In a year, I have to deal with at least 40 students who are shy. Even at the end of the academic year, they remain shy. How do I get them to open up?

First of all, it is important that teachers make a distinction between a quiet student and a shy student. Many a time, a quiet student is also erroneously labelled shy. A quiet student is one who participates in class rarely but is otherwise comfortable with herself and with other people. A shy student, on the other hand, feels uncomfortable, no matter what the situation is – whether she is being questioned by the teacher, her classmates or even when trying to enjoy herself. The student is besieged by a feeling of being unable to perform in front of audiences, both familiar and unfamiliar. The teacher can play a positive role in helping such a student surmount these feelings to become more proactive.

At the very start of the year, explain to your students that it is all right to be shy initially since they don’t know you and don’t know each other. Talk about celebrities and great personalities who were shy as children. Discuss the strategies used by these people to overcome their shyness in order to achieve what they wanted. Most shy children imagine that they will continue to be in the shadow of other people perpetually; this bubble has to be burst by you!

It is easy to target children who are noisy and articulate because they help you get your class going. Focusing on the shy students takes a great deal of time and energy on the part of the teacher because it can be very challenging and time consuming. A smile from you, a comment, a gentle, easy question put forth to these students will make them understand that talking in class or communicating with an unfamiliar person isn’t so painful after all! Give these children a task to do every day so that they interact with you and the rest of the class. This will unwittingly induce them to talk to you and their fellow students, while at the same time facilitate your tasks. Remember to target the ones that are not terrified of being in class! There are degrees of shyness and you need to first focus on the ones that are open to being prodded.

Allot tasks such as closing the classroom door once the bell rings and the students are in. You could easily tell the student, “X, could you from today on close the door once the bell rings, please? Otherwise we do have to deal with the noise outside. Thank you. I would really appreciate that.” The last sentence sends out the message clearly that the student is going to be performing a task to help the teacher. That is enough to instil confidence in the student and make her feel good. She will get accustomed to moving around in class.

The student could also be asked to collect the homework/assignment books of other students. This task would have to be given to the student who doesn’t dread interacting with students who haven’t brought their homework books to school. This could prove threatening, so you could tell the student, “Could you from today on collect the homework/assignment books? It would be such a great help. In case you run into someone who hasn’t brought it in… I’ll take care of it.” The sentence will only get rid of the nervous jitters of how to handle the impossible situation of a rebellious student.

Converse with the shy students in your class every day, even if it means only complimenting them on an item they are wearing or carrying. However, make it casual and move on to the business in hand so that the student does not go into a panic of how to respond to the compliment paid. First allow the student to get used to being in the company of people and then teach her how to respond. Everything cannot happen at once; this will trigger anxiety attacks.

Persuade parents to participate in gearing up their child for the world. Have them play games with their children, in which the children have to raise their hands to answer a question. This will make them comfortable with their class tasks.

Tell parents to ask the child to read stories out aloud to them instead of reading to them. Children will get used to hearing their own voice and eventually learn to love it!

Parents should also get their children to answer the phone, the door and do the ordering at restaurants. This will give them the opportunity to interact with total strangers, thereby making things easier in the classroom.

Children can also be encouraged to put up skits and plays with the other children in the neighbourhood. Once they overcome their shyness in a known environment, mingling in the classroom seems a less formidable task. Education ultimately is all about life skills and the teacher definitely plays a pivotal role!

The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Chennai. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.

Of late, the outsourcing of work to professionals and organisations to deal with day to day issues in schools has become a fad. As a result of the cut-throat competition amongst solution providers each agency wants to surpass the others by providing more solutions to the school system to ease the teaching-learning process. While these agencies certainly help facilitate change in the way a school functions, sustaining this change is entirely left to the school and how many schools manage it is a question.

The problem
The problem, essentially, is to sustain change in schools and to optimise learning in classrooms. Is it possible to sustain change, acknowledging the fact that outsourced professional assistance is an expensive solution and is accessible for a limited period only?

Some thoughts
A system that recognises the need for some external help is a system that learns and will grow. In Peter Senge’s (An American scientist and author of the book ‘The Fifth Discipline’) terms this system has analysed its current reality, its present situation, the problem it faces and is ready to seek help. In other words this system has self-knowledge and shows readiness for change.

Once a school has acknowledged its problems and is ready for help the second step is to look for help. Should the school outsource professionals or is there a scope of resolving the crisis from within? What shall affect a long lasting change? How should one move forward?

The visible trend
Increasingly, many schools are seeking professionals for the following needs:

• Day to day lesson planning
  Most schools are now seeking professional help for day to day lesson plans to effectively transact their course books. When a school management requests external help for lesson planning it sends a message across that it does not repose faith in its own teachers but trusts professionals who lie outside the school system to prescribe the methodology for teaching. And more often than not these professionals providing solutions to teaching are not practicing teachers.

  If a school does need external help then why not organize regular workshops on how to plan lessons, have discussions on the school and class setting, the effective use of available resources in optimising learning in classrooms? What I am articulating for is a common platform; time for teachers to discuss key issues that are peculiar to each of their classes and finding solutions as a group. Rather than looking at class 2A, 2B, 2C and 2D as separate groups led by different section educators, it is possible to treat class 2 as one cohort group and then identify different kinds of learning preferences of children. Collective lesson planning will surely help in minimising problems, finding solutions, collating resources and upgrading one’s knowledge.

• Making teaching-learning innovative
  Many schools are seeking professional assistance in acquainting teachers with ideas to make the teaching process engaging. Ideas are shared based on some philosophical or pedagogical theory; however such a system does not encourage teachers to develop activities on their own. It is important that teachers develop the capacity to create and design activities on their own. This can only happen when there is a culture of sustained reading and sharing. Expectations from teachers will only materialise when there are systemic changes as well.

  Time needs to be set aside on an ongoing basis for reading research, interpreting new syllabi document and engaging in a dialogue. Only this can push thought processes further and develop confidence to ideate and innovate. There needs to be an ethos where teachers can make errors and learn from their new experiments. It is imperative to move from being safe following the tried and tested chalk and talk method to becoming a risk-taker, plan based on one’s gut feelings, one’s interpretation of theories. There is risk in innovating, but yes there is also a sense of accomplishment.

  Isn’t this something we also expect of our students? Further as a practice, reflective journal writing can be introduced where teachers can pen down their daily reflections of their classes. This is important as these journals can be a source of assessing one’s new methodologies, and also can offer useful insights about learning and our learners. It is however important that these journals are not regulated and checked by the management as this would alter the entire dynamics and richness of writing, as somehow our schools are yet to function as a whole.

• Drafting assessments
  Some schools demand professional help in setting question papers – unit and term papers included. Such a demand leaves teachers with no autonomy to draft need -based assessments. Further, all pedagogical deliberations on assessments to be formative, beyond paper and pencil tests seem to be only deliberations with no practical grounding in face of such demand and solutions. If we do seek professional help, instead of asking them to set question papers, let’s ask for how to assess, what goes behind setting a good and valid assessment, how can children be assessed in a formative manner, how to design rubrics that are valid and reliable? Such demand from schools will also push solution providers to move beyond the spoonfeeding mode to more thinking and challenging levels. This will set a premise for a thinking school, where all stakeholders are engaged in thinking – leaders, teachers and children. This is what I call HOTS applied to a school. Higher Order Thinking Skills – is a framework not only for students but also true for a thinking school – a learning organisation.

The basic idea is to push the needs of the school management and solutions provided by organisations to a level where the fundamental paradigm breaks away from giving solutions to thinking together and empowerment at all levels. From questions that move from ‘what’ to ‘hows’ and ‘whys’at all levels. Such an empowerment shall definitely be a breeding ground for a thinking classroom.

The author works with the Oxford University Press, New Delhi. She can be reached at meetaprabir@gmail.com.

A typical rainy day… the kids of Apna Vidya Bhavan gather round me to hear the story of Peter Pan. Their faces are a treat for my eyes. As I expected them to, by the end of the story, they ask me, “How do we go to Neverland?” Before I could answer them they bombard me with their creative answers
“By climbing mountains.”
“Making ropes out of clouds.”
“By swinging to the moon.”
I tell them, “You already are in Neverland!”

Children’s story writer, Aroop Kumar Dutta

With a whopping collection of 1000-odd books, contributed by the Om Prakash Foundation, USA, this modest but wholesome collection will put most of the libraries in the cities to shame.

The philosophy behind the library and the school itself is interesting. The motto of the Apna Vidya Bhavan, an innovative educational initiative inspired by Swami H.H. Anubhavananda, an eminent spiritual saint of our times, is ‘Grow Wise’. The founders believe that education should be ‘formative rather than informative’. Rashmi Krisikro, Bursar of Apna Vidya Bhavan says, “At school level, the imparting of subject knowledge isn’t as important as kindling the spirit and the passion for the subject. The trick is to get the child to say ‘I love maths’ not just ‘I know maths.’”

In the same way, a book is not something that should be forced upon a child. No one has ever heard of a child being taught to appreciate a flower, or the beauty of the night sky. If that were done, then a flower would be the most repulsive thing. Each child should discover the pleasure of reading for himself/herself. All we need to do is to expose them to books and let each child take his/her own time with them. That is why no student in Apna Vidya Bhavan is forced to read but only encouraged to be with the books. Feel the pages, relish the scent of old books and fresh print. “We are even allowed to just look at the pictures without reading them”, says a relieved boy. Adds Ms. Neelima Bora, his teacher, “He will not even realise when he stops looking at the pictures and starts reading.”

The books in the library are not at all like the ones that you normally expect in a rural school – shabby, dog eared, torn at the climax of the story. Neither are they cheap re-prints of classics by obscure publishers with tacky illustrations. The books here are as attractive as chocolates and sugar cubes All the books are by high profile publishers like Bloomsbury, Walt Disney, Scholastic, Golden Books, Harper Collins, Puffin, Usborne, Lady Bird, etc.

There is a sizeable collection of books that have won International awards like the Phoenix Award, the H.C.Andersen Medal , the Caldecott Medal , the Carnegie Medal, etc.

And what books for beginners! You have books that sing songs; books about animals where you just don’t see the pictures but also get a feel of their skin textures.

What is commendable is the way these library books been have integrated with classroom learning. There is no separate library room. The books are divided into levels and are kept on open shelves in the corresponding classes. But the children can start reading at whatever level they feel comfortable. The readers themselves are in-charge of the maintenance of the books. No closed cupboards or locks! And the books are not meant just for the students of the school. Anyone from Wakro town can walk in on a weekend afternoon and sit there browsing the books and the magazines!

Library books are a part of the lessons in Apna Vidya Bhavan. So when they learn their lessons, say about Kalpana Chawla, the teacher immediately supplements it with a picture essay of astronauts in space. Science and Geography lessons make much more sense to children when they see the things they learn about. During my stint with the Apne library, my English classes would get longer because the kids would invariably unearth the unabridged glossy version of the lesson we would be doing. Even I would prefer that to the textbook.

Once, holding up her Roald Dahl, a student exclaimed, “I wish I had to read this book for tomorrow instead of that boring lesson”. Struck by her remark, I thought, “Why not!” Curriculum planning must involve people for whom it is meant. NCERT has clearly laid out the objectives and the skills to be fostered. Every teacher can creatively tweak the content. Certain stories that might be appropriate for children in the cities would fail to interest children from the tribal areas. So the children can themselves choose a book from the library and swap it with a lesson. They can select the pages or have the entire book. With the help of the teacher they could even make the questions and the exercises. This worked very well in our small 7^th standard class.

Children enjoying a story book at the library

The Apne Library is open to the public on weekends. It also conducts regular book exhibitions, competitions like story-telling, book reading, etc. Such competitions have worked wonders with their self-confidence. They have not only participated but won competitions both at the district and state levels. It is remarkable to see that some of the kids are already turning into authors and poets themselves. Says Chowkianso, class 5, “When I grow up I want to be an author or a scientist. I love to write in Mishmi, my language. It is hard to do that because we can’t write Mishmi” (Most languages in Arunachal Pradesh have no script). His songs, which he composed himself, are a big hit in the school. Some children already have dreams of establishing libraries in their own villages when they grow up. Says Amonlu – a class four girl, “It is so boring in our village. It will be really nice to have a book for a friend.”

The library movement also encourages visits of distinguished literary personalities like Arup Kumar Dutta, the famous author of the ‘Kaziranga Trail’. Mrs. Surekha Panandikar, Head of the All India Children’s Library Movement of AWIC, has warm memories of her visit to Apna Vidya Bhavan. The National Book week is a festival for these kids.

AWIC Youth Library Network has 13 mini libraries in many villages across the Lohit region of eastern Arunachal. The Library Network stands as a unique partnership of a national organisation of writers, a state government agency and a network of grass-root level organisations and volunteer-groups involved in promoting good reading habits for the educational empowerment of rural tribal children. Conceived by the AWIC, New Delhi, and supported by the Lohit district administration and the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, the Network is monitored by the Vivekananda Trust. The movement is making waves, cultivating a new generation of young book lovers. The network has won many accolades, and patronage from the locals, the government officials, the army, and most importantly from the children! The patrons’ sentiments were effectively summarised by Gen. (Retd) J J Singh, Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, “An excellent Library for the future leaders of our country. May God Bless you with knowledge and wisdom to make India proud.”

Inauguration of Wakro library by Lt Colonel V S Malhotra and Satyanarayanan Mundayoor

Of course the Library Network has been encountering the same problems that dog such movements across the country – lack of funds and dedicated volunteers, community lethargy, etc. Introducing reading to a community with a purely oral tradition is a special problem in tribal areas. All these problems are in addition to the fact that children are more readily drawn to the cable television and video games.

As I close my copy of Peter Pan, I wonder, “Is there a way to stop the art of reading from dying?” I look at the kids still enacting scenes from the book and smile. Maybe if we as teachers and parents continue to expose them to good books and think of ways of making reading an interesting activity, despite their initial reluctance, we will see them grow up reading books.

The author is an M.Phil student of Linguistics in Hyderabad. She worked as a teacher for six months at the Apne Library, Wakro, Arunachal Pradesh in 2008. She can be reached at shriekutty@yahoo.co.in.

The ‘neighbourhood criteria’ has environmental, economic and social ramifications

Admission to the nursery classes in most schools in Delhi has been a controversial issue. Added to this, the B K Ganguly Committee Report on nursery admissions has also caused a huge uproar. The committee was formed on the recommendation of the Delhi High Court to review a petition¹ against interviewing parents at the time of admissions to nursery school. The private school fraternity and many parents are not happy about it. But there is at least one important point in the report which will make environmentalists/educationists happy.

A section of the report has to do with a child’s residence near the school as a criterion for admission – ‘the neighbourhood criterion’. Initially, the report mentioned 3 km as the radius that the school should consider. After protests from parents and schools this radius was increased. Nevertheless, this condition makes a lot of sense, environmentally.

Every school invariably finds itself surrounded by vehicles both the school transport and private vehicles twice daily – when the school opens and when it closes. The reason – most students commuting to school use either the school bus or their private vehicles. With the ‘blue line fiasco’², failure of public transport and increasing affluence among people, the number of parents dropping their kids to school has increased. The result is an increase in the number of traffic jams outside schools.

As transport planners have been saying, more people should use public transport. A bus can carry more passengers than a car and occupies less space. This means that there will be less traffic and congestion on the roads. Not bad advice at all! More children need to use public or school buses rather than create traffic jams by using their own cars.

But this is not merely a traffic problem. A study by the Central Institute of Road Transport, Pune, finds that a car consumes nearly six times more energy per passenger per km than an average bus. Hence, public transport makes sense even from the point of view of saving fuel.

These days children travel enormous distances to reach their schools and get back home. Not only does the fuel spent impact the environment through emissions, there are many limitations unaccounted for. The time taken to travel eats into a child’s time to play. The child when he comes back home only has enough time to finish homework. This is stressful and has a negative impact on the child in general. And this is where the Ganguly committee’s suggestion will hold good.

If only those children staying close to the school are given admission, perhaps most children would walk/cycle to school and there would be no need for any other vehicle. The children would also have enough time to play. Even the Delhi Transportation Corporation buses used to ferry children can be used by those who need them more. Thus, the ‘neighbourhood criteria’ of admission to school makes a lot of sense.

There have been questions asked like “What will I do if there is no good school in my neighbourhood? I want good education for my kids.” There is only one answer to such questions. A school is made by its students. So, if good students (your children) study in the neighbourhood school, the school will automatically become good.

The Ganguly Committee’s recommendation of the neighbourhood criterion might initially be a bitter pill. There may be problems for some time. But this pill will surely cure the city of unwanted traffic and emissions.

The Ganguly committee had assigned 20 points to ‘neighbourhood criteria’ in its 100 point formula. The Delhi government rejected the 100 point formula and asked the schools to develop their own weightages for each criteria like neighbourhood, sibling, alumni, etc. It’s up to the school to give it a value of 10, 20 or 30.

As we sweat it out in the age of global warming and climate change, the ball is clearly in the schools’ court to take a decision, whether they want to value this important factor or not – not only in Delhi but across India and the world. It’s high time that schools realise the environmental, economic and social ramifications of the ‘neighbourhood criteria’.
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1. The petition was put forth by an NGO called Social Jurist and in particular Mr Ashok Agarwal, a prominent lawyer. The court issued a directive to stop interviews of parents during school admission and made a committee under the chairmanship of Mr BK Ganguly, then chariman CBSE Board to make guidelines for nursery admissions. It turned out that some of the guidelines forwarded by the Committee didn’t suit people.
2. The public buses in Delhi operated by private individuals are called Blue Line buses referring to the colour of the buses. Blue line fiasco refers to the increase in the number of pedestrians killed by these buses in accidents – rash driving by private drivers.

The author is a development professional working on issues of education for sustainable development with Educomp, New Delhi. He can be reached at smusafir@gmail.com.

This is the story of a four-day relationship between Ahmed and me. Ahmed is a driving school teacher in Oman.

My first day was a breeze. I was high on confidence. After all in streets with around half a dozen cars running, and no pedestrians, or 2 wheelers, or 4 legged creatures or 3 legged autos… what could be tough? I will sail through, I told myself…. and true enough, Ahmed was only checking to see my steering control. So he took me on a long drive on a straight road. It all went well, and I returned home feeling like the cat who had not only eaten her share of the cream but also everybody else’s!

The second day dawned bright and clear. I was excited and rang Ahmed in advance to reconfirm that he was coming. But now began my woes. The indicator controls were on my left … but my right hand unconsciously flipped the one on the right… (subconscious Indian response) and whoosh, the windshield wipers came on ferociously. By this time the car had already reached the turn and so there was no time to rectify the error and flick the right one! And so we turned, without signalling. That done, I had to program my mind… left hand – indicator, right hand – windshield… left leg – no need to use, as there was no clutch….. my left leg would rise up and down as if it had a will of its own!!

To add to the stress of my already muddled mind was the fact that I had to flick the control down to show left and up to show right. No prizes for guessing what made Ahmed’s nostrils flair up, next. I flicked it down while it was supposed to go up! Which meant that I was to turn right… but my indicator was showing left!!

After sufficient admonishment from Ahmed in his broken English we proceeded…. and I had to tell myself… for left, go down, for right, go up, again and again. I could feel the slow 360° turn of my brain, as I drilled this in. On that day, Ahmed looked at my learner’s license to check why I was being so fuddy duddy. I saw him turn the page to the age column and then I discerned a hint of sympathy,… relearning at 50 deserves more than two days that too when I didn’t even know the city! So we managed to finish the day on a slightly kinder note.

Third day dawned, this time I was more apprehensive than excited… I didn’t want Ahmed screaming at me again. So I had read the signs the previous night and visualised myself flicking the controls for left and right turn in my mind. But he had other plans. It was “roundabout day”! These were the strangest instructions that I had ever received. If one wants to turn left, one needs to give the left indicator and then turn right, go all around the roundabout and then turn left. So imagine my confusion, when Ahmed says, “give left indicator, turn right, go round, and now give right indicator and go straight!” To say my brain revolted is an understatement! I could not get it correct. Ahmed was livid… I would use the break, as the speed of the oncoming vehicles would make me nervous… and he would yell, “Me teacher? You teacher? I say press accelerator, you press brake? Make accident? Behind car coming, you not see?”

Oh, so one needs to use all the three mirrors (quite the opposite in India). My self-esteem was certainly taking a dive. Ahmed’s opinion was so important!! I had to grapple with not using my left leg at all, get the indicators right, use all three mirrors, and above all stick to my lane, The roundabout day was a disaster. Ahmed was furious…. no allowances for age here! That night I pored over my books again,…. put my visualisation techniques into operation, as my mind went up and down the controls and rules….. I was determined to win Ahmed’s approval and put my battered self-esteem back on track.

And yes, perseverance and determination does pay. Ahmed was very happy on the 4^th day. I did most of the things right. I lapped up the, “very good, very good” and could feel my self-esteem inch its way up.

At 50, after being a teacher for so many years, for those four days I was at the receiving end. But it’s going to be all right from now… and I will be ready to drive you guys around when you come here. The Left vs Right syndrome would have ensured that I toe all the lines, literally and figuratively!

The author is a partner in Edcraft, Hyderabad, a firm engaged in making teaching-learning materials and is currently in Oman. She can be reached at edcraft94@gmail.com.

Madras eye, Delhi belly, Oxford blue, Mexican wave, and American dream. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the first element in the expressions that have been listed is the name of a well-known place. It’s fairly obvious; the names just stare at you in the face. But sometimes, this connection is not so clear. There are many words which we use in our everyday conversation which have been derived from the names of places. Not everyone is able to make the link between the two; in fact, most people have forgotten about the place which gave birth to the word. In today’s column, I’m going to deal with some of these common words.

As teachers, we all ‘coach’ our students to do well in their exams. In the Indian context, our main job is to help them face the slings and arrows that the various Boards may wish to flying at them: we are meant to ‘carry’ the students through the various tests and exams. The original ‘coach’, however, was a carriage drawn by horses that ‘carried’ people from one place to another. The carriage got its name from a small town in Hungary where the vehicle was first made: Kocs (pronounced ‘coach’). When towns in different parts of Europe started making this carriage, people still referred to it as ‘coach’. As trains slowly replaced ‘horse drawn carriages’, ‘compartments’ began to be called ‘coaches’ because they too were being employed to ‘carry people’.

Nowadays, a hired bus is referred to as a ‘coach’: after all, like the train compartment and the horse carriage, it too ‘carries’ people. One thing that a bus carries, which the train and the horse carriage never did, is a spare wheel. People in India refer to this fifth wheel in a vehicle as a ‘stepney’: a word that is seldom heard in places where English is spoken as the first language. Native speakers of English refer to the fifth wheel as a ‘spare’. Where did the word ‘stepney’ come from? Did we Indians coin it? Stepney is actually the name of a street in Llanelli, Wales where spare wheels for the motorcar were originally made. Since the tyres were made in the street of Stepney, spare wheels began to be called “stepney wheel”. Later, it was shortened to “stepney”. These wheels consisted of ready infl ated tyres which could temporarily be clamped over a punctured wheel.

Wheels, carriages…. let’s move to something edible, shall we? People often say that one shouldn’t play with one’s food. John Montague, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, the man who is credited with having invented the sandwich, followed his mother’s advice: he didn’t play with his food. What he did was something quite different. He played and ate at the same time!

Many of us know that the sandwich was invented by an Earl who was addicted to playing cards. Montague was such an avid player that he made sure that the fellow participants stayed glued to their seat: he didn’t even permit them to take time off to eat! He had the food, which usually consisted of meat and bread, brought to him. In order to facilitate his playing, he put the meat between two slices of bread. It thus became possible for him to hold his food in one hand and his cards in the other. This allowed him to play and eat at the same time. Thus, the sandwich was born.

Sandwich is actually the name of a village in the county of Kent in England. The word literally means ‘village of sand’: a substance which we hope never to find in our sandwich! John Montague was such a well-known public figure in England that when James Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands, he named them after the Earl and called them ‘Sandwich Islands’.

Living the American dream means making it big in the adopted country. When you think of America, the things that immediately come to mind are burgers, hot dogs, chips, soft drinks, and pizzas. It is strange that something in which the main ingredient is beef should be called ‘ham’. The word hamburger suggests that the meat patty between the buns is ham.

It is not, it is beef. Then why is a hamburger called a hamburger? Where does it get its name? As you have probably guessed by now, it gets its name from the city of Hamburg: a port in Germany from which a lot of people set sail for the New World (America). This city was famous for its Hamburger steak: it consisted of ground beef. Later, in the United States, when this steak was put between two buns/slices of bread, the name changed to ‘hamburger sandwich’. With the passage of time, it was shortened to ‘hamburger’. The ‘hot dog’ which is sometimes referred to as ‘frankfurter’ gets its name from the city of Frankfurt.

What about India? Have our place names become a part of the everyday lexicon? Yes, they have. India was famous for its textiles; therefore, it is not surprising that many of the places where textiles were produced have become part of the English vocabulary. ‘Calico’, the white muslin cotton cloth gets its name from the city of ‘Calicut’. Woollen sweaters and shawls are called ‘cashmere’: it is the old spelling of what we now call ‘Kashmir’. I could go on and on. But as Shakespeare said, what’s in a name?

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

The author is a teacher trainer and is currently a teacher at Calorx Teachers’ University, Ahmedabad. She can be reached at ratnar_p@yahoo.co.in

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Dealing with the class 10 examination is only the tip of this iceberg, but it has thrown open a variety of questions ranging from what examinations do for learning if anything, to what else needs to happen within schools to ensure that children emerge with the ability to handle and contribute to a complex social and economic system.

Mr. Sibal himself has emphasized that the debate is not about the exam per se, though that is what has attracted most attention, but that the debate is really about the kind of India we want, the kind of people we want as future citizens of India – recognising that this shaping of the future citizens happens in school. Clearly, there are many issues to be dissected and examined in detail at the national, state and local level before these proposals can begin to be formalised, let alone implemented. There are many stakeholders – parents, teachers, school administrators, textbook publishers and materials developers, and the children themselves – whose viewpoints matter and who need to be heard before any movement can happen. But the one big positive development here has been that for the first time, school education – its very fabric – is on the national agenda and is being talked about at length and in depth by people in power. It presents an opportunity for those of us committed to education reform to keep at these questions and try to demand that they be addressed – better teachers, better standards, better infrastructure – before we can even talk about what the removal of the pressures signified by the board examination can signify!

“Books of all time, books of an hour” was what we heard our teachers say a couple of decades ago. But now in the age of technology will our children be able to understand this and judge books accordingly? The present generation has many options to keep themselves engaged.

Consequently, reading habits among children are on the decline, in part thanks to the television and the computer. Research in western countries over the last 50 years has indicated a fall in the reading habits of children, though there are country-to-country variations.

The author is principal, Jain Heritage – a Cambridge School in Hyderabad. She can be reached at kadiyalalakshmi@gmail.com

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Carbon is one of those elements known to man since prehistoric times, in the form of charcoal and soot. Despite the fact that it is one of least available elements in the earth’s crust, it is difficult to imagine life without it. In its various forms carbon is found in everything from wood to the human body. We know that the diamond and graphite (popular as the lead used in pencils) are different forms of carbon. But what is interesting is that despite possessing the same chemical properties these two forms of carbon are as different as chalk and cheese. While diamond is the hardest material known, graphite is one of the softest. Diamond is transparent but graphite is opaque and black. Your students might find it interesting and instructive to create a table comparing and contrasting these two different naturally occurring forms of carbon.

Carbon in nature
We already know that carbon is found everywhere in nature. It’s in the air, in our cars, in food. The air we know has carbon dioxide that we breathe out. How is carbon dioxide formed? Why do we feel refreshed when we sit under a tree?

The author has been in the field of education for the last 25 years and has published articles on education and children. She can be reached at srijaya68@gmail.com

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