What crisis?
There is now a growing scientific consensus that the impact of human activities on the natural environment is very significant and will have serious consequences for the planet. There is some difference of opinion on how soon this impact will be felt and how widespread it will be. But denial is no longer seen as an option. Most commentators will perhaps agree that the situation can, without exaggeration, be termed a “global crisis”.

What do we do? A recent article in the reputed scientific journal Nature proposes “…. a framework based on ‘planetary boundaries”. These boundaries define the safe operating space for humanity with respect to the Earth system and are associated with the planet’s bio-physical subsystems or processes.”* The authors define nine processes for which they believe it is necessary to define planetary boundaries: climate change; rate of bio-diversity loss (terrestrial and marine); interference with the nitrogen and phosphorous cycles; stratospheric ozone depletion; global fresh-water use; changes in land use; chemical pollution; and atmospheric aerosol loading. Many scientists hope that the discussions and negotiations at the international level like the Copenhagen Climate Summit scheduled for December 2009 will make significant progress in tackling at least some of the issues.

Whose crisis?
Unfortunately there are many difficulties ahead. I will consider three broad issues that arise and then explore the role and contribution of education in understanding and tackling the crisis.

Firstly, the crisis is the result of past actions. It is the result, mostly, of dramatic economic growth that began in the 18th century and subsequently accelerated. Most of this growth happened in what are today called the developed countries. These societies have acquired a level of material wealth, power and technological capability that has no historical parallel. And they, often through conquest and plunder, appropriated resources from all corners of the globe to fuel industrialization. Today, the poorer countries, (the “developing” countries) wish to emulate the success of the rich countries and improve their own socio-economic conditions.

This guarantees that the costs of the crisis will be paid, by and large, by future generations. Normal life will be disrupted through habitat loss and loss of livelihood. Poverty in many countries could increase. There is even the possibility of large scale loss of lives. There is the spectre that the poor and the innocent will suffer disproportionately for no fault of theirs.

The second difficulty arises in the nature of today’s world. We have a world of nations. Patriotism and ethnic loyalties run deep and are considered to be admirable qualities. Economic and political negotiations happen in the context of these loyalties. Most people forget that nations and ideas of nationhood arose relatively recently in world history. Governments try, tenaciously, to protect national interests and sustain hard-won power and prestige. Unfortunately, the environmental crisis is a truly global phenomenon that does not respect man-made boundaries. A ton of carbon dioxide emitted in Japan and an acre of Amazonian forest lost could have local effects but also consequences in Bangladesh and Tibet. We do not have, at the present moment, the ethical sensibilities and the political institutions necessary to address such a challenge.

The third difficulty is in understanding the role of personal change and private action in tackling such a crisis. How far should individuals try to alter their ways of life to meet the crisis – should we eat differently? Bathe differently? Drive less? Many argue, passionately, that personal initiatives are the only solution. Others, equally vehemently, argue that the changes needed are too wide in scope and need concerted action by governments. Many of those who argue for personal change also see the cause of the crisis differently. They see a moral failure in humanity – we allowed ourselves to be seduced by the glitter of the industrial age. We lost our connection to the earth, a sense of its beauty and its importance as life-giver. It is this connection that we need to regain.

The above three challenges can be summarised as follows. The environmental crisis is qualitatively a different challenge from what we have ever confronted. It calls for responses that lie outside traditional modes of thinking. We need to extend our sense of fairness and justice to all people and to future generations. To all life, perhaps. We need institutions that reflect this new ethical understanding. We need individual change and collective political action.

Education. Obviously?
The argument of the last section seems to indicate that we have to understand the causes and consequences of the crisis in all its complexity. We have to feel new ethical imperatives. And new ways of collective and individual action are needed. Isn’t this what education aims to do? Inform, provoke thought and inspire? In the next two sections I would like to explore the scope of educational responses. What are the possibilities? What is outside the reach of education?

A proposition
At a meeting in September held in Bangalore under the auspices of Wipro Applying Thought in Schools, a group of educators from all over the country examined this theme. As part of their discussions, they considered the following proposition:

“Education, broadly understood, is an important part of the response to the challenges that Indian society might face due to the environmental crisis. Educational initiatives have a crucial role to play in communicating the nature of the problem and in nurturing the critical intellectual, ethical and emotional capacities that are likely to help create a meaningful response.”

This proposition is worth examining in detail. The first sentence, while asserting the role of education in tackling the crisis, is careful to acknowledge that there might be constraints. For one, education, while a powerful social process, takes decades and even generations for its impact to be felt. Environmentalists feel that societies do not have that luxury. Therefore, we may have to turn to much more rapid political action. Political action can work in two ways. Firstly, it could tackle environmental problems directly. It could also set the stage for education by speeding up reform of the education system. Education in this context has to be understood in its widest sense. It is not merely school or university education that we are talking about. The educational process here involves all persons, of all ages, who learn. The point is worth emphasizing. The environmental crisis requires a multifaceted approach. Education is only one part.

What can education do?
Having warned the reader that we need to look at education broadly, I would like to use the rest of this essay to focus on school education. We should recognize immediately that ready-made tools and curricula equal to the task are not available. As the proposition points out, recognizing the problem is important, but not enough. As teachers, we are familiar with the phenomenon of “inert knowledge”. Students have a lot of information, but have a poor capacity to understand and apply the knowledge in meaningful ways.

So there is a lot to be done both at the level of policy and in the classroom. The educational policy makers need to realize that adding a new subject called “environmental science” or something similar is at best a small first step. We need flexible frameworks (not rigid and prescriptive lists) that allow teachers to engage the students in interesting ways. We need teachers interested enough and knowledgeable enough to do this. The syllabus needs to be responsive to local issues and has to accommodate local knowledge. For example, teachers and students in rural Rajastan will have to understand a different set of local environmental challenges compared to those in urban Kolkata. So the focus of the curriculum has to shift in significant ways. A sceptic may argue that this has to be done anyway regardless of the environmental crisis. Yes, true. But the stakes just got raised.

What about the classroom? I argue that learning about the crisis and discovering responses to it has two important dimensions. Firstly, the student and the teacher need to understand the complexity and interconnectedness of the problems. Students in sugarcane growing districts of Maharashtra must understand the potential impact of changes in monsoon patterns and ground water use on their livelihood. How would global fossil fuel use induce melting of the glaciers in the Himalayas? And what will that do to life in Uttarakhand and in remote Bangladesh? Secondly, we need to nurture the values and feelings that allow the student and the teacher to discover new responses – both personal and collective. This involves both the questioning of old patterns and discovering new affiliations.

The first point emphasizes the need to move away from an information based approach to one that encourages true understanding. The second is an appeal to make ethical thinking and understanding of values an integral part of the classroom experience. There is some danger here. Most of our schools have reduced “value education” to a mechanical attempt to list a few desirable qualities. There is very little attempt to engage the student in any meaningful dialogue. This approach is paternalistic and generally ineffective. If young people have to acquire a sensitivity to environmental issues that is not merely empty sloganeering, we have no choice but to take the long and hard road to reform.

What about the reference to feelings? This is born of the recognition that values and action are not merely the products of knowledge. A concern for the underprivileged, a sense of responsibility for other people from one’s own country and from other parts of the world, a sense of connection to the natural world and an appreciation of its beauty, all these call for a learning that is not merely intellectual, but deeply linked to our moral and ethical feelings. Taught not by persuasion and propaganda but learned through a process of discovery and dialogue.

Is this a pipe dream? Perhaps. But anything less is likely to be worse than useless. The environmental crisis is inexorable. It calls for the most comprehensive and energetic response societies can muster.

Conclusion
I have argued in this essay that education has a significant role in responding to the environmental crisis. But to be effective education needs to be re-oriented. And political action has to prepare the space for educational interventions. Mechanical, information based approaches have to be discarded in favour of nuanced understanding and a sensitivity to values. The capacity to feel, explore and empathize with others is just as important as conceptual skill. The education system has traditionally been very poor in nurturing these capabilities. Policy makers and teachers are both crucial to this change. The large bureaucratic organization of the education system is a hindrance. Teachers’ skills have to be raised. Can this happen?

In spite of the odds, we have few other options. And failure will cost us the earth.

The author works at the Centre for Learning, Bangalore. He can be reached at venu.cfl@gmail.com. *http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html

1. Learning for life

2. Children and their environment

Instead of dwelling on the questions, “What do I need?” and “How can I get it?”, ask “What is my place in the world?”. Rather than deriving machine like standards for optimal functioning, ask “What human qualities does a healthy ecosystem require?” Sustainability is a key concept, in the sense of both how we as a species, can live sustainably on the earth, and how we as individuals can create sustainable lives and relationships. -Larry Robinson, Ecotherapy

While the Supreme Court of India directive to make environmental education compulsory in schools brought cheer to some groups, agencies and individuals who had been trying for decades to make the system endorse the worth of environmental education, it also brought with it, its own baggage.

The teaching community now has one more subject to deal with, to teach, to grade. More textbooks on environmental studies, each vying with the other in complexity and density, have made their way to the market, and into the lives of teachers and students. More meaningless cramming goes on. Sadly, the very basis of environmental education and ethics has been misunderstood. Teachers are often at a loose end about how best to bring this subject across to students in a way that will have a lasting positive impact.

Conservation education (CE) is often seen very narrowly as tree planting activities (one lakh trees planted, no one cares how many perished post-planting!) and painting competitions. It is also viewed by many as a vague and largely theoretical subject, not really leading to the development of any life skills.

Ground rules and needs
What do you as an educator or teacher need, to try and put in place a conservation education module that addresses the following basic needs of a good learning programme:

• An approach that is not just exam, or text book geared, but takes into account basic ethics and philosophy that one will have to engage with, in the sharing of environmental learning with students.
• A focus on developing localized material that fits in well with the vernacular context of the place – not just the linguistic context, but also cultural and social. Often an alienation from one’s immediate surroundings results in very poor learning happening, and consequently little or no environmental stewardship.
• Something that challenges the students’ imagination, ability to question, engage with civic society and local communities, and arrive at real-life solutions to real life problems.
• Experiential learning, outdoor observation, and field trips as part of the CE modules being prepared.
• The inclusion of sustainable or appropriate livelihood options to be provided to students through the education system – something which is just not happening now.
• All this without taxing the teachers too much, and making them run around for material and engaging ways to teach.

What is the primary purpose of environmental education? Is it important that the student be able to identify 30 different birds and trees, or know that habitat loss will make us lose species even before we can identify what is impacting them? Do we need to insist on Master’s level textbooks for Class 11, and yet not know how to grow even a few garden vegetables with our heads, hands and hearts? At the end of the day, do we want a student with a sense of pride about his/her ecological roots, willing to identify issues or problems and use the requisite tools and the mental and emotional energy to work towards a resolution, or someone who has just passed an EVS (environmental studies) exam?

What can you do as part of conservation education?
Often the resources around us provide a rich learning ground for CE – the school campus, a leaky tap, an old neighbourhood tree, a corrupt politician, a wonderful craftsperson or story teller, etc. It is better to use what is around us and accessible, rather than look at faraway and harder to obtain resources. A trans-disciplinary approach is also useful, though it takes some effort. So while bridging math or language skills, one could employ art, ecology or even play.

As a teacher, it is a useful exercise to build up a menu for an academic year of conservation education work. Themes, focus areas, activities and co-curricular links will have to be built in. What you can do depends on

• how enthusiastic you are
• whether you are in government or private service
• working in a rural or urban area
• the number of hours per week that can be given to CE (either in the classroom or outside – say 2 hours per week at the minimum with a field trip once or twice a year)
• the sort of peer group you have around you
• resources available and the attitude of the school administration. By resources, do not feel that money is the only criterion. Often an open attitude is your best resource!

Draw up a schedule, see how you can organize an academic year of activities and lesson plans. Try and reach out to any local agency that is involved with CE and see if they can help. Each session or activity also needs to have some advance planning for the materials you will need to get together.

The topics you pick may already exist in the textbook you are using, which you may want to supplement with other information or activities. Textbooks prescribed by the system tend to be rather general, and often far removed from the peculiar graces of your local context and needs. There are several handbooks for teachers that explain how you go about carrying out a full fledged, localized environmental education programme in your school – the listings given may be of help. With a bit of tweaking you can build up a sensitive, very doable programme for your own situation.

Some helpful resources
Most teachers are victims of a system where the syllabus has to be covered before the exam, and there is pressure to achieve good “results”. Even if these compulsions exist, there are some ways in which you as an individual can make a big difference to the sort of environmental values that are instilled in a child.

Given below are some resources that you may find useful.

1. Organizations like those listed below have been working on CE and environment education.
   • Centre for Environment Education (CEE) www.ceeindia.org
   • Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) www.cseindia.org
   • Development Alternatives (DA) www.devalt.org
   • The Energy Research Institute (TERI) www.teri.org
   • World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) www.wwfindia.org
   • Kalpavriksh www.kalpavriksh.org
   • Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) (www.atree.org)
   • Zoo Outreach (ZOO) www.zooreach.org
   • National Conservation Foundation (NCF) www.ncf-india.org

   They have produced a lot of material and teachers’ handbooks on various environmental themes, complete with useful information and activities. Numerous other agencies, especially smaller ones have been doing excellent work in their own areas.

2. There are innumerable field guides available to go bird-watching, identify frogs, butterflies, snakes and other creepy crawlies. The Bombay Natural History Society (www.bnhs.org) has some of the best guides in the country. Unfortunately there is still a great paucity of information about local areas. But if you can locate a nature group within your city or town and ask for help, there are often volunteers or resource people who would come out for a session or two.
3. If you can lay your hands on any articles or books by David Orr especially those related to the greening of education, do read them. They will give you a good perspective and overall philosophy.
4. Books by David Sobel like “Childhood and Nature – Design Principles for Education”, “Into the Field – A Guide to Locally Focussed Teaching” and others are also very valuable.
5. Jospeh Cornell is also a much loved author of nature education, and although written for a typical American situation, the core ideas can be used for work in India.

The possibilities are too numerous to list here. With some adaptation, a little effort and imagination, you can put together a wholesome, fairly easy to carry out conservation education package for your class. Getting any of the localized manuals from the groups listed above will help, if there are none for the area you are from.

Like it or not, the internet does seem to be a good resource with all kinds of material that you can very effectively use with your students. Whether it is calculating one’s carbon footprint or setting up a rainwater harvesting system, or beginning a food garden in school, there is a wide range of good quality information available. Books, articles, periodicals, films (U tube seems to have it all!), games, activity ideas, posters, music, quizzes, work sheets… what you can download is endless. Exercise caution here though. It is tempting, especially for city kids with free access to the internet, to live virtual lives with little or no connection to ground reality. While we used to see the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower during our childhood….. now it is all seen on Facebook!

Sunita Rao is an Adjunct Fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) and a member of Kalpavriksh. She can be contacted for further information and dialogue at sunitasirsi@gmail.com.

1. The environmental crisis and education

2. Children and their environment

To my mind, there are two compelling reasons for considering the environment in the context of children’s education. The first is that good education helps children construct knowledge and develop understanding through interaction with their immediate environment. The second is that we as a species need an education that will bring about a deeper relatedness to the environment. A relatedness that will prevent us from destroying the very basis of our lives. In other words, we could say that education should include “learning from the environment” and also help children in “relating to the environment”. Over a number of years teaching has taught me to see how the first leads to the second.

Children are naturally curious about their environment. This curiosity can be encouraged at school by allowing children the space and freedom to explore the spaces in and around the school. Walks have always been an integral part of learning at Poorna (Poorna Learning Centre is situated at Sathanur village, Jala Hobli, Bangalore North; www.poorna.in). I would like to share some experiences of how walks have been used by teachers at Poorna to support learning from the environment.

Walking to learn from the environment
Very short walks for about 40 minutes or so can be used to teach many subjects and all the examples given below have been actually tried out at our learning centre. I have tried to organize the walk related activities according to subjects, although walks provide much room for collateral learning!

Language:

• While learning the different literary forms of “alankaar” related to Hindi poetry, children were asked to walk around the school grounds, which had a number of flowering trees and were asked to come up with personifications. One boy likened a cassia full of yellow blooms to a woman decked in gold ornaments, a girl said, the rock by the gate was like a woman bending to clean the floor and the other children in the group managed to come up with many other curious and wonderful personifications. As a result, the otherwise ‘boring’ poetry class came alive and children began noticing elements in their environment with a different eye. Hindi poetry is wonderfully evocative, drawing on the imagery of mustard fields, banyan trees, seas of golden wheat swaying in the breeze, foaming waterfalls and majestic mountains that seamlessly meld environmental consciousness and culture.
• A much younger group of children were taken on an “alphabet walk” where they had to name all the things that they could see beginning with a particular sound. Children enjoyed the freedom to move around and also learnt to observe the things around them and hone their phonic skills.

Math:

• Notebooks in hand, children were taken on a walk down the street to tally the different types of trees that they saw. These were then used to develop a bar graph.
• Children took a short walk to a safe spot on the roadside from where they surveyed the different types of vehicles that went past in a given interval of time and worked out an estimate of the number of vehicles that would pass the spot in a span of 12 hours. Possible reasons for the estimate being too low or too high were also discussed.
• Although not exactly a walk, children went to the playground and sighted along a home-made sextant to estimate the height of trees as a practical exercise in trigonometry.

Chemistry/geology:

• A rock collection walk was undertaken to bring back different pieces of rocks to test whether they were carbonates.
• A walk around the building helped children list the number of different materials used and then look at the processes for manufacturing them.

Biology:
A major portion of biology can be taught outdoors and I have mentioned just two examples –

• Young children were taken on a walk to look at the various insects and butterflies on the way and as their teacher, I was amazed at how keenly the little ones observed the minute insects on tiny blades of grass and eagerly pointed them out to me. One little girl, observing a pair of shiny coleopteran beetles, said, “They are dressed up for a marriage function, aunty!” How wonderful to see the world through the eyes of a young child, I thought.
• A senior class took a short walk down the road to understand how infectious diseases spread. They were shocked at the public health hazards that they encountered. They wrote up their findings in the form of a project called “Flies, fleas and flus.” Several of them realized that public health existed in absence and started thinking about how awareness could be created.

Pollution and environmental responsibility:

• A walk around the Hebbal lake, near which Poorna was located, allowed children to experience the joy of watching birds and also understand an aquatic ecosystem. They also got to see how the lake was being polluted. On subsequent visits they tested the water quality at the lake using a water testing kit supplied by Development Alternatives.
• Clean up walks in and around the school were often undertaken by different groups of children to clear up the plastic and other rubbish that people so carelessly flung all over. One memorable outcome of this was a walking street play called “Plastic rakshasha” that children performed at several points on the road outside the school as part of an awareness campaign. A parent ruefully reported how during a road trip, a family member had thrown a plastic bag out of the window and the Poorna child in the car had insisted that the car be stopped and the bag picked up. The child also explained to the family why plastic should not be thrown in a forest area.
• A household survey walk was done at two different locations – a high income area near the school and a low income area also near the school. Children collected information about the type and amount of cooking fuel used in the various households. This led to a lot of classroom discussion and study related to issues centering on energy and equity.

Appreciating nature
Excursions have been a much loved part each year at Poorna for they provide great opportunities to learn about both the natural and the cultural environments. Rather than detail one or more of the numerous excursions that we have been on, I would like to share two incidents of how children find a sense of connection with nature and come to appreciate the wonder and beauty of it. On a trip to the forests in Hassan district, I was silently gazing at the immense trees growing from the valley when I noticed eight year old Ammu by my side, her huge eyes brimming with tears. “What happened, Ammu?” I asked and she replied in a voice choked with emotion and wonder, “I didn’t know that God made such beautiful places!” So we continued to stand silently, our hearts filled with gratitude for the beauty spread before us.

During another trip we had reached our destination at 3:30 a.m and were sitting on the steps of the bus stand of the little town, waiting for daylight before hiring jeeps to take us into the reserved forest. Very soon, children needed to “go susu”, so I took them a little way down the quiet and dark road so that they could relieve themselves behind some bushes. As we walked back towards the bus stand, one of the children, Archana, said, “What is that sound?” and we stopped and my ears picked up what may have been the ‘chree, chree’ of insects. Before I could answer, Archana, Zuri spoke up pointing to the velvet sky, filled with a myriad stars, “That is the sound of the stars twinkling, no, aunty?” – Who was I to deny the possibility that we could be hearing the sounds of stars twinkling? We walked on in silence listening to that sound in the stillness before dawn.

Children who form deep connections with their environment are likely to be pro-active when it comes to caring and action for the environment. The conceptual understanding that they would have developed by way of learning from the environment would inform their actions as environmentally sensitive people. Children participating in clean up drives and creating awareness about plastic waste have already been mentioned. Many more such examples could have been cited, but for the paucity of space.

I would like to end by saying that the little girl who heard stars twinkling is in college now and is involved in actively campaigning against illegal iron ore mining in her home state, Goa. Her slide presentation was woven into the classroom study of mining and metallurgy, as part of the chemistry lessons.

It is possible for teachers to make connections to environmental issues as they teach the regular syllabus. Personally, I have been unable to teach about atomic structure without discussing the atom bomb and the world war, nor have I been able to teach about the constituents of the atmosphere without linking it to geopolitics of carbon and its presence in the atmosphere. Environment education is about helping children see the connections.

The author is the founder-trustee of Poorna Learning Centre in Bangalore – an “alternative” school that emerged out of her experience and ideas while she chose to home-school her own children. She is now Consultant, Academics and Pedagogy, Azim Premji Foundation, Bangalore. She can be reached at indira@azimpremjifoundation.org.

1. The environmental crisis and education

2. Learning for life

It has been a stimulating experience bringing the Happy series to you and sharing some tried and tested classroom ideas. We would love to know if any of you tried out the project and the response it generated. Both brickbats and bouquets are welcome, but feedback will help us know if what we are putting out, works for you or not. Perhaps we can also through the feedback forum, share some of the “Aha” as well as the “Oh no” moments that arose for you and your children!

The authors are partners in Edcraft, Hyderabad, a firm engaged in making teaching-learning materials, conducting workshops and providing consultancy services. They can be reached at edcraft94@gmail.com.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.

School classrooms are the ideal places for children to learn and practice good nutrition as they spend a large amount of their time in school and have one or two meals a day at school. Given this, not imparting nutrition education is a missed opportunity to empower children with better knowledge on nutrition and influence their dietary habits. In a recent survey conducted by the Kalanjiyam Trust (refer to article ‘Aspirations of rural students’ that appeared in Teacher Plus, September 09), a majority of the students from rural schools reported that their only role model was their teacher, indicating the power a teacher has to mould the children.

Our children’s nutrition status
Including nutrition education in schools is the need of the hour in a country where a large majority of children and adolescents are undernourished and have a number of nutritional deficiencies, such as iron, calcium and others that are vital for normal growth and development. .The National Family Health Survey (NFHS 3) conducted in all states in India (between 2005-06) provides a dismal picture of our children’s nutrition status. About 46% of the children under three years were underweight compared to the 47% reported in NFHS 2 conducted in 1998 -99. This indicates that nearly every second child is underweight, which is worse than in sub-Saharan Africa. Added to this, 38% of the children were found to be stunted (not having adequate height for their age), a sign of prolonged undernourishment; and about 80% of the children were anemic, an increase from 74% in NFHS 2. This picture is sufficient to understand the nutritional profile of students who are starting their lives at a disadvantage, which has to be overcome through intense nutritional supplementation and proper balanced diet.

Link between nutrition and school performance
Just as children need to understand the importance of good nutrition, teachers need reinforcement on how good nutrition contributes to a child’s cognitive abilities and ultimately his/her academic performance. A teacher might want to examine the differences between a student scoring high marks, one scoring mediocre marks and one who is a poor performer in the same class. Since the teacher does not take separate classes for good and poor students, it does not take long to realize that factors other than the teaching method are the major contributing factor of which a student’s health/nutritional status is among the foremost. A student’s current mental ability, IQ and mental health (which are directly related to school performance) are strongly linked to nutritional status, including that of the mother at the time of pregnancy, the child’s birth and early childhood, as well as his past and present dietary patterns. In fact, Science tells us that brain chemistry can change with the lack of even one nutrient and can give rise to diminished mental ability, emotional or behavioral disturbances, anxiety and many other disorders. One can then imagine the situation of children who routinely come to school without eating any breakfast, or who predominantly consume rice and do not get a balanced supply of essential vitamins in their diet.

Integrating nutrition in the classroom
To be effective, a nutrition lesson needs to be provided in conjunction with a school breakfast and lunch programme that will help exemplify the lessons being taught to children. In schools where breakfast and noon meals are provided, teachers can talk about the nutrition value of foods being provided and its connection to health and performance. In public schools, teachers can, in conjunction with Anganwaadi workers, mobilize local resources to increase the amount of vegetables or pulses used in the noon meal, and introduce fruits or other nutritious snacks for children.

Besides imparting information about nutrition and the links between diet, health and learning, teachers can focus on giving individual attention to developing skills among children in selecting foods and work with parents in preparation of foods. This is essential for children who are found to be physically weak and not doing well in class. Teachers can easily assess the dietary patterns of children who come from families that are primarily wage labourers, as the nutrition status of children from such families are likely to be more compromised. In such situations teachers can reinforce that a good nutritious diet is possible within the available means and help such children and their parents make healthier food choices using locally available options. Parents can channel the small amounts they give their children to purchase fast foods, junk or packaged foods, to rather include whole grains, milk or bananas.

Even without having a formal class time for nutrition education in school, teachers can employ innovative approaches for talking about nutrition in their classrooms:

• Using examples from health and nutrition in mathematics lessons.
• Providing nutrition tips or trivia and presenting a nutritional value every day in class.
• Checking with students randomly on what they ate for breakfast, and giving ‘stars’ to students who had breakfast and a balanced diet.
• Using stories, drama and role play activities during regular classes to help teach and reinforce the messages on nutrition and health.
• Including compositions / essay writing contests on health and nutrition.
• Presenting brief facts about the situation of our children’s nutrition in history or geography classes.

Teachers can also advocate with the school administration to organize an annual health and nutrition day in their school, where special program or talks can be presented to children on nutrition, health and hygiene.

Teacher’s club
While teachers face many challenges in bringing nutrition into the classroom, it is important to realize that they need to have an understanding of nutrition and have access to information sources to effectively impart nutrition education. This was in fact the overarching need expressed by teachers who participated in a programme organized by the Kalanjiyam Trust, to provide information on nutrition to rural teachers.This need triggered formation of a local Teacher’s Club, to serve as a resource and to support teachers in their efforts to integrate health and nutrition in school. In the upcoming months, Kalanjiyam will enroll teachers from the local schools and based on the needs expressed, organize informational and skill building workshops. Such a teacher’s club we expect will become a forum where teachers can share their experiences for effective cross learning.

The important role of teachers in imparting knowledge on nutrition as well as instilling good dietary habits among children must be acknowledged and put to practice, given their power of influence over students. By talking about nutrition in the classroom teachers will more effectively be able to succeed in the ultimate aims of educating children and contribute to realizing the dream of healthier future generations of children in our country.

Basic food groups

It is never too early or too late to talk to children about nutrition. Children of all ages can be taught about basic nutritional requirements, the main food groups, types of foods in each group, the health benefits of each and how they can include these in their diet. Children in higher classes can be taught about the key nutrients for each food group, the recommended amounts to be had and about combination foods, those having multiple nutritious values.

The food guide pyramid is a useful tool that teachers can use in the classroom to help explain to children what a good diet is and what kind of diet is right for them. The name, food pyramid suggests that more servings are required of the foods at the bottom of the pyramid and fewer servings of those at the top to derive the necessary nutrition from them. Within each group it suggests varying serving sizes of food groups according to age, gender and activity levels.

The food pyramid, gives the basic food groups required for a healthy nutrition rich diet for all children. These include: grains, fruits, vegetables, milk and cheese, meat, beans, poultry, fish and other food groups (oils, fats and sugars). Children can be encouraged to adopt the following practices to eat healthy:

• Eat foods from all five food groups every day as they are all equally important.
• Eat different foods from a food group every day even though they have the same nutrients, as the amounts of nutrients in each food vary, and therefore including different sources helps make a balanced diet.
• Make food choices that are nutritious but low in fat; while meat and poultry are important, low fat choices among this food group are best for long-term health.
• Never skip breakfast as it is the most important meal of the day.

While talking to children about the other food groups, teachers should tell the children that limited amounts of “other” foods (fried foods, sweets, and other fast foods) are okay, as long as they don’t take the place of the more nutritious, first five-food-group food, and they balance their choices with plenty of daily physical activity. Teachers also need to address children’s likes and dislikes of foods so as to influence them adopt healthy eating habits. Along with this, encouraging personal cleanliness, good hygienic practices such as insisting that they always wear slippers outside their homes are important messages that children should receive in school.

The author is founder and director, Kalanjiyam Trust, Chennai. He can be reached at kalanjiyam@gmail.com.

Biology teaching needs to step out of the textbook ever so often and find its place in daily life – the lessons that apply to what and how we eat, how we live and how we relate to people around us. Teaching units that relate to nutrition and health can be made practicable to both our students and ourselves. This article on tackling anemia, a common nutrition related deficiency, can give you some supplemental information and ideas to take into the classroom.

The author is a hematologist with Tapadia Lifeline Diagnostic Centre, Hyderabad. She can be reached at gaya3k@yahoo.com.

This is an article for subscribers only. You may request the complete article by writing to us at editorial@teacherplus.org.

Having been the author of many a ‘last word’, I am beginning to wonder about the column’s overall place in Teacher Plus as a popular intellectual forum for disseminating critical ideas on education. The last word has often departed from the magazine’s content in ways that I’ve enjoyed both, reading and writing.

When I was working for Teacher Plus, I was churning the column out every other month, trying to justify my curious existence at the magazine office. On a number of occasions, my writing provoked angry reactions from people, mainly protesting the insensitivity with which I called a spade a spade. The editor was pleased with these responses because people often do not bother to offer feedback that, in turn, challenges us to produce more thought-(or anger-)provoking content. In a particular instance, an apology was demanded by an advocate of “accidental” plagiarism on the part of teachers. In the column in question, I had derided teacher submitted content plagiarised from the internet. Another Last Word I wrote about the status of spoken English in India hurt the feelings of rookie learners who felt I was being elitist. These claims are inconclusively debatable.

Without justifying my own position, an important question for me then is: What is the ‘last word’ really about?

Other writers of the column may disagree but I propose it’s about not taking oneself too seriously. It is convenient for me to claim this for I mostly operate in self-deprecatory humour mode, thus it comes naturally to me. Where the rest of the magazine content broaches crucial matters pertaining to education, the Last Word, in my view, offers a moment of respite. I do not intend to detract from the gravity of Teacher Plus’ mission but if a little more thought is expended, the Last Word in fact serves the same critical function but employs different linguistic devices.

Why is plagiarism such an issue? Why are we obsessed with speaking English? Why is education, more often than not, a religious experience? Why is living in America so completely necessary to lead a fulfilling life? These questions have merely peeled the superficial layer of our being constituted through irony and contradiction. The Last Word, then, for me is turning the lens on ourselves (the unity of you, the reader, and I, the writer) to think a bit more about who we are. It’s the exact opposite of self-help in that it allows us (at least I hope) to forget our fragile, egoistic selves and have a hearty laugh at our own insecurities and blind spots. The sardonic tone only serves a medicinal function. It is bitter yet it is meant to make us feel better.

At least, that’s how I’ve always intended to write the last word. If humour is employed to humiliate, the author thoroughly betrays his own intelligence and devolves into self-oblivion. And the ability to laugh at ourselves, on the other hand, is a sublime form of nirvana that we must vie for in small measure in our routine, insignificant lives. The Last Word is perhaps a first step towards that state.

The author is a PhD student at the University of California at San Diego, USA. He can be reached at pawansinghh@gmail.com.

All of us know that English has borrowed liberally from other languages like Spanish, French, Latin, Celtic, etc. What is of interest to note, however, is that many of the expressions we use today come from the world of fairy tales; and some of them are the creations of an African slave who lived in Greece some 2500 years ago! Any idea who this person is? Here’s a hint: the tales told by this prolific storyteller gave us expressions like ‘sour grapes’, ‘to cry wolf’, ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’, etc. If the bulb that went off in your head flashed the name Aesop, then congratulations! You hit the nail on the head.

For someone whose stories are known the world over, there is not much we know about this weaver of stories; the details of his life are rather sketchy. What is known, however, is that he was a slave who served two masters in the island of Samos. Scholars believe ‘Aesop’ may not have been this individual’s actual name. They are of the opinion the name is a corruption of ‘Aethopian’ (sounds a lot like Ethiopian, doesn’t it?), a term used by the Greeks to refer to dark skinned Africans. The story goes that even as a slave, Aesop’s stories kept all those around him thoroughly entertained: his fellow slaves, his master and his guests. His second master was so pleased with his ability to spin yarns that he set him free. Aesop travelled quite extensively before settling down in the court of King Croesus. The legend goes that he met his end when he was thrown off a cliff by an angry mob. I wonder if Aesop was forced to look before he took the fatal leap!

This month’s column will deal with some of the expressions that we get from the tales of Aesop. In many of his stories, animals play the lead character; and what better way to begin the column than by talking about the king of the jungle: the lion! Whenever someone gets the major chunk of something, we say that the person got the ‘lion’s share’. In one of Aesop’s stories, a lion goes hunting with three of his friends – a fox, a donkey, and a wolf. After they make a kill, the lion informs them that the meat will be not shared equally among the four; that he is, in fact, going to keep three fourths of the meat for himself. The reasons he provides for keeping the ‘lion’s share’ are the following: one fourth as his just share for killing the animal, one fourth for his hungry lioness and cubs, and the other one fourth for his courage. The lion then goes on to inform his friends that he is prepared to part with the remaining one fourth, provided one of them challenges him to a fight and defeats him. The fox, donkey and wolf are of course too chicken to take him on, and leave the entire kill to the king of beasts. Before the three realized they had been an ass to make friends with a lion, they probably thought they would be sharing of the meat: they were celebrating prematurely; they were counting their chickens before the eggs hatched. You know what our master storyteller tells people who celebrate prematurely: ‘Don’t count your chickens before the eggs hatch’.

To get this message across, Aesop tells us the story of a woman whose daydreams bring her misery. In the story, a woman is carrying a basket of eggs. While she is walking, she begins to think about how many chicks she will soon have, how much money she’ll make by selling the chicks, the things she’ll buy with all the money, etc. As she is thinking about all this, she drops the basket of eggs! Result? The woman is left with egg on her face!

One cannot accuse Aesop of being a sexist because in his stories both men and women come across as being equally silly. In the case of ‘one swallow does not make a summer’, an expression we use to caution people, it is a man who is left rueing. In this story, a young man sees a swallow on a relatively warm winter day. Since a ‘swallow’ is a bird which is usually seen in summer, the young man concludes that warm weather is around the corner. He is so confident that he proceeds to sell his winter coat, and spend the money on drinks. A few days later, the weather takes a turn for the worse, and the young man, shivering in the cold, realizes that the presence of one swallow does not necessarily imply summer has arrived. Aesop doesn’t tell us if the young man was married; if he had been, his wife would have surely made an already bad situation worse by screaming, ‘I told you not to sell that coat, you idiot!’ Not the words of comfort you wish to hear when you are feeling miserably cold and have a hangover to boot!

Make a situation that is already bad, worse? Isn’t there an expression for that? There certainly is, ‘add insult to injury’. This too comes from one of Aesop’s tales. This time around, the protagonist is an insect; a ‘fly’ to be more precise. In the story, a bald man tries to swat a fly that has landed on his head. He misses the fly and smacks his head instead. The fly tells the man, ‘You wanted to kill me for a mere touch. What will you do to yourself, now that you have added insult to injury?’

And perhaps that is a good point at which to end this tale…lest I suffer the same fate as poor Aesop!

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

Schooling the National Imagination by Shalini Advani adds to the list of good books on education that we have seen in the recent past. A non-ideological enquiry into the political agenda of education, it comprehensively maps a territory that has not been sufficiently explored.

Schooling the National Imagination traces the historical journey of the ideological debates that have informed policy, curriculum, texts, classroom transactions and attitudes since India’s independence. The book explores, through the various shifts over the past 60 years, the vexed relationship between language and modernity and a nationalist identity – which, within a postcolonial setting gets even more complex.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section, ‘The Policy Landscape’, concentrates on the ideological and policy shifts. This section is further divided into three chapters. In each of these, Shalini Advani concentrates on a particular component: the nationalist identity, language and what Indian society sees as the role of education. Thus, the first chapter examines what it means to be a “true Indian”, the second chapter explores the predicament of the relation with the language of the colonizer in a post-colonial nation and the third concentrates on the “overall framing vision of education in India”.

The second section entitled ‘The Culture of Text-books’, concentrates on changes in the textbooks. This section is again divided into three chapters The Construction of the Nation, Normalizing Boundaries, and Engendering the Nation. The first examines how the national policy enters into the classroom through the textbooks. In the second chapter, there is an attempt to describe an ideal citizen, as well as to reveal who is included or marginalized. It also looks at the construction of “the non-Western, modern” citizen. The last chapter in this section examines how gender roles are depicted in textbooks.

The third section, ‘Entering the School Gates’, takes us right into the classroom. It shows how ideology, policy and the textbook unfold in the classroom. The conclusion maps the connections and new tensions between “Nationalist Pedagogy, Sub-national Identities and Transnational Desires” in the present day.

Schooling the National Imagination would be of immense use to all interested in studying the inter-connections between ideology-policy, curricular reforms and classroom delivery. From the deliberations at the top to its transaction in the field, the book shows clearly how an ideology, through policy and curriculum informs textbooks and how these, in turn, play out within a classroom between the teacher-student. Shalini Advani’s book gives one both a wide angle shot of the historical perspective and a microscopic, vertical picture of the three issues – language, modernity and national identity – that continue to engage “the national imagination”. The book is worth reading for its enquiry into the politics of two very interesting issues of language and self-identity in a post-colonial situation. Students and researchers will find the book studying for its worth-emulating methodology.

The only amendment that I would suggest to this very competently written book is a change in the title. It is evocative but, I think, not accurate. Even if one could pin down what a “national imagination” might be, it would still be impossible to ‘school’ it, given the norm of rote-learning. Thus, an apt title, I think, would have been Attempting to School the National Identity or Schooling and the Nationalist Identity!

Schooling the National Imagination
Shalini Advani
Oxford Publications, 2009
pp. 205, Rs. 575/-

The author is founder Centre for Learning, which aims to offer alternative education to all children. She can be reached at kaur.gurveen@gmail.com.

When I was asked to review the book, I agreed to it with little expectation that I would be struck by a storm! That was truly my immediate feeling on reading the insightful preface. The primary mismatches as outlined by the author between a child’s capacities and what the school expects was sufficient pointer to the depth of research and questioning that was to follow.

Having worked with the Waldorf curriculum (as indicated by Rudolf Steiner), I know that child development is central to our understanding of the growing human being, the curriculum that will ideally suit children and the creative methodology that goes with it. Hence it was heartening to read about the development of the brain. It is indeed a key to understanding how to approach the child as well as his/her learning. At the same time ‘brain development’ has been placed within the context of the whole human being. At a time when all kinds of educational practices are being commodified under the fad ‘brain development in the young’, the author’s concern if something can be accomplished in a less painful way drives home the point that teaching is essentially a human activity.

As I read and reread the chapter on ‘learning’, it became more and more clear that the activity of teaching is about owning responsibility – owning responsibility for their learning. As I finished reading it I relived the question – if something is not clear to children, is it their limitation or mine?

One of the primary reasons for me to question the typical school of our times is the abuse of memory and an assumption that memory based learning which is marked and graded is an indicator of intelligence. While there are general questions and concerns about memory overload, the author has painted an excellently researched picture of ‘memory’ – a must read not only for teachers and planners but also parents. The need to use memory as ‘a convenience to allow for higher order thinking to occur more smoothly’ wonderfully places memory in the right perspective of learning.

The chapter on child development questions how much we truly understand the growing child. I was reminded of my own child asking me (she was 5 years old then) why the sea water was salty. I might have jumped around and laid my hands on to a handsome looking encyclopaedia – only better sense prevailed in the form of my mentor who told her a fairy tale where a dwarf churns a rock in the sea. Her eyes sparkled with wonder – something that no scientific explanation would have done in a child that young. She seemed perfectly happy with the answer. Many years later when she learnt ‘neutralization’ – the question that was sleeping in her consciousness woke up again – only she was ready to put her hands on to an encyclopedia – with no coercion from me or anyone else. I am particularly moved when I see children whose development has been respected in terms of what and how they learn. I’ve noticed that they approach arts and sciences with equal enthusiasm. For them, scientific knowledge and mythical consciousness do not seem contradictory. Often an early intellectualization and pushing of formal sciences makes them either lose interest in literature and fine arts – or they begin to treat the latter as lowest in the hierarchy of subjects – a phenomenon recognized in the book too. The worst form of abuse is, of course, enrolling in arts and humanities since ‘they were not good enough at sciences’.

The discussion in ‘Nature vs Nurture’ once again throws up fundamental questions on the abilities of children – these to me as a teacher have long been linked with existential questions and I have found my answers that are much less tentative than ideas thrown open in the chapter. Nevertheless the asking of these questions is much more important than finding the answers. It is in the asking of such questions that education flowers into a human activity.

I must confess that I did not read the book sequentially – I first attacked the chapter on Moral Development since that to me has been a key question and not separate from any academic work we do with the children. (This is one of the few books that can be read sequentially or at random). The clarity between ‘conventions’ and ‘moral empathic reasons’ was starkly depicted with examples and the reader left thinking about our own methods of working around morality. The chapter concludes by questioning ‘competition’ which still seems to govern our way of education. Competition immediately places individuals in a situation of conflict. I believe any discussion on morality sounds hollow if we have not questioned whether competition has any role at all in learning… other than making people feel small or big – building images on which they begin to be dependent life long. It is a psychological addiction – much more dangerous than addictions of other kinds since it is not even recognized as one.

Questions about ‘what is intelligence’ on the one hand highlighted the narrow scope of IQ tests, and on the other hand truly explored what intelligence is. The chapter seemed to be a reminder to all educators to understand the word in its broad scope – I’ve often viewed the word as an expression of integrated thought, feeling and action. The way different psychologists have viewed ‘intelligence’ certainly needs to wake us up from the slumber of a non-intelligent understanding of the word.

The chapter on motivation summed up the shallowness of external motivation. To me it had always seemed that motivation in students had a lot to do with the enthusiasm of the teacher. Brings up the larger question we need to ask ourselves ‘why have we chosen this path? (Profession?)’ Measuring learning had ideas to make evaluation and assessment lively. I’ve always believed that if we view assessment as a means to ‘measure teaching’, we might have the right attitude towards students.

I was happy to see a whole chapter committed to understanding the emotional states of the child. The ideas about self-esteem seemed to be different from what I hold. To me, both Baumeister and J. Krishnamurthy seem to be questioning ‘self – image’ (which I think is harmful whether or not it is a good or bad image of oneself that one entertains). I’ve noticed that self-esteem is never a ‘conscious’ feeling. It seems to be an unconscious and un-self conscious state of emotional well-being or lack thereof – the latter needing intervention of adults.

At school we are constantly challenged by adolescents and their swinging moods – a trainer who visited us recently recommended ‘compassion’ towards the growing adolescent. Many ideas in the chapter seem practical in nature and we at school would perhaps read these aspects in our teachers’ meetings. Yes this book ought to be read in every school that takes education seriously; and read by every teacher who takes education seriously.

A feeling of gratitude filled me when I finished reading the book. For the author, for the book, a life filled with the meaning of ‘teaching’ and the good fortune of having met many teachers for whom teaching is a living dynamic relationship with the taught.

What did you ask at school today?
Kamala V Mukunda
Collins Pulishers, 2009
pp. 287, Rs. 199/-

The author teaches at Abhaya, a Waldorf school in Kompally, Hyderabad. She can be reached at
vijuanu@yahoo.com.