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 4th 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.

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?

Teacher Plus quizzed some teachers and heads of institutions to find out how they view the importance or otherwise of seating arrangements and whether this plays a vital role in the development of their wards.

Mrs. Marie F Prabhu, Directress, The Happy Scholar School, Mehdipatnam, Hyderabad notes: “For the nursery and lower kindergarten classes, it is ideal to have a long low table or two square tables with the children sitting around. The teacher should sit at the head of the table in order to get a proper view. Freeze boards or charts should be placed in such a way, so as to accommodate easy viewing.”

Rifka Khambati is a teacher at Gitanjali Devshala, Hyderabad. She quotes classroom management expert Ford Jones, who said, “Good classroom seating arrangement is the cheapest form of classroom management”. She adds, “IT IS DISCIPLINE FOR FREE. While a seating arrangement may at first seem despotic and unpopular, it does give students time to adjust to the teacher, classroom and their peer group.” She explains, “For my class, at the beginning of the academic year they sit with their friends for a few days, who are then replaced with students who share the same interests like those who love vanilla ice-cream, who have the same number of brothers/ sisters, the same color bag, the same mode of transport, or whose mothers’ share the same name, etc.”

Mrs. S. Raha, Senior English Teacher, St. Thomas’ Girls School, Kolkata and Lecturer, English Methods, B.Ed. Dept. St. Xavier’s college, Kolkata said, “The classroom reflects the new psychological principles governing education. The seating plan ensures that the student can interact with his peers as well as his teachers. The junior classrooms normally have students seated in groups of four or five around a table. This helps the process of socialisation and freer interaction with the micro and macro groups. The teacher also has the freedom to interact with the students.”

“The middle school classroom seating plan should take into consideration the L shaped or U shaped arrangements. It ensures that all students get an equal amount of attention. Flexibility is the keyword here. The teacher’s table can move from the head of the room to the centre of the room. The senior school normally has lecture chairs and more traditional seating plans as the focus is on serious learning. However, having said all this, we have to acknowledge that most classrooms are cramped and overcrowded places with no thought or planning about the seating of the students.”

Mrs. Margaret Francis, HOD – Social Management at St. Francis College for Women, Hyderabad, feels, “The strategic placement of students in a classroom can affect the learning process for each individual student. The physical arrangement of the classroom is an important aspect to consider. It is one way to get control of the classroom. I keep the following criteria in mind… room logistics, student personalities and types of interaction. From this perspective and my experiences, I feel circle or semi-circle structure of seating is good because it helps me see all the students and initiate group discussions easily.”

Rev. Sr. Christine Rebello, Correspondent, Holy Mary Girls High School, Hyderabad, (Formerly, Principal of St Francis College for Women, Hyderabad) states, “The placement of students in a classroom must be done according to the normal roll call method. As there are students from various communities, it helps them to interact and learn not just what is taught in class but also about the other faiths followed.”

Clearly, seating plays a role in the level and type of interaction that can happen in a classroom. It can impact the way students see each other and themselves, in relation to the teacher and other authority figures that enter the classroom. Seating arrangements, carefully thought out, can create the right ambience for learning.

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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“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

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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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 neighborhood 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 ‘neighborhood 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 neighborhood? 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 neighborhood school, the school will automatically become good.

The Ganguly Committee’s recommendation of the neighborhood 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’.

S Sundaram and Nirmala Raman
P.K. Srinivasan, or PKS as he was known, was a dreamer with his head in the world of mathematics but feet fi rmly on the ground. He was an ardent admirer and practically a devotee of the Indian mathematical genius Srinivasa Ramanujan.

This is what he wrote in a preface to Volume 1 of the Ramanujan Memorial Number: Letters and Reminiscences he helped publish in 1968; “(the dream is to set up a) Ramanujan Memorial Foundation with the object of setting up a permanent memorial to Ramanujan in the shape of a multistoried building in Madras, housing a planetarium, mathematical exhibition wings, auditorium, library and showrooms displaying applications of mathematics in industry. It will be a house of entertainment par excellence for the layman and it will strive to make mathematics almost as popular as dance and music. We solicit generous support and help from the readers and institutions all over the globe for translation of the dream into reality.”

He had to wait for almost 25 years to atleast have a room for the memorabilia of this great mathematician and finally could accommodate it in the premises of the Avvai Cultural Academy, Royapuram, and the man who helped him realise his dream, at least partially, was Shri A.T.B Bose, a businessman interested in education.

The story of PKS’s fascination with Ramanujan and how he came to collect letters and other memorablia related to Ramanujan and how these came to be housed in the Ramanujan Museum in Chennai is a story worth recounting if only to show the power of dreams and a single-minded devotion to a cause.

PKS was introduced to the life and works of Ramanujan in 1948 through a book on “Indian Scientists’ published by G A Natesan & Co. The life sketch of Ramanujan moved him and created in him a desire to discover more about the genius.

At that time, PKS was working as a mathematics teacher in Muthialpet High School in Chennai. Through his innovative methods of teaching, PKS managed to kindle an interest in mathematics amongst his students.

PKS felt that Ramanujan’s life taught you that it was possible to reach great heights of achievement irrespective of your background if only you are true to yourself. This was something he wanted all his students to realise. He was one of the founder members of the Association of Mathematics Teachers in India (AMTI) in 1965 because of a conviction that mathematics teachers needed to have a professional platform to exchange ideas.

In 1954 PKS met Janaki Ammal and S Thirunarayanan, wife and brother of Shri Ramanujan. Subsequently he also met Ananda Rao, who was a contemporary of Ramanujan in England. He was fascinated listening to the many small and hitherto unknown incidences in Ramanujan’s life. This meeting and subsequent contacts with relatives and friends of Ramanujan encouraged PKS into thinking about collecting letters and reminiscences related to Ramanujan’s remarkable life.

In 1962, the Government of India announced the release of a special commemoration stamp marking Ramanujan’s 75th birthday on 22nd December. PKS decided to use this opportunity to bring out a memorial number on Ramanujan, containing letters and reminiscences.

With the help of his students, both former and current, he formed a committee for this purpose in October 1962. They then set about searching for contacts and institutions in India and abroad that who were connected in any way with Ramanujan.

The committee placed ads in local papers, interviewed people who had known Ramanujan and gathered letters. When he got a response to an ad or found a contact, he would immediately follow up. Often he found himself just patiently sitting while some one rummaged around in an old trunk for some half-remembered letter. Sometimes he would bring in a stenographer skilled in both English and Tamil to record a conversation.

Around the time of Ramanujan’s birth anniversary, a celebration was held in Madras to which many of Ramanujan’s relatives those who were close to him were invited. PKS exploited this opportunity by stationing former students at the entrance to the hall to solicit comments, correspondence and reminiscences.

He also visited Ramanujan’s old house in Kumbakonam and with the permission of the then tenant, searched an old almirah which had not been opened for many years and found a letter Ramanujan had written to his father from England.

Through such untiring efforts, by December 1962, the committee had collected a substantial amount of letters, documents and photographs.

On December 22, 1962, a special function was held at the University of Madras for the release of the commemorative stamp by the Governor of Madras. The committee was invited by the Mathematics Department of the University, to display their Ramanujan collection. In the special function the Vice Chancellor openly acknowledged the contribution of the committee. PKS also took a group of about 300 students and teachers in a procession from Muthialpet School to Mount Road Post Office, carrying placards of homage to mathematicians of India and bought first day covers. Because of these activities, the work of the committee became more widely known and it was able to secure many more contacts and materials.

After a delay of many years, in 1968 Ramanujan Memorial was published in two volumes; the first volume was mainly biographical while the second described his mathematical work.

These two Volumes had an impact internationally when mathematicians and biographers used these volumes extensively and mentioned them in their works. Many of them, particularly Robert Kanigel who wrote ‘The Man Who Knew Infi nity’ and Prof. Bruce C. Bernt, who researched ‘Ramanujan’s Lost Notebooks’ visited PKS at his residence and found him sharing his long cherished dream of setting up a Math City with child like enthusiasm and details of how he went about collecting the original letters, etc. with a missionary zeal.

PKS met A T B Bose through one of his old students. Bose was a businessman from North Chennai who had an engineering degree from Guindy Engineering College. Due to his deep interest in education and culture, he had decided to establish a cultural centre on a piece of land given to him by his aunt, since he felt that North Chennai was in dire need of a centre for cultural activities. Avvai Cultural Academy was thrown open to the public in November 1991 and had a meeting hall, an open air auditorium, rooms for organising activities, a library, etc. Avvai was the grand old lady of ancient Tamil literature.

PKS invited Bose to his residence to share his long cherished dream. Bose had a thrilling experience seeing the original letters and photographs related to the great mathematician’s life.

PKS’s meeting with Bose materialised in the latter agreeing to give one of the rooms in Avvai Cultural Academy for the Ramanujan Museum and Math Education Centre.

In March 1993 at a ripe old age of 83 Mr. C. Subramaniam, Ex- Finance Minister of India, took it as a privilege to travel to Royapuram to inaugurate the Ramanujan Museum and Math Education Centre (RM & MEC) at Avvai Cultural Academy.

Among the many articles on display in the Ramanujan Museum are:

• Application seeking employment in the Port Trust
• Correspondence with G H Hardy in Cambridge from India
• Correspondence with his friends and relatives in India from Cambridge
• Photographs of his house at Kumbakonam
• Photographs of his mother, wife, foster son, etc.
• Charts containing Ramanujan’s fi ndings showing him as a Friend of Numbers which can inspire children from classes 5 to 12 and make them come closer to the work of the Mathematician

Bose used his technical acumen to ensure that the exhibits were aesthetically mounted and illuminated and preserved with proper air-conditioning. The originals are displayed in such a way that one can touch them and therefore can remain preserved.

At the age of 70, PKS offered to be the Resident Curator-Director of the Museum. As the Curator-Director he stayed in a single room on the terrace. General public and the academic institutions utilized the opportunity to visit the museum by participating in workshops and conferences organised by him through its Math Education Centre wing.. He felt that a total change in math teaching methodology in the classroom and math climate in the school and the society at large was an urgent need for the Knowledge Society.

Many eminent mathematicians from the United States of America, Belgium, The Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Canada, Poland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Japan, China and Singapore have visited this museum. However, it is a sad reflection of the priorities of our society that very few schools and people from Chennai visit the museum.

PKS organised math workshops for teachers, even for parents, students and teachers together, for media. His efforts led to the Tamil Nadu government declaring Ramanujan’s birth Anniversary on 22nd December as Creativity Day.

Some of his pioneering efforts from Math Education Centre of the Ramanujan Museum were

• A Central government approved project on algebra for eight year olds
• State-level Conference on Kolam (Rangoli) and mathematics
• Primary level math Olympiad
• Math kits for primary, middle and high school levels (CBSE has made math labs mandatory in their schools. State government schools are also working on them)
• Several enrichment and recreational math books in Tamil and English.

Ramanujan Museum and Math Education Centre continue to organise workshops to propagate mathematics. It has also been trying to popularize the use of the Math Kit in schools all over India. The museum now has a separate PKS Gallery.

For all that he achieved, PKS’s dream of having a Math City in the Ramanujan Memorial Foundation still remains unfulfilled.

India is a land of many awe-inspiring and fascinating reptiles and amphibians – from king cobras that can stand up and look you in the eye, to frogs that glide from tree to tree. There are turtles that can stay under water for several hours, snakes that can eat a whole deer and lizards that can run on their hind legs. Which other subjects can hold a child’s attention as well as this group can? For some, the fascination comes from wanting to know if the scary rumors they have heard are true: Do snakes take revenge? Are lizards poisonous? For other children, the attraction is simple curiosity: How can a snake swallow something twice as big as its head? Why do frogs sing in the monsoon?

“Herps” is the collective name given to reptiles and amphibians. You can take advantage of their appeal to teach a variety of subjects. Science, Social Studies, Geography, Art, creative writing and other subjects can “come alive” with this topic. Studying herps can also provide a good reason to take a fi eld trip – to a snake park or a crocodile farm, if there’s one nearby, or the reptile house at your local zoo. Better still, visit a local herp environment, like a fi eld, pond or forest to see frogs, turtles, lizards, and even snakes and crocodiles in the wild, if possible.

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