabella apparently told her young husband that until he captured this city, she would not remove her underwear even to wash it! The husband, being big on hygiene, panicked and set off to Ostend to capture it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it took him nearly three years to do so! If the story is to be believed, poor blue-blooded Isabella wore the same unwashed underwear for three years! Now do you understand why “isabel” means “brownish yellow”?

I guess the story explains two things. One, why Isabella and Albert never had children, and two, why Hamlet kept saying that something was rotten in the state of Denmark! The smell probably carried all the way from the Netherlands!

S Upendran teaches at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. He can be reached at supendran@gmail.com.

Driving through Jaipur, one is struck by the sparkling clean roads and neatly intersecting thoroughfares of the Pink City. Digantar, an organisation that works in alternative education for rural children, located outside Jaipur, was the venue for the 9th Partners’ Forum organised by Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS). Unlike conferences held in air-conditioned auditoria, Digantar offered a white shamiana that was adequate protection against the mild summer heat. Inside, gaddas with white sheets and bolsters promised a sense of being at home – in keeping with the rest of the arrangements.

The three-day conference saw some relevant themes in education being discussed and debated by the participants. On the second day, we visited government schools in rural Rajasthan. The participants had a choice to visit schools run by Digantar or the government schools in a sub-district called Phagi, an hour’s drive from the city. The Phagi schools are part of the government’s Shiksha Samarthan Project launched by Digantar in 2006 with support from WATIS. A few of us started early and reached Phagi after an hour’s bumpy ride on the bus. We were accompanied by Pushpajee, a Shiksha Samarthak, whose role is to mobilise support for these schools by working closely with the community and the schools’ staff.

After driving through a seemingly endless barren stretch of land, we reached one of the three schools in Nimera, a village in Phagi. We entered the classroom, trying not to interrupt the assembly. There were folk songs, dance and poetry recital. After the assembly, the children of class four were sent to another room while class three stayed with us. The classroom was simple – no benches or desks, only mats. We were asked to introduce ourselves, after which we asked the children for their names. Ninety per cent of the class belonged to the Yadav community. What was most striking was how cheerful and engaged the students were. They came across as bright and confident, and keen to interact with us. Their learning was different only in terms of school infrastructure. We posed mathematical problems, which they solved with ease. The teacher told us how the education given to them was relevant to their context. For instance, they were taught to measure land in bighas since a number of them took to farming after school.

Another revelation was the entirely different way of managing the class without the traditional approach to discipline. If a child didn’t feel like studying – which did happen occasionally – he/she was allowed to do what he/she felt like. Also, students are not failed in examinations, saving them the disappointment and stigma associated with failure that children in most schools are subjected to.

We were served tea while the students asked us
to solve a practical problem involving matchsticks. We were stumped and only one of the students, Rekha Yadav, demonstrated it, did we realise how simple the solution was. We left the school with a completely different perception of government schools.

The quality of education is not determined by the infrastructure available. Though, with better facilities, these schools could perhaps do much more. Discipline is not necessarily a matter of punishment and reward but rather of understanding what children need without imposing a teacherly view of classroom behaviour. Examinations, beyond grades, are a way of making the student realise his or her best, without encumbering them with the guilt or anxiety associated with failure.

We came away feeling that government schools sometimes offer a more practical approach to education, one that is relevant to the socio-cultural context of the child.